Stadium on the Forest Public Consultation 6th May 2004

Into the Robin's Nest

In contrast to the consultation event on 29 April, where Roughmoor Social Hall was besieged by 1,500 to 2,000 angry residents wanting to know what St Modwen Properties plc and Swindon Town Football Club were up to, the second of the two presentations at the County Ground on 6 May was a very quiet affair.

In total about 500 people attended during the seven hours. Between 6.30pm and 8pm, most of the people in the room seemed to live in West Swindon, who had gone to the club to confirm that the plans had not changed again.


Apart from the two options for the development of the Shaw Country Park site, a plan displayed how the County Ground area could be developed to generate the funds to pay for the move to West Swindon. About 400 homes are suggested to cover the stadium and cricket ground and two football pitches are to go on the athletics track. The listed cricket pavilion is incorporated into a new bowls club and green.

The cricket club still has 21 years to run on its lease of the ground from Swindon Council. Its reaction to the proposals to move them to West Swindon is not yet known.

The survey form, heavily criticised as amateur and flawed on 29 April, was changed to allow respondents the chance that they did not support the proposed move to Shaw Forest. However the comparison of results will now be very difficult and will give rise to different interpretations.

Were there any football club supporters who like the idea? The few comments heard suggested fans are not impressed. Please send us your comments to: 6may@swindonlink.com

One person who made her views plain was 71 year old Margaret Painter from Shrivenham Road (pictured), who said, "I've lived here for 51 years and brought up three children next to the football club. I really like it at the County Ground and don't want it to move. I used to go to games with my father when I was 11, then when I married my husband was a steward and I used to serve teas.


"The Goddard Family gave the county ground and the cricket pitch to the people of Swindon, and my house is part of the estate, the covenant on the land states that it should be used as a recreation ground. I can't see how that can be overturned."

Club chief executive Mark Devlin acknowledged that the event at Roughmoor had been expected to be difficult but said criticism of the too small venue was unfair. "Today was by no means plain sailing as we were listening to people with a different set of concerns. Not only was there interest from club supporters, people who live close-by who will be affected by the re-development of the County Ground site have expressed their viewpoints.

"It's been a highly beneficial exercise; a large number of comments have been made for us to consider. There is now a lot of work to be done to get this to the outline planning stage."

There has been confusion as to how the project ever got to this stage. Swindon Town say the Shaw Forest Country Park site was suggested to them by Swindon Council; in turn Swindon Council say they were approached by the club and St Modwen Properties. Mark Devlin explained, "Four days after I took up my position in June 2002 I attended a meeting at the borough council with former managing director Bob Holt for a verbal 'beating up' about payment of rent owed on the county ground. The then leader of the council Sue Bates was there and I believe Mike Bawden, leader of the Conservative Group, was present. There were possibly two other councillors and some officers there.

"After the financial issues had been discussed and we moved on to look at future developments and the possibility of relocating to another site, Sue Bates, made a casual suggestion by asking 'had anybody thought of the land at Shaw Tip."

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Did you attend the consultation on 6 May, what do you think, what did you hear and what questions do you still want answered?

Send your views to 6may@swindonlink.com to be posted below.



From: Stephen Cannons - a Swindon Town supporter and West Swindon resident

A bigger venue, a longer time slot, enhanced and altered feedback forms and revised plans ..... one might suspect that St. Modwen were not being even-handed in their presentations.

But despite that, my impression was of St. Modwen losing friends and looking increasingly out-of-touch ; Halcrow were again keen to stress that this was just an engineering exercise on their part, and did not signify any support by them for the site chosen.

Mark Devlin has dropped (members of) the council in hot water by repeating that the Shaw Forest site was offered to the club and developers BY THE COUNCIL, and the council - the ones with most questions to answer - were nowhere to be seen !

There was certainly no swamping of the venue by fans eager to be counted, no local residents demonstrating their support for the football club quitting their current site, and still no answers to the key questions.

The debate within the hall, across the media and between interested individuals was no longer about 'what ifs' and the nightmare scenario ... but more about how we can best explain to these people, and to those misled by their dangerous and unrealistic dreams, that they are wasting their time : It's a badly thought out, badly presented, badly led scheme S and it's in the wrong place.



From: Alan Hayward, Sparcells

The St Modwen/STFC "Consultation" (read Roadshow if you were listening or watching to BBC local regional programmes this morning) was a strangely muted affair. Several Shaw Forest Protection Group members went along at different times during the day and I went for an hour or so this evening.

After the undersized, hot, stuffy emotional melee of Roughmoor Hall last week, it was almost surreal. Large room, air conditioning, free tea and bikkies, hardly anybody there? The questionnaire had completely changed, it now looked rather professional and had a wider range of questions and options, including a third answer to "Which site layout would you prefer?" - Neither. Definitely worth scanning in for comparison

One has to wonder how the two completely different documents can ever be collated into one set of responses...???

