St James’ Hospital Inquiry “Closing Statement” Milton Neighbourhood Forum

Preamble

  1. The Milton Neighbourhood Forum (the Forum) strongly oppose the application by PJ Livesey to convert the Grade II Hospital and Chapel into 151 Apartments and 58 houses and associated car-parking.
  2. The Forum considers that the appeal scheme proposes an overdevelopment of a heritage site. Had the Appellant been able to cross-subsidise the conservation cost of redevelopment and restoration across both vacant Hospital sites, the heritage harm could have been reduced, the historic landscape better preserved, and the open spaces retained.
  3. The application is for a residential development as is the adjacent plot 1. Bringing the two sites to market separately thwarts PCS 13 which requires the provision of additional open space. 
  4. The benefit of a Legal Right of access over a “Permissive” one is overstated. The Appeal Scheme is a residential conversion with enabling development and includes the reinstatement of a publicly recognised pedestrian and cycle route linking Longfield Road with Locksway Road, it is therefore inconceivable the public could be denied access.
  5. Similarly, we do not accept that new development encroaching upon the northern Airing Courts particularly at the Northeast can be justified to the extent claimed.
  6. The harm from the proposed scheme is not sufficiently justified and cannot be considered to significantly and demonstrably outweigh any perceived benefits.

Impacts

Matron’s Garden 

The scheme seeks to reduce the locally sensitive Matron’s Garden to a single border of trees on four sides of three large, detached houses and garages together with 10 visitor car parking spaces. The Inspector has heard testimony from the Council, the Portsmouth North MP, and public witnesses as to the long-held appreciation of this tranquil green enclosure within the Hospital’s designed landscape. The ‘Garden’s’ isolation is the  very quality that makes it exceptional. Instead of dismissing it as a planning impediment, the Appeal Scheme should embrace it to retain the arboretum feel of the landscape for future residents and visitors alike.

Harm To The Setting of the Listed Hospital Building 

A residential conversion for the hospital is a significant heritage benefit. It is however, recognised that there is harm to the setting of the heritage assets, and we disagree with the extent of new housing. The appellant’s evidence was in error dating the 1937 Lancashire House as post WW2 and further, the (1907) Edwardian Villas are not 1928-32 as stated. That later date considerably diminishes the significance of these early examples of detached villas in a psychiatric setting. The villas have an integral relationship with the Hospital. Building across the North East Airing court and “Chapel View” causes significant harm to that relationship. Additionally, it creates incongruous sightlines from the important vantage point of the Chapel.

Setting and Publicly Accessible Open Space

Local and heritage protections do not rely on public accessibility. MT4 and MH1  protect the hospital’s setting. PCS 13 and ENV1 protect open space. The erection of 9 houses on the North-East Airing Court are a doubly injurious outcome not compensated for by public access to the southern lawn and southern Airing Courts. Furthermore, the proposed redirected north/south cycle path will impede the free flow along the long-established route via the roadway known as “Chapel View” which defines the extent of the eastern Airing Courts.

Demolitions and Open Space

Demolition of the 1950/60’s single storey buildings to the south west of the Goddard Wing are welcomed. The Forum is unable to reconcile the Appellant’s inclusion of verandas and courtyard enclosure demolitions within a net open space calculation consistent with the ordinary meaning of the term open space. There is an open space loss within the Appeal scheme with different ways of calculating it. We believe the Forum’s is more readily understandable.

Car Parking and Traffic Generation

Exceeding the car-parking quotas of the MNDP and to a lesser extent those of the Local Plan, are detrimental to the designed landscape and deters greener modes of travel. For the avoidance of doubt, whilst the MNDP’s visitor parking standard is not explicit, it is intended that visitor parking accord with those under the Local Plan. SYTRAs highway report for the emerging Plan explicitly references the Locksway/Milton Road and Moorings Way/Eastern Road junctions. The Appellant has agreed to mitigate the first and is unable to make improvements to the second where more of the Scheme’s traffic will flow. The SYSTRA report identifies it will operate beyond capacity by 2026 and is incapable of mitigation. We cannot reconcile these conclusions with the benign outcomes of the appellants traffic assessment. 

