Invitation from Councillors Cross-party Portswood Planning Group to two Workshops to contribute to plans for Portswood

“Dear friends and neighbours   

A cross-party initiative, Portswood Planning Group met regularly over the past 8 months – thank you to everyone who gave up their time to be involved in this work.   

The background to this group came from many conversations on the doorstep where residents felt things were done to them, such as the Bus-gate and the proliferation of student housing developments without their voice being heard. 

As local councillors we considered developing a Neighbourhood plan for Portswood, as has been done in Bassett, but this did not have sufficient community buy-in to make it creditable.

Instead we agreed to feed ideas into the Southampton Local Plan   and to other voluntary and council projects that are already underway.  Some funding for greening projects in Hampshire is also available and with sufficient support we could make a bid.   

www.Greening-campaign.org/join 

We researched and discussed many issues at these meetings including the Broadway, transport, green spaces, safety and housing.  We have now reached the point where we would welcome your input to the process. 

We attach an invitation to 2 workshops (see below):

 ⁃ Monday 16th November 1pm to 3pm at Portswood Church (see poster below)

  ⁃ Tuesday 1st December 6pm to 8pm at Portswood Church (see poster below)

 Please respond to this email with your details and street name if you wish to attend – we are trying to achieve inclusive representation from all parts of the Ward and all residential-types.     Email Councillor.k.barbour@southampton.gov.uk

Each workshop will take the format of table top discussions on 3 issues, namely: 

Transport

Housing 

The Broadway.  

If other issues are your priority and you have points to raise these would be welcome. You only need to attend one workshop.

Room bookings have been funded by a large discount by the church and by HRA – thank you both.   

The outputs from the workshops will be shared with 

•The 3 Ward Councillors 

•Amber Trueman SCC who is working on the Local Plan for the city Southampton Local Plan Southampton Local Plan

•Clare Diaper from So Linked/TWICS  who is leading work on SO17 

•Kate Bond from the Architect team at SCC who is leading the small public realm project for the Broadway.    

We are also keen to see if we can make any quick wins to how things are done around here and have some concrete outcomes from the workshops.

You are here to hold us all to account and we welcome your input.   

It has been heartening to see the recent achievement in securing artists to decorate the hoarding around the closed shopping centre in Portswood before the permanent solution but this is a good outcome.   

So make contact to book a place. I look forward to seeing you at one of the workshops.  If the workshops were oversubscribed we would arrange a further workshop in December.  

Finally the Architect, Kate Bond, is hosting a public drop to display the ideas for improvement of the Public Realm – Portswood Broadway in at Sainsbury’s community room next Wednesday 4 November from 4pm to 7pm. Let us talk Portswood!

Go along and vote for the scheme that you feel will be most beneficial to our High Street   

With kind regards   

John, Kat and Lori”

Portswood Ward Councillors