News and Press Releases
Section 106 contributions are used to pay for improvements to the social infrastructure, surrounding new buildings and developments. These can include paying for an agreed percentage of affordable housing within a development, new roads, schools, health facilities and other benefits to the public realm. Many councils, unlike Norwich, choose as an act of policy to extend the use of Section 106 to make developers use a very small portion (usually less than 1%) of construction costs to pay for public art.
The Norwich Society is strongly in favour of the constructive use of Section 106 to improve as much of the City’s social infrastructure as possible. But the City Council’s consultation also enables us to comment on what we consider to be a major omission in the Planning Department’s standard list of possible requirements – that of Public Art. Norwich is failing to use a planning tool which could mightily enhance our cityscape, making it more attractive to citizens, tourists and outside investors drawn by the quality of life in our community. Read full response here
The Norwich Society has submitted “Heights – A Policy for Tall Buildings in Central Norwich” to the City Council Planning Department.
Plans and planning permissions for new tall buildings in several locations in recent years have highlighted the lack of a coherent attitude towards such structures in our unique and historic City. If adopted, we believe such a policy could lead to the eventual demolition of several eyesore structures in Central Norwich, and prevent a random scattering of new towers which would deface the City skyline.
The policy involves:
- A height “trigger point” of seven standard office floors (about 22 metres), beyond which any new planning application would also be assessed for its impact on the Norwich skyline and existing Landmark Buildings.
- A list of Landmark buildings, views of which should not be defaced by new structures, either in the foreground or background.
- Definition of five types of view above, around and within the City Centre which should act as preservation guidelines for the future.
- A discussion of the type of area where tall building could be allowed.
The Society says that no more tall buildings should be allowed within the City’s primary central area. Also, that arguments in favour of tall buildings are normally to the benefit of private, sectional interests such as developers, and that any Heights Policy should be applied retrospectively, as new development allows. This would lead to replacement of such eyesores as the Westlegate Tower, Norfolk Tower, Normandie and Winchester Towers with low-rise development.
The policy affirms that Norwich has developed as a low-rise, green City, clothing a hilly landscape. It has a skyline punctuated by towers of a quality and historic significance equal to any heritage site in Northern Europe. Enormous care should be taken to make sure that new development within the City Centre protects and improves that skyline. For full report click here....
The Norwich Society was saddened to learn that several of the buildings in Elm Hill, most owned by the City Council, are in a poor state of repair.
Following up detailed information provided by The Friends of Elm Hill, the Society asked the City to inspect a number of properties and as a result 29/29a and Wright’s Court will be recommended to be placed on the County’s “Buildings at Risk List” early next year. Several others also need care and attention.
In addition, the state of the road is poorly attended to; the cobbles, which are such an important part of the historical ambience of the street, have become shabby, irregular and filled with detritus and grass. Despite pleas to the City Council from Friends of Elm Hill for more than a year, nothing has been done.
Elm Hill is a showpiece street for Norwich, sought out by tourists, painters, photographers and film makers. It is vaunted on calendars, postcards, brochures and advertising. It was one of the first series of buildings that the Norwich Society was able to save from demolition by the municipal councils of the day in the 1920s and 1930s.
This neglect is quite unacceptable. Elm Hill should be one of the City’s highest priorities, why is it being allowed to deteriorate ?
As with so many other treasures, Norwich doesn’t realise or value what it has. The Norwich Society’s 2008 Environmental Audit has highlighted the fact that Norwich has one of the largest and best collections of civic public parks in the country but they are under used. There are so many facilities for sports and games of all kinds: should the City Council do more to encourage people to use the parks?- Almost without exception our audit found the maintenance of the parks was excellent; great credit must go to the City Care team who carry out this task. Surely some of our parks would qualify for the Green Flag Award for Parks.
- There were a few areas of concern. In 2005 this committee drew attention to the disgraceful state of the Castle Mound, and below the Mound, the unacceptably neglected Castle Gardens. This is an historic site in the centre of the City and a key tourist area. Remedial action has been agreed but has yet to begin.
- The other park which we felt fell below standard was Mile Cross. A local ‘Friends’ group is doing great work against difficult odds and would like to see it restored to the standard of the other historic parks.
- There are attendants in some of the parks some of the time but vandalism remains a problem. It would seem that the presence of authority and involvement of the local community does make a big difference to the way the park is treated.
- There is a lack of signage to direct to some of the more suburban parks which were often difficult to find. Toilets were just about adequate though those at Mousehold were in a poor state.
- The restored pavilion at Waterloo Park was shuttered and apparently had little if any use.
The rapidly worsening national and international economic situation has already made meaningless the assumptions of continued expansion and development on which the JCS is founded. Worries that we expressed in our earlier response have now become major anxieties, and we see no evidence in the new document that the planners are able to even acknowledge the existence of the new realities.
In addition, developments on the ground, in the form of transport infrastructure decisions and piecemeal planning permissions already granted by or in process with individual councils, may have begun to distort and undermine the JCS before it is even formulated. Those details that do emerge in the new document reveal a lack of strategic long-term planning vision that is in danger of producing a badly-flawed and unbalanced outcome for the Greater Norwich area.
