BRIGHTWELLS YARD DEVELOPMENT:

‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an men gang aft a-gley.’

The Brightwells Yard development arose from an ambitious design brief based upon high street trade in the 1990s – pre the banking crisis of 2008 and the slow inevitable decline of shopping as a physical activity with the growth of the ubiquitous on line solution for all needs. The scheme as eventually adopted is somewhat less ambitious, and was forced through despite many thousand objections. A major concern was the danger of Farnham becoming bifurcated. With two separate retail areas there is a risk that only one will survive. We could see the risk of a prosperous and attractive West end and a deprived, empty and increasingly desolate East end. The scheme includes 239 apartments (many of them small) but there has been inadequate attention to infrastructure required so that a small town can sustain the new residents as well as their visitors. The low provision of parking spaces risks causing increased congestion, for example if ‘residents’ visitors use the 42 streets of unrestricted parking in Farnham to save them paying in nearby council carparks !