Plans for 11 storage units on a patch of brownfield land behind Newport Street in Old Town have been withdrawn, after Swindon Borough Council's highways team recommended refusal and nearby residents raised a string of objections.
The application, submitted in September by a Mr S Holmes, proposed block and stone walls in a beige and cream finish with a concrete tiled roof, on land that has sat empty for years. Highways officers said the only access, a narrow 3.5 metre gap onto Newport Street next to a signal controlled pedestrian crossing, did not have enough information to show vehicles could use it safely. Residents in Dewell Mews separately warned that the roofs of the units could be used to climb into adjoining gardens, and raised concerns about noise from vehicles and shutters. The application was formally withdrawn on 4 October.
What nobody seems to have asked is what a storage unit is for, if not to be impossible to get into. The whole business model rests on this. Yet here were 11 of them, rejected partly on the grounds that they were too easy to get into, which rather undermines the sign that would presumably have gone on the front.
Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had always kept her own valuables somewhere no burglar would think to look, which was Ron's old golf bag, and saw no reason the council needed 11 brick buildings to achieve the same result. 'If you want to keep something safe round here,' she said, 'you put it under the stairs and you don't tell the woman two doors down, who tells everyone.'
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the saga had given him a new way of describing his firm's own storage arrangement, a filing cabinet in reception that Julie refers to as 'the vault' despite containing mainly expired loyalty cards. He said the Newport Street site reminded him of his own management style, 'built to keep things contained, but apparently someone can always find a way over the top.'
One Cornwood Road resident, in a lone note of support, said the site had been a dumping ground for rubbish for years and garages would be an improvement. The land remains exactly as it was before the application, which is to say empty, brownfield, and now, officially, too exposed to be trusted with anyone's lawnmower.