The Norwich Society rejects the Boundary Committee’s preferred proposal for the reorganisation of local government in Norfolk of creating a single Unitary Authority covering the whole of the county with the addition of Lowestoft. It believes that abolition of Norwich City Council, thereby placing all the City’s affairs in the hands of a massively unwieldy County Council, would only accelerate Norwich’s slow but steady decline as the county’s economic engine in recent decades.
Instead the Society supports the so-called “Doughnut Solution”, in which the Boundary Committee also sees merit, of a Unitary Greater Norwich Council within boundaries expanded to take in the City’s outlying suburbs, and a Unitary Norfolk County Council beyond.
Our main arguments are:
- . Norwich is the economic engine for Norfolk. Recent research shows that it is a “Stuck City”, firing on only three cylinders, with a large but under-performing private sector. It has slipped from 12th to 20th place in the league of “most thriving cities” since 1995.
- This has happened in the three decades since the County Council took over strategic planning responsibility for Norwich’s economy. The Society feels that a bureaucratic attention deficit, brought about by the need for County Hall to listen to the many highly vocal communities within Norfolk, and the fact that representatives of the City are inevitably in a permanent minority in the county council chamber, has meant that Norfolk has failed to provide the kind of sustained infrastructure and development planning needed to attract the investment that Norwich needs.
- The county needs an economic engine firing on all four cylinders. Norfolk can only be dragged out of its under-performing position as a low-wage economy if Norwich returns to its historic role as the county’s dynamic focal point. To regain this dynamism, the City needs to be its own master, with finances derived from its true population and the dedicated cadre of high-quality officers and councillors that would be attracted to the governance of such an exciting and unique community.
- Subjecting Norwich to a Unitary Norfolk would also produce a massive democratic deficit, leading to frustration with and even more cynicism about local government among Norwich citizens.
- The Society recognises that in recent years the City Council has displayed weakness in a number of areas, including planning control and management of its own finances. We argue that the way out is to strengthen the City Council, to restore and increase the power and income lost more than thirty years ago, when the 1974 Local Government Act reduced it to District Council status. Those weaknesses are a direct result of that reduction, but the past does not inform the future.
- . A strong, independent City of Norwich can only benefit the County of Norfolk. Giving the City more responsibility, power and scope, and charging it with leading the regeneration of Norfolk, could be the saving of the county and the region.
For downloadable and printable full report click here.
The Norwich Society has registered its concern about the potential closure of the Colman’s Mustard Shop in the Royal Arcade by writing to Unilever. The letter supports the City Centre Management Partnership’s initiative to persuade the company to maintain the shop. The shop is an important focus for the continuing local connection with the Colman heritage which is a significant strand of Norwich’s industrial and cultural history. The Colman family were pioneers of philanthropy – two of the Norwich Society’s founding members were Colmans. In the same tradition as Lever Brothers at Port Sunlight and Cadburys at Bourneville, the Colman family provided for their workers and built housing, schools and canteens for them.
The Society also feels that Local Distinctiveness is increasingly important in a global market and that the shop contributes to national and international tourism.
The Norwich Society is delighted to hear from the Preservation Trust that City Living Property, the developer of the St Anne’s Wharf site, is undertaking the immediate repair and conservation of the Howard House that has been decaying for so long through neglect. City Living plans to use the House as a site office during the development, and later as offices.Given the important history of the House, the Norwich Society hopes and expects that some public access will be discussed and provided for. Pre-booked groups from local societies and Heritage Open Days would be suitable.
Dr Jeremy Taylor, architect, architectural historian and recent chairman of the Norwich Society, has been actively involved with the Advisory Group for the restoration and enhancement of the St Peter Street memorial Gardens.
Paul Monchaux is the artist chosen to create the new sculpture to complement the back of the Lutyens War Memorial when it is repositioned. He has devised a sensitive work called ‘Breath’ that is both impressively authoritative against the scale of City Hall, yet sensitive in terms of the meaning and importance of the War Memorial itself.
To see the design: http://www.norwich.gov.uk/webapps/news/news.asp?cid=4948 
John Moray-Smith – the Adventure Goes on
Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones! Intrepid researchers from the Norwich Society are on the trail of Norwich’s most elusive and prolific public artist again. In the best tradition of such adventures, vital new clues have been discovered in a box hidden for decades in the Forum’s Local History Library…
Seriously though, publication of our booklet on Moray-Smith (circulated to members with the last Annual Review) and discussion between our friends at Gressenhall, where several of Moray-Smith’s plaques are stored, and librarians at the Forum, led to the discovery of a box-full of unpublished research undertaken by the Tretts, a husband and wife team working in the late Seventies.
Some of the information gathered by them matches our research. Some of it, though, is more detailed (since they were a good two and a half decades nearer in time to the death of Moray-Smith and his wife in the Fifties), and some of it is new and unknown!
The Tretts, for example, knew of and photographed works in three pubs we didn’t know existed – six in the Men of March in March, Cambridgeshire, and one each in the Harnser at Stalham and the Flying Fish at Carbrook, near Watton. They also reveal the existence (at that time) of three oil paintings in the Old Ship at Brancaster and an extra plaque in the Ship Hotel, Cromer.
They also took pictures of works that we knew existed but hadn’t seen before – including a splendid Norse warrior in full rampage at the Viking at Sprowston and a mail coach at full gallop from the Coach and Horses in Red Lion Street, Norwich – now the Bella Italia restaurant.