Discuss saving our Penarth Heritage Wed 31st May

We have reserved space in the Albion on Glebe Street, next Wed. evening 31st May, from 7pm.   Do come along and discuss saving our heritage!

Save PENARTH’s HERITAGE – we’ve recently had some bad decisions and officer recommendations on the Coastguard Tower, Ashdene and Northcliffe Lodge. Fortunately Councillors were alert to the last-named and turned it down.  Our Victorian street lights have been replaced by ugly modern ones, the Town Council itself is replacing Victorian seats with ‘brutalist’ concrete ones.  Pernarth Civic Society opposed some of these but too weakly and politely.

With the election of new councillors on the Vale and Town Councils, there’s need for a public pressure group to defend our conservation areas and heritage from a planning department too complaint with developers.

The Mint-&-Mustard (Windsor Place) alterations are a prime example. This application in a conservation area should have been thrown out by the Vale planning officers right from the start. There is no report from the conservation officer. The Town council approved it just pre-election!  It hasn’t been called in. We fear the Vale officers will give it the nod.

Then there is the Northcliffe development.

Will you make preservation of Penarth conservation areas a priority?

Will you stop the Vale highways department having carte blanche to do works changing our pavements and street ‘furniture’ without consultation or checking? Issues are replacing traditional lamp-posts with miscellaneous designs, replacing paving with various different materials not appropriate for our central conservation area.

Conservation areas are 'areas of special architectural or historic interest'. The special interest does not only relate to buildings but also includes how all the features (listed or otherwise) of a place come together to make a distinctive environment.  It includes:

• the mix of uses
• the historic layout
• characteristic buildings
• paving materials and street furniture

Conservation areas have extra planning controls applied to them to help preserve or enhance their character and protect their settings.

Yet the Vale Council’s conservation officer for the Vale supported modern extensions to the side and rear of Penarth’s historic Victorian coastguard tower on Tower Hill; approved new wings on Ashdene Manor on condition that they did not closely resemble the existing, and who argued that modern box-flats at Northcliffe Lodge would not affect the ‘setting’ of the listed Custom House just below. He even approved a flat-roofed extension to Cotterell Lodge the 300 yr-old listed thatched house on the main A48 between St Nicholas and Bonvilston. 

The Vale officers generally have little regard for street trees, refusing to replace ones felled due to hazard or age, despite their being part of our ‘distinctive environment’.  Nor do they restrict huge gaudy shop-frontages.  The Town Council decided to fell the mature Robinia tree in front of their West House offices, despite a good-health assessment.

What can be done to defend our town’s character and historical streets?  We propose an informal meeting of people wanting to take a stand for Penarth to discuss possible Penarth ‘Heritage’ co-ordination or an information/pressure group.

Now we have wake boarding at Cosmeston going to VoG planning soon….

We have reserved space in the Albion on Glebe Street, next Wed. evening 31st May, from 7pm.   Do come along and discuss saving our heritage!

  

Anne Greagsby womensvoice@gmail.com

Max Wallis 07783 330956