Tackling one of the blackest spots for cycling in the city
If you’ve ever tried to walk or cycle from Water Lane, Easton Lane, or Winnall, to the railway station or Hyde, then you’ll know how daunting it is. With North Walls being one-way eastbound, and the pavement on the north side extremely narrow, especially in front of Handy Villas, cyclists are thwarted, and pedestrians take their lives in their hands as heavy vehicles thunder past.
As we noted in our most recent cycle count, “What is also consistent about North Walls is the number of cyclists recorded who use the pavement to travel west against the traffic. With new thinking around the old police station site, Cycle Winchester has renewed its push for cycle access through to Park Avenue.”
For many years Cycle Winchester has been in discussion with the University of Southampton (UoS), the institution that operates the Winchester School of Art (WSA) campus. WSA has long expressed an intention to develop on the site of the former police station, opening up access through the gated entrance on North Walls.
Establishing the principle of permeability through the campus
We understood that the principle had been established that a public walking and cycling route would be opened between the gate on North Walls and Park Avenue. This would provide an alternative to the narrow dangerous pavement in front of Handy Villas.
This understanding was documented in the Winchester Movement Strategy developed in collaboration between Winchester City Council and Hampshire County Council. A key document here is the Friarsgate, Union Street and Upper Brook Street Highway Changes – Feasibility Study (2022) which was endorsed at the time by University of Southampton (UoS) representatives and which depends on a public route through the WSA site.
The WSA connection forms part of Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) Route 300, designed to provide a safe, low-traffic alternative parallel to the busy, one-way North Walls corridor.
Over the following years, UoS became evasive about plans to provide permeability for pedestrians and cyclists through the WSA campus, and so, when, in April 2026, they submitted a planning application to redevelop the site (search for 26/00866/FUL via https://planningapps.winchester.gov.uk/), Cycle Winchester was disappointed to find absolutely no mention of permeability for cyclists.
Our objection to WSA’s development plans
Cycle Winchester lodged a strong objection to the plans. Moreover we lobbied local councillors and alerted Hampshire Highways that this development proposal fundamentally undermined their LCWIP. Hampshire Highways subsequently posted their own objection to the planning application, noting that “the Highway Authority considers that the submission does not adequately demonstrate: how walking and cycling trips will access the site from the surrounding network; how proposed growth in students will be accommodated in terms of non-motorised movements; that safe, attractive and convenient routes exist beyond the immediate site boundary.”
In late August UoS’s development partner responded to these objections and published a Highways Technical Note, which attempted to address the objections.
At first glance the document appears to concede the principle of permeability through the campus.
However on closer inspection we still find the proposal very unsatisfactory and Cycle Winchester has submitted a second objection.
Our objection to the updated plans
- The updated documents still avoid any mention of public access through the site, talking only about access for “staff, students and visitors”, “to and within” the site. This suggests the applicants still have no intention of allowing open public access.
- Throughout, the applicants’ discussion of active travel routes is focused purely on how the public cycling and walking routes in the area can be of benefit to the university’s own staff and students. At no point do they mention how the university could make a proportionate contribution to the public network in return.
- The proposed east-west cycle route through the site is designed to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to use it to cycle in through one entrance and out through the other. It also includes an access barrier that could prevent staff and students (especially those with mobility problems or disabilities) from accessing the inner campus area, where the secure bike stores are.
- Despite acknowledging that there is space for a shared-use cyclepath northwest from North Walls into the site, the applicants still show this as a narrow pedestrian path but promise to clear a strip along either side of it to allow for future conversion into a cycle route “should future demand dictate”. They don’t say how or when this demand would be measured or assessed. Their plan involves measures explicitly designed to discourage cycling on this section – work that will probably cost just as much as widening the path in the first place would.
- Despite a specific request from HCC Highways, the new documents still fail to define the status of each new pedestrian and cycle path within the campus – will they be open to the public? Will the university attempt to restrict access times/dates to them? We still don’t know.
- The new site diagrams are ambiguous and in some cases contradictory over signage and the locations of fences, gates and dropped kerbs.
- Secure cycle parking does not allow for non-standard cycles: no facilities for adapted bikes
or trikes for people with disabilities, nor for cargo bikes or trailers, nor e-bikes. - Secure cycle parking provision appears inadequate even for the applicants’ own estimates. They now estimate that, by the end of the period covered by their Travel Plan, there will be 150 students cycling to the site daily. Their plans show just 52 secure cycle parking spaces, shared between students and staff.
- The proposals therefore still fail to meet the requirements set out by WCC policy TP1, the Winchester City LCWIP and the Movement Strategy. The applicant is not meeting its obligations to contribute to sustainable and active travel routes for the city, despite being ideally situated to do so.
We currently have no information about whether or when this application will go to planning committee, but we will keep members and supporters informed of developments.
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