Wednesday 11 June 2014

The Hove Park Depot development

                

Planning application BH2014/00922 proposes the demolition of some existing single-storey buildings and the construction of a two storey building on the site of the Council's Hove Park Gardeners' Depot. The Council thinks it can move the existing facilities to Stanmer Park nurseries. Presumably the consequential extra traffic at Stanmer and on the Lewes Road, and the extra mileage to City Centre gardens are judged not to be important considerations.

The site at present.
Looking NW across Hove Park the new building will be behind the belt of trees to the left of the Engineerium chimney.
The building will be large enough to serve 650 pupils
It seems that the building will not obtrude seriously on the landscape, especially in comparison with the lowering buildings of the City Business Park. What is of serious concern is the effect on traffic in the area. Such a specialised school must draw its pupils from over a wide area and the number of young children who will be living within walking distance will be negligible. How will pupils arrive and be collected from the school?  Will working parents voluntarily take and collect their children by bus, or will several hundred cars be descending on the quiet, narrow Droveway, or busy Nevill Road area twice a day? Even in Goldstone Crescent across the Park, parking spaces are not plentiful.

Looking east in the Droveway towards the site entrance.
The proposed building


 "SaveHOVE" has been campaigning against this proposal for some time. For their latest comment see "The Whistleblower, the EFA and the Spanish Bilingual Primary School".

2 comments:

  1. specialised school??? This teaches the full standard curriculum and includes teaching Spanish too. I believe Ms Paynter has had too much of an impact on your facts...

    ReplyDelete
  2. "SpeciaIised" may not be quite the right word Damien but I understood the school was teaching IN spanish as well as teaching the language.per se. Were there any other "facts" you dispute?

    ReplyDelete

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