‘Snow Fun – a Visit to Panattoni Park

It’s no fun trying to keep the dust and noise down when you’re knocking down one of the biggest car plants in Europe. Matthew Vallender, Colin and I, were invited onto the old Honda site for a second meeting with the Panatonni team who are busy clearing the site with a massive demolition programme before rebuilding it into a major warehousing and distribution park.

We were able to sit round the table and discuss the plans now in for the first three buildings.  Two smaller units are over by Kingsdown but then one huge one, Unit 1,  will butt up to the end of the village by Crown Timber and its new houses when built.  Their team has been keen to engage with the Parish and get ahead of any concerns we may have and to that end, one immediate benefit is that the new building will have a maximum height of 25m instead of 30m as is common.

Lighting on the buildings is being restricted to a maximum height of 8m with none projecting upwards. Of benefit to residents and the local ecology. We have a ‘bat corridor’ going down the side of Unit 1 to facilitate their movement across site.

Additional landscaping will be provided to protect the privacy of Greenfield residents from the new cycle/pedestrian route at the back of their houses as it comes round to Oak Tree Corner on Highworth Road.

So what about the dust and noise?  That was where it got fascinating.  A drive around the site showed us the extensive lengths taken to stay on top of both issues.  First in sight was the traditional road sweeper with a water sprayer damping down.  Further round we saw two tractors with ‘muck spreaders’ on the back chucking huge quantities of water up into the air as they circled the site.  But the truly impressive sight was the snow canon in operation. Yes, a snow machine some of you might have seen on the slopes of your ski resort!  Where the massive jack hammer diggers were breaking up the concrete the snow machine was blasting actual snow across which brought the dust down as the snow settled and melted. That’s an expensive piece of kit.

 

 

 

 

 

Below, is a photo of the dust and noise monitors positioned all around the extremities of the site. Linked to the managers’ smart phones, if either the dust or noise levels exceed the permitted they get an alert to take immediate action, in fact an alert went off while we were in our meeting which prompted a call for a temporary suspension of work in the affected area.

The drive around the site continued and while it looked like the aftermath of a Russian attack it was tidier,  with piles of metal in one heap  and rubble in another, all awaiting reuse. The runway being broken up has a lot more concrete than expected but all this will get reused as hardcore for the slab bases of the new buildings.

There’s a new Kingsdown brook being built across the site from the ‘Crem’ side to join up with South Marston Brook at the back of St Julian’s Wood.  The picture below shows a precast concrete channel for it with a concrete ‘otter shelf’ halfway up inside. Who knew; apparently otters don’t like water and need somewhere to sit out on!

The tour ended up with a look at the ‘Honda lagoon’ which is much bigger than expected and an ideal established wildlife habitat which has protection in place as the site develops.

And to reinforce how committed the Panattoni team seem to be in working with the Village they’ve made a contact email available for any specific queries that residents might have: PanattoniParkSwindon@connectpa.co.uk