Since my wife and I live next door to Gallia Court and over the years have got to know some of its residents quite well, I thought it would be worthwhile adding the following before this thread dies.
Gallia Court is owned by SCC. They let out five or six of the ten flats. The others have been bought by their Council tenants over the years and have since been sold on to private landlords who rent them out. As far as I know, there are no owner-occupiers. The Council-owned flats are not sheltered accommodation, but since eight out of ten are one-bed, it’s perhaps inevitable that many of the tenants are “senior citizens” (is that OK??).
The building is over 40 years old and evidently in need of refurbishment. The front balconies, which are currently cantilevered out from the front of the building, are life-expired, and are to be supported on additional beams and piers (shown in yellow on the plan that Pete posted above).
The colours of the front balcony panels were decided by SCC after some consultation with residents of Gallia, last year; a significant minority preferred green over red. SCC is the landlord and therefore in a position to impose its choices on its tenants, as amply demonstrated by its decision yesterday to abandon colours entirely. Owner-occupiers are entitled to paint their front doors whatever colour they wish: tenants have to choose from any options their landlord may be minded to offer.
If OTRA had gone ahead with opposing the planning application, it would presumably have been attempting to intervene on behalf of all Oakmount Triangle residents, including the dozen or so in Gallia, with the aim of reconciling Gallia’s tenants’ preferences (good suggestion, Peter; it’s a pity, given Covid restrictions, that none seem to be members) with the Management Plan for the Conservation Area. (The flats also have rear balconies, which are not covered by Conservation Area constraints. Maybe SCC will use coloured panels for those??)
When SCC drew up its planning application, I suspect that it had not consulted its own Management Plan for the Triangle. SCC’s most recent switch to like-for-like (reinforced glass) for the panels, thereby avoiding having to defend its choices to the Planning Committee, might support this.
A planning application is a very blunt instrument for resolving issues like this, since it can only be altered by formal objection, encouraging polarisation of views. If SCC Housing had consulted their own Heritage people before deciding on the colours, they might have come up with a more acceptable proposal. Unfortunately the formal application put OTRA into the invidious position of having to decide whether or not to hold SCC to its own Management Plan, by no means the first time this has happened.
This raises a more general misconception, that the Management Plan is something that OTRA imposes on residents, potentially against their will. The Management Plan is a Southampton City Council document that they (should) use when preparing or evaluating planning applications. Occasionally, residents will disagree with the Council’s interpretation of the Plan and wish to make their own views known, but ideally this shouldn’t happen very often.
It’s also worth remembering that the Plan is still in its initial form (2008) and inevitably does not cover every eventuality that could arise. SCC is supposed to carry out a Conservation Area Appraisal every five years, but if it has done so, it does not seem to have suggested revisions to the Plan.
Turning to the gardens at Gallia Court, these are maintained by SCC (minimally) supplemented from time to time by residents. For many years the front garden was looked after by an Irish lady called Cath; recently Abbie Shoebridge has been doing what she can from her wheelchair (she has a black spaniel as her assistance dog, you may have seen her around the neighbourhood). The front garden has already been partly wrecked by the contractors and once they are gone some assistance with replanting might well be appreciated.
planningpublicaccess.southampton.gov.uk
