New student tower for city centre is good news
Published on Friday, 6th October 2016
There has been another application for a new high rise student tower. This time it’s for a 19-storey block for the corner of Commercial Road and Stanhope Street that would replace the Co-operative bank building diagonally opposite the station. There would be a new retail unit on the ground floor.
The 256 rooms this building would contain would lessen the demand for shared student houses by perhaps 60 or 70. Having more potential customers nearby will also help shore up the Commercial Road retail area, which is important given that any new shopping centre for the Tricorn site is at least five years from opening.
There is a myth out there that were it not for these student towers somehow a lot of new council housing would be being built instead. That’s obviously untrue – all these schemes are in the private sector and the council simply cannot afford to build social housing beyond that already planned.
The alternative to these student schemes is empty sites and no development at all. That would mean fewer construction jobs and more students living in residential areas. From the council’s perspective, this development also means a little more money in the pot from the infrastructure tax to fund flood defences and school places. It’s in the city’s interest that this scheme goes ahead.
If you want to comment, the planning reference number is 16/01537/FUL.
Tags: Planning, City Centre
Planning application for road at Fraser Ranges
Best ever GCSE results in Portsmouth, even while the pass rate falls across the rest of the country
Published on Saturday, 27th August 2016
Exam results in Portsmouth this year were sharply better, halving the attainment gap with the rest of the country as a result.
58% of GCSE entries in the city’s state schools were graded A*-C, compared to 51% last year. Across England as a whole that figure feel from 69% to 67%. About half the national drop can be explained by new rules that compel students with lower grades to re-sit English and Maths, the rest is the result of tougher marking standards.
The rise in attainment in Portsmouth is spread across most of the city’s secondary schools. It partly reflects the role of academy chains in improving the quality of teaching – and of course hard work by local teenagers.
Local authorities are due to lose responsibility for school improvement from next September, after which it will sit with regional schools’ commissioner and central government. However by guiding schools through the process of switching to academy status, the council has had real influence over the last couple of years and I will be sorry to lose it.
Tags: Education
Inside the new Greetham St student tower
Published on Saturday, 27th August 2016
Recently I got to see inside the new 836-room student tower near Portsmouth and Southsea station that has just been completed. While the building is undeniably dominant from the outside, inside the accommodation is to a good standard and the views from the 19th floor common room are stunning.
Developments like this are good for the city. The site was previously a council-owned car park and the receipt from disposal more than funded the local contribution to recent primary school building programme. It has also freed up space in rented housing and should also help support city centre retailing by adding hundreds more potential customers to the area.
This site and nearby Chaucer House, which the council has also sold, have brought in about £10m. This has allowed it to continue with an ambitious capital programme that has included a new bus station at the Hard, a large number of new school places and that will potentially include a new road in the city centre, which if it goes ahead may finally make development at the Northern Quarter site a reality.
Tags: University
University numbers are not rising
Published on Saturday, 27th August 2016
The new halls of residence construction in the city centre have been greeted by critics who say that student numbers are rising faster than the number of available rooms. The statistics do not bear that out.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency has been counting student numbers for twenty years. Stripping out part-time students, who probably mostly live at home, results in a full-time student body of about 18000. This number has actually fallen slightly since 2010.
There was a sharp rise in numbers through the nineties and the early years of this century, but it has not been sustained. This partly reflects the cap on UK student numbers imposed by the government - and lifted last year - so there could be an increase in future. However unless that happens, the numbers suggest that building new student halls really will lessen demand for spaces in shared houses.
| year | number of full time students |
|---|---|
| 1996/97 | 12387 |
| 1998/99 | 12416 |
| 2000/01 | 12315 |
| 2002/03 | 13945 |
| 2004/05 | 15805 |
| 2006/07 | 15420 |
| 2008/09 | 16675 |
| 2010/11 | 18820 |
| 2012/13 | 18720 |
| 2014/15 | 17995 |
Tags: Education, University
New hovercraft arrive
Published on Sunday, 7th August 2016
The two new hovercraft ordered by Hovertravel a couple of years ago have now been delivered and are already working the Southsea-Ryde route.
The Solent Flyer and the Island Flyer replace two earlier vessels, one dating from 1986 and the other from 1990 (although the latter is still serving some journeys at the moment) and ensure that the service will remain for decades to come.
Compared to their predecessors, the new craft are more comfortable. Passenger capacity has actually being reduced from 95 to 80, but as there are generally spare seats on most journeys, this should not be a problem.
The Isle of Wight connection is the only commercial hovercraft service operating in Europe. Most other routes were squeezed out by catamarans in the 1980s and 1990s.
Tags: Transport
Sharing senior management with other councils
Published on Saturday, 30th July 2016
Portsmouth is leading the way in sharing management structures with other councils. The City Council will soon provide lead finance and legal officers to Gosport as well as sharing a Chief Executive with the borough. The two authorities already share housing managers.
Meanwhile the city’s finance head is also fulfilling that role on the Isle of Wight; Portsmouth and Southampton City Councils have agreed to have a joint head of Public Health and The Head of Adult Social Care is also head of the GP-led Clinical Commissioning Group within the NHS.
All these joint roles save money in wages. Their real potential though is in having larger scale contracts and larger scale teams delivering services. This does not necessitate having a single standard of service – it would be perfectly practicable to have a single waste collection contract that allows for fortnightly bin collections in Gosport and weekly ones in Portsmouth for example. It’s the sharing of the vehicle fleet and depot that leads to lower costs.
It will take several years to realise all the benefits, but the Gosport tie-up may potentially save the city a million pounds a year. The other deals are probably less lucrative, but they all help.
Many people see the joining of services as resulting in a loss of sovereignty, but that’s easy to overstate and, to me at least, just not that important. Not everything works best at scale, but where it does we should seize the opportunity to do more with less.
Tags: Shared Services
Wild flowers in Milton Park
Published on Saturday, 30th July 2016
The council has been experimenting with putting wild flower in some city parks, including Milton, Kingston and Stamshaw. The areas planted last year have become overrun with weeds and the flowers have struggled to return, but in the newly planted areas, an annual mix has been used and the effect has been stunning. These plants are now dying back, but the plan is to repeat the exercise again next year.
Tags: Parks
Building new affordable housing through a council-owned company
Published on Friday, 29th July 2016
The council is currently waiting on decisions from Havant Borough Council on three planning applications to build a total of 95 houses and flats in Leigh Park. The housing will all be affordable and will be let through a council-owned company, the setting up of which was authorised earlier this month.
All told the developments will cost about £11m, most of which is coming through additional borrowing in the Housing Revenue Account – the fund that council house rents go into. The council is, however forming an arms-length company to manage the developments, Ravelin Developments. The right-to-buy, while providing a welcome leg up for many families, makes it uneconomic to build new social housing. The only way of squaring the circle is to move the management into a separate but still council-owned company.
I mention this now in part because the LibDems are launching a campaign calling for exactly this to happen. It could be that they are not away of these proposals, but if they are then frankly it looks rather cynical.
The three schemes before Havant council are allow available to see online. Click here, here and here for details.
Tags: Housing, Commercialisation
New movable café planned for seafront
Published on Monday, 11th July 2016
The Vista Snack Bar by The Dell will be moved and a kiosk put in its place if plans put forward by the City Council are approved.
The council has purchased a second-hand movable structure that can seat about twenty people. No end user has been lined up and if permission is refused the council will consider other sites.
Outside seating will be provided on a decking area. There is a distinct shortage of places to eat by the beach and so all the existing venues are trading well.
Tags: Seafront