Demonstrably Significant Benefits Outweighing Harm

  1. The Appellant’s case rests on the value attributable to the 1879 Asylum’s high degree of architectural and historic significance, accepting that a degree of change is necessary. Loss of early fabric is unfortunate but considered acceptable to Historic England and the Conservation Officer. However there comes a tipping point where the loss of historic landscape undermines the very essence of the scheme’s justification. We do not accept the incursion across the North East Airing Court and “Chapel View” is justified.
  2. The absence of a coherent Masterplan across both sites, frustrates the ability to achieve open space gain required under PCS 13 as required.
  3. The sale of the site appears to be predicated on a Keppie Massie valuation of the site with a 20% incentive to the landowner to sell. This is inconsistent with the spirit of Historic England Guidance to public authorities with heritage assets when disposing of them. In these circumstance price is not to be the overriding objective.
  4. We agree with the LPA, the Appeal Scheme does not produce “Significant and Demonstrable Benefits Outweighing Harm” when considered against the overall objectives of the Local Plan and MNDP.
  5. Overall, there are good reasons to dismiss the Appeal Scheme.

Rod Bailey

Milton Neighbourhood Forum

4th July 2023

St James’ Hospital

Milton Neighbourhood Forum Statement of Case

Against Applications 20/00204/FUL and 20/00205/LBC

We are providing this Statement of Case in absence of sight of the Core Documents.

In addition to the comments made to PINS on 14th September 2022, the comments within this Statement of Case should be read in conjunction with the Neighbourhood Planning Forum Objections to the LPA of 15th March 2020; 16th March 2021; 27th October 2022 and 21st November 2022 (mistakenly drafted as October but is in response to the public release in mid-November 2022 of the Appellant’s Open Space Note of Dec 2021).   

Preamble

As early as 1961 a political decision was taken to replace psychiatric hospitals. This was accelerated in the 1980’s with care in the community. St James Hospital was listed in 1989 in response to the rapid disposal of these heritage assets. At the same time an application was considered to convert the Hospital to an hotel/training centre. 

The Cabinet Office has clear instructions for those proposing to dispose of surplus government estate. Guiding the seller to Historic England’s advice which specifically cautions against fragmentation and “picking off” more profitable areas and is particularly relevant to former Hospital and Military sites. By 2014 if not before PCC was informed that the hospital was being wound down and operating essentially as an administrative facility

The failure of the seller to bring the two remaining parcels of land to market together has unnecessarily loaded the costs of a challenging conversion onto this one scheme.

Summary

The intensification of development adversely impacts heritage and landscape, 

The quantum of new development exceeds the aggregate footprint of original structures following demolition of buildings with the former Hospital airing courts being encroached upon and valuable open space lost.

The justification of improved public access is unreasonable, and a more appropriate development could have been master-planned with greater adherence to Historic England’s Guidelines on the disposal of public land with heritage assets. 

The site’s intensification is detrimental to the local community with increased traffic on  congested local roads increasing degradation of air quality.

Heritage and Setting

The Grade II Hospital sits within a designed verdant landscape including east and west airing courts. The northern parts of both are harmed by the intrusion of unsympathetically designed houses and car-parking.

“Harrisons” emerge from behind Overton and extend to Chapel View 

The Curtilage Listed Edwardian Villas (known as “Falcon House” and “Baytrees”) overlooking the eastern airing court from the north will become visually disconnected from the Chapel by six of the nine three-storey “Harrison” type detached houses ruining the open character of the setting of the Hospital’s eastern wing as seen below.

East Airing Court from the south.

The Hospital and the Villas are closely related in terms of historical medical context, with no physical barriers between them and being ancillary, the Villas are considered part and parcel of the Hospital Building. The Chapel is also Grade II Listed. The Hospital, the Villas and the Chapel were functionally linked at the date of Listing; visually connected in the open landscape; and physically connected by the road named “Chapel View”,

Historic England’s letter of 24th March 2020 to the LPA questions the justification for the harm to the setting.

The Examiner’s Report (para 4.13.4) to the Milton Neighbourhood Development Plan (MNDP) explains the green land north of the Chapel “has a heritage importance as open space” in relation to the setting of the Listed Chapel and Hospital building:- it requires the land to be “protected from an indication it is available for development” because of its potential heritage value as setting for Listed Buildings. This is the land immediately to the right behind the Chapel edge in the above image.

The current Historic Environment Good Practice Advice from Historic England explains how views from the surrounding landscape contribute to the setting and significance of a heritage asset. 

PCC’s Conservation Officer on 5th March 2021 advised the Hospital had “High Significance” in terms of scale, form and architectural detail, and that it also sits within extensive “park-like” grounds, the scale, maturity and character of which contribute very significantly to the overall value of the site:- an extreme rarity in Portsmouth. 

The Conservation Officer was also concerned with the number siting/disposition of the new build houses and their impact on views, which he considered quite high (in terms of their potential to generate undesirable impacts). We will explain at the Round Table Sessions why we consider that impact to be very high. 