The site plans had changed with the addition of a sticker pointing towards "The Great Western Way link road" - hmmmm. There were also two new cross sectional plans which showed that the stadium would not dominate the area. I found this a bit strange as the levels indicated that as well as a vastly reduced height on the forest area, Sparcells and Shaw had both become flat as well... They must be reusing diagrams from somewhere around Peterborough, I suppose.

Most of the people I met when I attended were West Swindon residents against the scheme. I guess that a lot of us didn't go because we had second thoughts about certain elements of the STFC fan community being there. But to be honest, they weren't. Or hardly any STFC fans that I noticed. I therefore have to conclude that they probably aren't that bothered about a new ground after all and would be quite happy to stay put and half fill the existing stadium?

A lady BBC Radio Swindon reporter was on site for most of the afternoon and evening and looked somewhat bored trying to find anybody to talk to which she hadn't done already... I think that we have had an effect, thanks :-)

I heard a few worried local residents voicing their concerns about the type of housing which was being proposed for the County Ground site - "don't want to be overlooked" and one comment about the Covenant being irrefutable.

All in all a rather strange experience...



From: David L Biggins, Eastleaze

I have just returned from the consultation on the proposed move of the football stadium to the Shaw Forest site.

I have to say that I was pleasantly impressed by the Halcrow representatives present; they were receptive to discussion of many of the problems involved in this site, including:

• Traffic loading on West Swindon roads
• Parking problems on West Swindon residential roads
• Parking problems on the Asda, Link Centre and Shaw Ridge leisure area car parks
• Risks due to the toxic products stored on the tip
• Proximity to residential areas
• Loss of an amenity, which while not yet complete, has been promised for many years.

Sadly, however, I also have to say that they were unable to offer any practical or viable solutions for these issues.

Traffic would undoubtedly be a major problem, particularly traffic from the M4 Junction16. This would seriously affect the Great Western Way (already likely to get extra traffic from the proposed new DIY superstore at Barnfield), Whitehill Way and Mead Way. It would also have a detrimental effect on all the routes out of West Swindon, which are already seriously overloaded. Given any practical variation on West Swindon's road designs, all traffic coming to the proposed site would have priority over all traffic trying to leave West Swindon by almost any route, effectively trapping people in West Swindon on home match days and during all other significant events on this site.

I have considerable concern that should this scheme go ahead, future councils would attempt to solve the actually insuperable traffic problems it would create by using the wide verges of Mead Way and/or the rest of Whitehill Way to turn them into dual carriageways, in effect turning the Northern Orbital Road, Mead Way and Whitehill Way into an de-facto Swindon Bypass. This would of course attract further traffic between the M4 and the A419, and actually exacerbate the problems.

Those who view with alarm this council's lack of transparency in planning matters, or anyone who studies the underhand way in which many road schemes have been undertaken across the country might even wonder whether this is in fact the real objective of the scheme's proponents on council - certainly the proposal otherwise has little to justify or commend it.

The developers have accepted that parking on West Swindon residential roads would be a major problem. Their proposed solution to this is to saddle the area with a residents-only parking scheme that would undoubtedly be inconvenient for residents, and whose cost to administer would undoubtedly be passed on to them as a direct charge at some point, rather than being borne by the council or the management of the proposed site.

Parking at the Asda West Swindon, Link Centre and Shaw Ridge Leisure areas can already be problematical on Saturdays. It would undoubtedly become much worse, as football fans would decide to "make a day of it" and go skating or bowling in the morning, walk to the ground, watch the match, walk back to the leisure area, use the pubs and clubs, and finally drive home. The consultants have no answer to the problems this would cause other than to say that it is a problem for the owners of the car parks concerned. These owners may not, of course, see it as a problem; the fans' money is likely to be welcome by the traders, car parking charges could be a useful additional revenue generator, and the only people inconvenienced by this would be the West Swindon residents.

The risks associated with the materials stored under the forest have already been covered in depth in Professor Toft's excellent article in the May 2004 issue of 'The Link', and I will not rehearse them here (click here to read). I would however note Professor Toft's international reputation in risk management, as life vice-chairman of the International Institute of Risk and Safety Managers. Nor is his expertise divorced from the issues at hand - I first encountered him professionally when he designed the national construction disasters database for the Indemnity Research division of the Royal Institute of British Architects. As such, I have confidence in his assessment of these risks.

The consultants believe that they may be able to "engineer round" these problems. Possible solutions discussed by the Halcrow consultants present included large-scale pile driving as an alternative to digging foundations. Such solutions would be very much more expensive, increasing the risk of cost overruns for the project, and would of course contribute to an increase in construction noise, particularly for residents in nearby estates. Any failure of the precautions in construction would risk the exposure of toxic material, possibly with huge remedial costs in addition to any health risks. The danger of such issues in close proximity to residential estates is of course an obvious and critical risk in this project ­ but not, it seems to this council, or its advisers.

The proximity of the site to the Shaw and Sparcells estates would mean that these residents would face noise, traffic, all the well-known problems with visiting football fans, and the general increases in litter and nuisance, in perpetuity ­ having purchased their houses in expectation of having a forest as their neighbours, not a major sports facility.

