Page 4 - link magazine

4 The Link Magazine • January 2005
A university campus at Coate will be a boost to Swindon

Counsellor Barrie Thompson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Group on Swindon Council, says Swindon needs the University of Bath to set up
a campus in the town and the best place is the Gateway site between the Great Western Hospital and Coate Water Country Park.
spaces that ensure people living in
the urban landscape have a decent
environment within which to live.
This may mean that some of the
brown field and town centre sites
are used for that purpose, as for
example, the Shaw Forest Country
Park site to which the council re-
committed itself last July.
We also need to ensure that the
developers pay a heavy price and
do not get away with fat profits at
the expense of the people of Swin-
don. Anybody who like me had to
suffer the keynote speaker, a de-
veloper, at the Mayor's dinner in
June will know what I mean. De-
velopers do not create communi-
ties, they produce a product for
sale. It is we the people who create
s communities.
Developers must be made to put
back something substantial for the
people of Swindon and its sur-
rounding area. I do not accept the
premise that if we demand too
much the developers will not build
in Swindon.
We have been reasonably suc-
t cessful in the past. Many of the
town's leisure facilities, country
parks and wildlife sanctuaries have
come about by making those de-
mands on developers. For the sake
of our children and grandchildren
we now need to take charge of
Swindon's future sustainability
and a first class university is the
key to that.
1 I would suggest that if we are
unsuccessful in attracting the uni-
versity to the Gateway site, by 2030
it will be covered in large measure
by houses and the economy of
i the aensny or nousing provision Swindon will be in decline.
within the urban envelope and we • A new town for Swindon?
need to provide large public open See page 8.
SWINDON C ^'

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