The 2020 Design Review was as critical of the excessive parking and the impacts on the setting of the Hospital as we are. Para 3.3 therein required a review of the parking strategy but instead of reducing the level of parking, it increased between the initial Planning Committee of 12th January 2022 and the subsequent one of 21st December 2022, from 370 to 388. Policy TSP 2 in the MNDP recommends the parking limit be 304 including 10% for visitors (25) and 26 for the Cricket Ground/Club.    

As the Historic England Guidance explains, the contribution of setting to significance does not depend on public rights of access.

Open Space and Trees

We have shown in our submission to PINS of 14th Septemberwhy there is an overall net loss in Open Space in terms of the immediate surrounds of the Hospital building and at “Matron’s Garden”.

We have explained in our final submission to the LPA in November 2022 the qualities of the “Garden” including its trees. We described it as a unique enclosure not replicated elsewhere in Portsmouth and why the LP and the MNDP includes Policies to retain and enhance existing open spaces. Similarly, the Conservation Officer (see above) has stated the parkland landscape is a rarity in the context of Portsmouth. “Matron’s Garden” is a significant feature of that designed landscape which excluded buildings immediately south of the main frontage and north of what is now known as St James’ Green . 

“Matron’s Garden” looking west.


Since November 2022 Public Health has issued the attached Note (see para 2) on the contributions Green Space has to the health and wellbeing of residents, to the City’s “Greening” ambitions, in mitigating urban heat effects, and absorbing atmospheric pollution and CO2, all of which emphasises the case for its retention.

We have previously explained the public had already been invited by the NHS onto the site for walking and jogging purposes but that in any event PCS 13 is not a Policy for Public Open Space, as evidenced by its application to the adjoining University site at Langstone Campus. It is a Policy primarily for Open Space retention and enhancement in a City with huge deficits thereof. 

PCS13 (and hence the MNDP Policy ENV1) require the creation of additional “pocket parks” on developments in excess of fifty homes to a standard of 1.5ha per 1,000 population. Using PCC’s current Housing Standards SPD, the estimated number of new residents occupying the proposed new development would be 436. We estimate the loss of open space to be in the order of 7,000m². Whereas policy PCS13 requires the provision of an additional 6,540 m² new space.

Local Road Capacity and Traffic Congestion with associated risks to Air Quality

Saved LP PolicyMT4 and MNDP Policy TSP1 require that additional traffic from new development be satisfactorily accommodated on the surrounding highway network. The main roads the site will access, and egress are the Eastern Road (A2030) and Milton Road (A288). 

In an application for a residential scheme of 134 new homes submitted in May 2019 (19/00420/FUL) at Fraser Range, the LPA were advised on 24th February 2023, that the Highway Authority would lodge an objection due to the inadequate assessment of the likely highway impact resulting from the development. This development relies on both the A288 and the A2030 (albeit not exclusively). 

The LHA  advised that since Covid vehicle numbers using the network had significantly risen and referenced the DFT counter (Site Number 56297) along Eastern Road. This site recorded higher vehicle numbers than those pre covid and the evidence submitted had not considered the wider increase in vehicle trips during 2022. 

The applicants had therefore not provided an appropriate assessment of the likely highway impacts resulting from the development and would need to resurvey the highway conditions before a formal assessment can be made. 

The LPA was therefore advised that should it be minded to make a determination in the absence of an  updated assessment, it should include the following reasons for refusal:- “The proposal involves development that cannot be reconciled with the National Planning Policy Framework in that the proposal fails to appropriately assess the development impact on the existing transport network. This could result in a severe impact on the road safety and operation of the local transport network contrary to the NPPF 2021”.

The last reported advice from the LHA to the LPA regarding the Appellant’s Highway Assessment was in a Memo dated 29th September 2021. It explained a traffic light junction would resolve the operation of the Locksway Road/Milton Road junction. However, this is dependent on Cumulative Transport Assessment for St James’ relying upon traffic flows relating to the network peak of June 2019 surveys “moderated to reflect the land use fall back assumptions the LPA found sound in the addendum TA to establish the base case”.

That LHA advice of September 2021 in respect of St James’ pre-dates the LHA’s advice of February 2023 in respect of Fraser by seventeen months. We must therefore conclude the Appellant’s Assessment is also out of date.

