Romseynet - Look at Romsey Area Three

Look at Romsey

Town Design Statement for Romsey

Tadburn Valley

Prepared by a team of volunteers in the area under the auspices of the
Romsey and District Society.

Most of Areas 3 and 4 lie within the Tadburn ward of Romsey. To distinguish them, we have named them Tadburn Gardens and Tadburn Valley.

2003-4
Initial step: May 2003
Members of Romsey & District Society distributed leaflets to all households in the area, inviting people to attend inaugural meeting.

First meeting: 20 May 2003:
Inaugural meeting held in Romsey Town Hall. 20 (?) attended. Volunteers agreed to form team to take project forward.

Questionnaire: June/July 2003
Questionnaire produced and delivered by team of 7 to 400 households for response by 31 July.

Responses: August/September 2003
118/400 responses collected/returned. All responses typed into database, analysed and précis made. Team then prepared and delivered leaflet to all households in area, inviting residents to exhibition of findings on Sept 14th. Display stands prepared with analysis of responses, illustrated with relevant photographs.

Exhibition: 14 September 2003
Exhibition held in cemetery chapel (as part of Heritage Open Day event). Of those who attended, about 12 were residents of the area.

Questionnaire Review: 03 October 2003:
10 residents attended meeting in Crosfield Hall annexe, to review questionnaire results and agree process for drawing up the design statement. It was determined to take forward the non-design issues raised in the questionnaire by inviting members of the council and their officers to a public meeting.

Public meeting: 21 October 2003:
Public meeting in Crosfield Hall, to which councillors and officers of TVBC, Parish Councils and partner agencies had been invited. The exhibition was again displayed and those representatives of public bodies present were given the opportunity to respond to the non-design issues raised by residents. 31 attended, of which 17 were residents of Area 3.

Newsletter: December 2003:
Newsletter compiled and distributed by the team to all households, summarising the responses from the questionnaire and reporting on the results of the public meeting.

From November 2003, a series of 5 meetings of the volunteer team was held to review progress on the drafting of the statement. Initially, ten members agreed to compile reports on individual streets, covering the historical development, architectural design, natural features etc.

Newsletter 2: May 2004:
Newsletter 2 compiled and delivered to all households, giving update on progress and inviting residents to a guided walk around the area.

Guided walk: 13 June 2004:
10 (?) Residents joined guided walk, lasting about 1 ½ hours.

The first draft of the statement consisted of a history of the area and the collected street reports. This was made available at the TDS steering group meeting on 5 July 2004. The second and all subsequent drafts followed the format devised by the steering group, using the material gathered for the first draft as a basis.

Superfluous historical research was retained for later presentation to LTVAS, to whose members a report of the findings was given by a member of the Tadburn Valley group. Non-design issues were extracted to form an appendix for later presentation to councillors and other agencies.

The work on later drafts was carried out principally by two members of the group and then circulated to all members for comment and approval. Other members supplied photographs, both historical and current. The drafts of December ’04 and August ’05 were submitted to the TVBC planning officer for comment. Subsequent drafts reflected those comments after discussion by the group.

When the final draft had been prepared, a leaflet was delivered to all households, advising residents that copies of the draft statement were available free of charge at various houses within and shops just outside the area. Comments were requested by the end of March, together with an invitation to attend a meeting to discuss the draft. About 30 copies were collected from these locations. Copies of the draft were also sent to councillors and others (see list in connection with Overview). 5 written responses were received.

Public meeting: 30 March 2006:
Public meeting held at 48 Botley Road, attended mainly by members of the team. Comments received were discussed and some changes made to the draft as a result. The final draft was then forwarded to TVBC in April 2006.