Brave new wave of regeneration washes along Poole’s waterfront
Standing in the way of a new footpath skirting Poole harbour is the RNLI’s gleaming national hub, where it builds five new lifeboats each year, refits the charity’s existing fleet and trains countless volunteers.
“It’s a shame the path stops dead and people can’t walk any further,” says Philip Broadhead, deputy leader of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) council. Access to water is essential to the charity’s twin-hangar complex, so walkers and cyclists will be diverted away from the waterfront for that section of the route.
The Tory-controlled council, a unitary authority covering some of the most valuable real estate on the south coast, is commissioning what will probably be the UK’s most expensive waterfront development, worth about £2.8bn. And like many local authorities before them, Broadhead and his colleagues must steer a course between the private interests of property developers and the public good.
But free-marketers might be surprised at their almost socialist emphasis on maintaining control, not just of the commissioning and planning phases, but for decades to come, as owner and steward of the land.
This ambitious urban design project was conceived using the latest thinking on creating communities that are both bustling and low carbon, with walking and cycling routes a cornerstone of the master plan.
Broadhead says he is pushing at an open door when he visits Michael Gove’s housing ministry. And the planning overhaul announced in the Queen’s speech, which effectively downgraded requirements for densely packed housing in favour of developments actively supported by local communities, will have given the council’s plans more impetus.
Poole is aiming to be very different from the overdeveloped seafronts that
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