Policy MT4 was drafted for the 2001 to 2012 Local Plan and specifically cautioned decision makers that the highway capacity be capable of satisfactorily accommodating the additional traffic generated from the Hospital’s redevelopment. We suggest that was with the full knowledge of highway limitations in 2001 and that the Hospital was a Psychiatric Hospital and not a General Hospital as otherwise, the same caveat would have been imposed on policy MT3 covering phase 1.

The Eastern Road serves the Appeal site, and we included 2017 images of congestion thereon together with the Milton Rd/Goldsmith Avenue Junction in our September submission to PINS.

The image below shows a recent example of congestion at the Milton Rd/Locksway Rd junction with stationary cars blocking the roundabout preventing egress from Locksway Road onto the north and south lanes of Milton Road. This is not a peak-time event but an ordinary Saturday in May. It’s not a Bank Holiday and nor is it one where Portsmouth FC has a home fixture. 

Milton Road/Locksway Rd Junction looking east.

The LHA in its advice to the LPA of 21st March 2021 estimates the road space between Locksway Road and Goldsmith Avenue can accommodate approximately twenty vehicles. The second image below taken on the same day shows why it can’t.

Milton Road/Locksway Rd Junction looking south.

We have explained in our letter to PINS of 14th September why we had doubts that advancing the stop line in Moorings Way was feasible. PCC’s evidence papers to the emerging Plan include a Local Transport Assessment done in in 2020 by “SYSTRA” and it concluded the junction at Moorings Way and Eastern Road could not be mitigated because of “tracking with larger vehicles” (otherwise known as a No 13 Bus https://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Portsmouth-City-Council-Local-Plan-Modelling-TA-V4-231020-_compressed.pdf  We have to assume the stop-line cannot practically be advanced.

We are not highway experts and cannot argue transport modelling one way or another. However, we have reasonable grounds to assume the existing highway network cannot satisfactorily accommodate the additional traffic generation required to comply with MT4 and TSP 1.

If the highway network cannot accommodate the additional traffic, it is also reasonable to assume Air Quality will suffer too. In that respect there is no justification for proposing parking levels in excess of Policy standards. TfL research of 2012/15 (see PH Note) determined increased parking levels results in increased vehicle movements. 

The Appellant’s AQ Assessment is dependent upon the 2018 AQ Annual Report and that can no longer be relied upon in 2023 if traffic levels have increased and road traffic accounts for over half the City’s air pollution levels.

The Appellant’s development feeds directly into AQMA 9.

Absence of Justification within Historic England Guidance

The submission to PINS of September 2022 identified Historic England Guidance as relating to this development. 

That Guidance:- https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/disposal-heritage-assets/guidance-disposals-final-jun-10/ makes clear that large sites should be considered holistically to avoid isolating heritage assets and potentially damaging their setting. With a more considerate Masterplan embracing both phases of the disposal coherently, the Hospital’s redevelopment could have created a less intensive scheme with Listed Building costs being spread across the whole site. Price is not to be the overriding objective and it specifically cautions against fragmentation and “picking off” more profitable areas and is particularly relevant to former Hospital and Military sites.

Conclusion

St James’ Hospital provides a wonderful opportunity for an iconic development.

Policies in the Portsmouth Plan and the Neighbourhood Plan have been incorrectly applied resulting in a non-compliant scheme failing in the following respects:-

  • Harm to the setting of the Grade II Listed Hospital visually from poor layout and design, particularly at the northern end of the eastern Airing Court where the special relationship with the Hospital, Chapel and Non-Designated Villas is broken.
  • Quantitative and qualitative loss in Open Space and trees with adverse impacts to health and well-being, and inevitably resulting in biodiversity stress. Matrons Garden particularly, is a significant and relict feature of the designed and ‘private’ landscape that precluded building immediately south of the main front.
  • Unquantified negative highway impacts from an already congested network exacerbated by excessive parking levels which further add to heritage harm and open space loss.

These are clear reasons for REFUSING the application especially when considering the application site forms part of a wider Hospital estate, still in public ownership, not yet determined or disposed of, and capable of affording a more comprehensive, coherent and less harmful scheme.   

Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires decision makers refer to the relevant Local (and Neighbourhood) Plan Policies in determining applications. The Policies within the Local and Neighbourhood Plan on heritage and design; open space and environment; and highway impacts are relevant and material.

The absence of a five-year housing land supply or any non-fulfilment of a Housing Delivery Test where the principle of residential development is accepted, is irrelevant to a scheme where there are no “Significant and Demonstrable Benefits” outweighing harm.  

The appellants reliance on the “Tilted Balance” is overstated.

