Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Heritage sinks in Swindon's deep end

No-one should be that surprised at GLL's proposals for the wholesale ripping-out of the Health Hydro, especially considering their recent past performance (such as the closure of the 2nd pool at Milton Road, the debacle at The Link over the climbing wall and the ejection of the playgroup at the same centre).

If you look beyond the shouty headline, it remains to be seen if this proposal would ever get anywhere, especially inside a listed building.

In a smaller heritage story, the reaction from the Civic Voice was predictably moaning in 'we're in a paddy because we weren't just given the building because that's what we expect'-style. Makes you wonder what they've been doing about it since 2012.

In the same way that Civic Voice complained about the authorised part demolition of the Technical College building in Victoria Road and admitted that they had failed to spot the detail of it in the planning application.

The Swindon Civic Voice is a very long way from it's earlier incarnation when it use to formally and carefully critique developer plans, and was effective.

Now Civic Voice just seems to shout as often and as loud as it can like a child having a paddy.

3 comments:

komadori said...

The cynic in me thinks perhaps Civic Voice have gone predictably shouty because detailed criticism of planning applications takes lots of effort, gets results but little recognition; whereas whinging about their own fantasy plans is easy and gets lots of attention for them as an organisation, albeit with the tangible benefit to the town's heritage.

To me this proposal seems similar to the Adver towers proposal: something ridiculous thrown in by a developer to soften the way for a slightly less outlandish proposal later.

komadori said...

I meant 'no tangible benefit'.

Swindoncentric said...

All true. It seems Civic Voice has done a 2016 and dispensed with experts.