Business rates and the High St

Published on Wednesday, 28th February 2018

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the retail sector, with both Toys R Us and Maplin Electronics likely to disappear completely and with closure dates announced for Marks and Spencer’s, in Portsmouth and in Fareham.

Shopping habits are changing rapidly. Nationwide approximately 15% of retail spending goes on online purchases, while out-of-town centres continue to grow and the likes of Asda and Tesco sell an ever wider range of goods. This is bound to have an effect on the High Street.

Locally, the City Council is doing what it can to support shops. This includes, for example, establishing a market in Cosham and continuing to offer some, admittedly limited, free parking in Southsea and other district centres. As it does not own any town centre shops, the council cannot determine rent levels. Business rates for shops are generally coming down though. The rateable value for Debenhams in Commercial Road is now £915,000, compared to £1,280,000 in 2010 and the value for the Marks and Spencer’s store has fallen from £715,000 to £610,000 over the same period.

Commercial Road is also getting at least some relief from having large numbers of students living in the city centre and will also benefit when the two new hotels planned for the area open. In the longer run, a lot is hinging on the City Centre Road Scheme and the new shopping area that will follow if it goes ahead. In future, retail will be concentrated in a small number of big centres. Portsmouth city centre needs to join Southampton and Guildford as a shopping and leisure destination.

Tags: Town Centres, Retail

New environmentally friendly lighting now being installed

Published on Sunday, 11th February 2018

An eighteen-month programme to replace the bulbs in the city’s streetlights started last week. The new LED lights use 40% less energy than the current sodium ones and will need replacing less frequently. 

Only the lantern head will be replaced; it will take about fifteen minutes to swap each one, so the level of disruption in any individual street will be minimal. The ornate lighting used in parts of Old Portsmouth and Southsea will not be changed.

The first phase of the works covers Portsea. This area of the city will get the new bulbs between about May and August. Click here to see the timetable.

Tags: Transport, Rail

Congestion likely as Network Rail replaces bridge

Published on Sunday, 11th February 2018

A 19th century railway bridge on the route to Gunwharf is to be replaced this coming week. It will inevitably cause congestion.

Network Rail will be carrying out works to replace the Burnaby Road bridge between Monday and Friday. Portsmouth Harbour station will be closed throughout that period, as will Park Road, which is the main access to Gunwharf.

Next week is half term and the shops and cinema at Gunwharf will be busier than normal. Rail usage is however always lower in school holidays, which is why Network Rail has taken the decision to do the works then. Diversions will be in place, but queues are likely. The £2.7m cost of the works is being met entirely by Network Rail.

Tags: Transport, Rail

Exercise group for people with breathing problems benefits from lottery cash

Published on Sunday, 11th February 2018

Breathe Easy Southsea, a group for people with COPD and other lung conditions, has received money from the Portsmouth Lottery for new exercise equipment. The group, which meets in the Mountbatten Centre, also gets free support from a trainer from BH Live as part of the council’s leisure centre contract with that company. The exercises the members of the group undertake help to maintain lung capacity and therefore to their stop long term health conditions from worsening.

The council is providing practical help to people with medical conditions through the leisure facilities it already owns. The lottery grants, while modest at up to £2000, are a practical way of helping small groups fund worthy projects.

Tags: Health, Leisure

Housing scheme for Fraser Range published

Published on Sunday, 11th February 2018

Draft plans for 130 houses and flats on the Fraser Range site were shown to the public at the start of last week. As expected, the two main existing buildings are retained and converted to housing, while the new units proposed are largely on existing buildings or parking areas.

The quality of the design is good and the buildings do not go over four storeys in height. Obviously this is a very sensitive site and ecological issues will be of central importance. While it is intended to leave the eastern end of the site undeveloped, there are unanswered questions about the impact on bird and plant life. Flood defences are also a key issue, with the developer liable for the full cost of protecting the area.

On a positive note, the scheme includes an extension to the England Coastal Path, which in conjunction with an extension around the Southern Water site would mean a full path around that part of the coastline.

Any additional housing would also put pressure on school places and on the road network. However as this location is brownfield land in planning law, it won’t be possible to refuse permission on those grounds. The most the council will be able to do is secure some funding to try and mitigate the problem.

There is no planning application at this stage, although one is likely in the next couple of months. That means we do not yet know whether any social housing will be included; my expectation though is that it will not be. The developers are running a consultation on their website (www.fraserrange.co.uk), where there is more information.

Tags: Housing, Planning

Mountbatten Centre gets a new look

Published on Thursday, 18th January 2018

(From Linda Symes' facebook page)

These images of the improvements taking place at the Mountbatten Centre will be completed over the next few months and will make it an even more attractive offer, the Climbing Wall, Soft Play for children and the improved reception with a new swipe system only adds to the value to the overall offer of 7 Centres for less than £27 a month

Tags: Leisure

Portsmouth one of a handful of areas to get electric car cash

Published on Tuesday, 16th January 2018

Just five council areas in England bid into a government pot to pay for charging points for electric vehicles – and Portsmouth was one of them. The £100,000 grant will be matched by £30,000 of the council’s own money.

With most parking on-street, Portsmouth is a difficult area to provide charging infrastructure - but it is not impossible. Last year, the council agreed to provide three chargers for public use, all of which are located in car parks. Consideration is being given to whether electric vehicle charging points will be able to be incorporated into street lights.

Electric car numbers will surge over the coming decade. In Norway, where they are heavily subsidised, one new car in three is battery powered. In the UK the figure is much lower, although once hybrids are included it rises to about 1.5%. It is surprising that so few councils are interested in putting in the infrastructure, but happily, Portsmouth is an exception.

Tags: Environment

Church initiative on homelessness

Published on Monday, 15th January 2018

I attended an interesting meeting last week at North End Baptist Church.

Hope into Action is a church-led homeless programme in which parishioners finance housing and church social groups provide support. It started in East Anglia and now has over 200 houses nationwide. There is going to be an attempt to bring it to Portsmouth.

Their business model is to buy houses using money that would otherwise be tied up in low-interest rate accounts. Members of the congregation agree to pay for a slice of a property, so, for example, five people could put in £50,000 each. At the end of a five year period, they can sell their share in proportion to whatever the house is now worth and during the five years they are guaranteed a two percent annual return on their investment – so, in this case, £1000 a year.

This was an initial meeting and I have no idea what will come from it, but it is an example of thinking outside the box. From the perspective of the City Council, any projects like this are welcome and we’d be very happy to have a full discussion about move-on housing: these homeless placements only last for two years.

As an aside, one of the big barriers to housing single people is the social housing stock, most of which is over 40 years old and was built with families in mind. The City Council owns very few small units and while housing associations have more, many are careful who they allow as tenants in order to minimise the risk of rent arrears.

Tags: Homelessness

New French electricity link may come ashore at Eastney

Published on Monday, 18th December 2017

A new connection between the National Grid and the French electricity network is being proposed. Branded as Aquind, the £1.1bn project seeks to link up the two networks at a new substation at Lovedean. If it all proceeds, the cable will come ashore at Eastney and run underground from there. The local impact should be minimal, at least once the construction phase is completed. If the wiring is buried under the road network then this could mean significant road works for a while, although the representative of the company that I spoke to was unsure whether that would be the case. He was also unable to say exactly where the cable would start from, although as the project plan is for works to start in 2020 that is perhaps not surprising. Generally below ground infrastructure does not require planning consent.

A consultation event will take place at Milton Village Hall on January 26th between 2 and 8pm. The project webpage is here.

Tags: Planning