Rod Bailey

Rod Bailey

Milton Neighbourhood Forum Planning Group

26th May 2023

St James planning appeal – Statement of case

AQUIND Objection

Unique Reference 20025182

We in Portsmouth’s Milton Neigbourhood Forum are opposed to the AQUIND Project.

The Neighbourhood Planning Forum previously wrote to you as an “Interested Party”, the last time being 16th November 2021. We were subsequently notified by you of the Secretary of State’s Decision Letter of 20th January 2022, referenced EN02002, to refuse the application.

The High Court Judgement of 24th January 2023 rejected the Sec of State’s Decision. It was largely based on the SoS’s failure to recognise that requesting a review of an alternative Substation site at Mannington had been made without due consideration of its capacity. 

It’s not easy to understand from the documentation what the capacity issue is or was. However, and more importantly, why the “Alternatives” for landfall consideration were reduced to an area from Weymouth to Bognor Regis. 

The Environmental Statement (Vol 1 Chapter 2 “Consideration of Alternatives” p8) shows an arc from Pevensey Bay in East Sussex, northwards beyond Basingstoke, to Chesil Beach in the west. This arc is seen as “suitable” to appraise for connection points and acceptable to NGET. The arc misses entirely the Ninfield Converter Station in East Sussex. This is only four miles off the coast from Bexhill-On-Sea. It has a direct road link thereto. Bexhill is 7 miles from Pevensey. Ninfield is about seven miles from the arc.

In giving significant weight to the SoS’s misunderstanding of Mannington’s capacity or otherwise, the High Court has been distracted from the real issue. The real issue is that undersea cables are extremely expensive to service and maintain. AQUIND’s case is that reducing cable lengths, both undersea and underground, will be critical to financial viability. All the proposed Converter Stations require upgrades to accommodate the new connection.

The real question should be:- “Why is the Ninfield Converter Station ignored if the route across the Channel to Bexhill or nearby, is so much shorter?” 

The next question should be “Why has a landfall option in Portsmouth been selected at all if the route to a Converter Station at Lovedean from the City is so obviously disruptive?” 

The applicant could have opted for a far easier and less disruptive route by using the former Hayling Island to Havant railway link, now a combined foot/cycle path and bridleway. Land and seabed adjacent to it had in the past, been used as an overhead Electricity cable route. Rights may still exist. The Public Right of Way is sufficiently wide to accommodate plant and machinery equipment. The cable installation would be quicker and easier to maintain than under a public highway.

Using Portsmouth as a Landfall option has never been acceptable because of the huge social disruption and otherwise unnecessary environmental harm. Disruption and damage to the most densely populated City in the UK is entirely avoidable. Portsmouth City Council had proposed the Hayling trail as a feasible alternative in their submissions of 19th February 2020 and 30 September 2021, They have fully expressed the difficulties with Portsmouth also.

The rejection of Hayling Island seems to be based on difficulties around crossing a causeway to the Hampshire Mainland. That same requirement is also necessary from Portsmouth. The difference between Hayling Island to Lovedean and Portsmouth to Lovedean is so similar as to be insignificant. Compared to the distance between the French Coast and Ninfield, and the French Coast and Lovedean; the difference is vast.

It is also unacceptable to conceal within the Project, a secondary function to accommodate data cabling. It’s a function not dependent on the Project’s primary purpose. The Development Consent Order is for Energy Security. Data cabling for commercial export is irrelevant to energy security. The application is being misused.

The true motives of the applicant are questionable. 

AQUIND’s case for using Portsmouth seems to have shifted towards the time it has taken to get to this stage using time as a threat to the Project’s viability. However, it was entirely within the gift of the AQUIND Project Team to have chosen an easier option and thereby achieve an earlier consent. 

Increasing the UK’s Energy Security may be justified on grounds of the “common good”, but where is the cost/benefit analysis consistent with the Treasury Green book guidance in choosing Portsmouth over Bexhill, or Ninfield over Lovedean?

This Project seems to be seeking State approval on unacceptable grounds. Doing so in the context of private donations to Party Members within Government, is also unacceptable.

The application should be REFUSED.

Rod Bailey, Chair of Milton Neighbourhood Planning Group &

Martin Silman, Chair of Milton Neighbourhood Forum

Representing the 14,000 residents of Milton, Portsmouth

With the full support & approval of all 6 Ward Councillors:-

Cllr. Gerald Vernon Jackson CBE

Cllr. Steve Pitt

Cllr. Kimberley Barrett

Cllr. Abdul Kadir

Cllr. Darren Sanders

Cllr. Lynne Stagg

30th March 2023