The forest has been on the town plans as a developing amenity for many years now. It forms a significant part of the "wildlife corridor" across West Swindon, linking it to the River Ray parkway. The government has praised the town for its environmental policies, with this forest being a key component of them. Now the council, for no adequate reason, is proposing that rather than completing this amenity, the work already done on it should be effectively abandoned in favour of an unwanted and unwonted development.

All in all, while the members of the Halcrow team were professional and prepared to listen, they had mostly not read Professor Toft's article (few of them were even aware of it) and had few answers to the problems of this site, none of them satisfactory.

St Modwen Developments however, do not seem to share the openness of their colleagues at Halcrow. I had heard from people who attended the earlier consultation at Peatmoor that the questionnaire was effectively a biased survey designed to provide support for an established position. At today's meeting, I was assured that these issues had been addressed (and the survey now included St Modwen name and logo). Aside from the fact that such changes must invalidate any attempt to integrate the results of the two consultations, it rapidly became clear that the document remains severely biased:

o While there is a question 3a for "Would you like to see STFC leave the County Ground?", there is no question for "Would you like to see the development built over the forest?", implying that if the Country Ground is not acceptable the new project must be at Shaw - there is no consideration of any alternative site.

o Question 4 clearly assumes that the development is to be approved, and that it will be in the Shaw forest: "The development will lead to the loss of some Community Forest land ­ what measures could be included to compensate this?" No option for "just don't build it there" is included anywhere on the questionnaire.

o Question 6 implicitly assumes that the development is to be on the Forest: In terms of transport, what would you like to see? Access to proposed Purton Road to Great Western Way Link.

In short, this continues to be a warped survey of which "Yes Minister's" Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud.

I would also suggest that the people of West Swindon note the wording of the BBC news story this morning (6th May) in which the site was described as "a disused tip, known locally as the Shaw Forest", clearly seeking to downplay the amenity and other values of the site as a forest, and thereby to tilt public opinion towards the scheme. Such wording is unlikely to have originated with the BBC; I do not yet know who drafted the press release that clearly formed the basis for this story, but I trust that the culprit will be removed promptly from all further association with this project.

There are many better sites that this development could occupy, where it would not have any of these problems. Yet the council ignores them and seeks to build in this wholly unsuitable site.

All of these factors lead me to fear that despite the professionalism shown by Halcrow at this meeting, the exercise as a whole will be turned into a whitewashing exercise rather than a consultation, and that the developers and the council, or at least influential people within it, have already made up their minds.

The solution is obvious. The council elections are due very shortly. The people of Swindon who oppose this scheme should treat this as the primary election issue, and ensure that every Councillor standing for re-election who fails to publicly denounce this appalling scheme faces removal from office, with the promise of the process continuing in future local elections.



From: Phil Hall, Peatmoor

I'm sure that many people in Swindon see the proposed new stadium as a West Swindon issue and would say we oppose the plans simple because we don't want it in our back yard.

However I have a much larger concern. The developers maintained tonight that the stadium they built in Stoke was done within budget. The stadium may well have been, but the Chief Executive admitted to us last Thursday that the project as a whole ran "tens of millions of pounds" over-budget. He also told us that the Council Tax payer had picked up the bill for the over spend.

The £25 million Swindon's Council expect to get from the development of the County Ground may be enough to build the stadium but is it enough to clear the site, build a hotel, sports centre, cricket ground, rugby field, tennis courts, greyhound track, new park and ride and most importantly new roads?

I think all the councillors who back this project should go public, front page of the Evening Advertiser, and state that if this development goes over-budget and the Council Tax payer ends up with the bill they will resign. Especially as I'm led to believe that the Council have been developing these plans for some time and yet did not disclose them on any land searches.

We might be a bunch of NIMBY's and it may be a local issue now but I'm worried that by the time it's over, everyone in Swindon will be paying for it.



From: Dinesh Patel - 8 May 2004

We went to the STFC on Thursday to gauge the reaction. We were there from 5.30pm till close at 8pm and saw about 100 people of which 50% were friends of the 'Forest not Stadium' group. I was amazed that the next morning when Radio Swindon announced that 500+ had attended the consultation. The majority must have come before we went there!

There was some additional information on the schemes, but I am assured that it was the same as previous week at Roughmoor: A new link road between Great Western (Barnfield) and Mead Way (Peatmoor Round about) to go to Purton!

Sections showing the relationship of the proposed Stadium and houses in Sparcells and Shaw. I observed that a few houses shown in the Sparcells section were almost in a straight line, but as we know from the Mead Way end looking towards the river (lowest end) you would be able to see the roofs of the houses if they were not obstructed by other houses.

On balance between the two consultations, I believe that it will be resounding 'NO' to the proposed stadium at the Shaw Forest.



From: Nick Martin - 8 May 2004

I hear that St Modwens were quite blown out that the fans didn't care about their scheme and hadn't started their own petition of support. Of course the fans want money spent on new players and not on extra rent for a new stadium.

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