Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

It is claimed by some that most people’s answer to the statement that they live in Bedfordshire is ‘Where’s that?’

I can’t say that I’ve had that reaction myself, but at least one group of people must be getting to know us quite well and that’s the royal family.

Visitors to Bedford since 2002 when I became mayor are the Earl of Wessex (twice), the Princess Royal (twice) and the Prince of Wales. The Queen and Prince Philip visited Mid-Bedfordshire in earlier this year to open Mid-Bedfordshire Council’s new offices at Chicksands.

The most recent visitor is the Earl of Wessex opening the new theatre at Bedfordshire University. He arrived promptly but spent so much time chatting to students elsewhere on the campus that those of us awaiting him in the theatre were getting a bit hot and bothered by the time he came in half an hour late to watch a dance which was reproduced 3D on the screen behind them. At least, that was how it was explained, but to an uncultured oaf like me it was all rather incomprehensible. It was supposed to have something to do with e-arts. These days nothing can be truly modern without an ‘e’ in front of it.

My one recommendation is that Bedfordshire University invests in air-conditioning for its theatre. If it was unpleasantly warm on a coolish autumn day goodness knows what it will be like in a heatwave.

The earl then went to the borough council’s i-Lab, its incubator unit for high tech businesses and talked to some of the businesspeople. He asked how much was left of my year of office and appeared bemused when I said I was in post for another three-and-a-half years.

The Princess Royal’s visit was to see Bedfordia’s bioenergy unit which now produces enough power for 800 homes.

At least the Royals can’t say visits to Bedford lack variety.

County leader Madeline Russell has written to Bedfordshire on Sunday taking issue with its (and my) comments last week that after a judicial review backed the Government against two Shropshire councils, Bedfordshire should have recognised that its judicial review wasn’t going to get anywhere and it shouldn’t waste £400,000 of taxpayers’ money in pursuing it.

Nonsense, sayd Madeline. Bedfordshire’s application was on a totally different point to the Shropshire case which was about whether the Government had the power to make the decision it did. The county’s is whether the Government should have chosen Bedford’s bid if it wanted more information about its financial case (heavily oversimplifying, of course).

Madeline has missed the point. The Shropshire judgement showed that the judge had no desire to second guess the Government and it is unlikely that whoever hears the county’s judicial review will feel any different.

A crucial step towards the Nirah project was taken on Friday when the scheme got outline planning permission from the county council, but my goodness, it went to the wire.

Warnings that it was going to be difficult had surfaced a week or so earlier when Gallagher, the company building the Wixams development, had listed a number of objections to the scheme, particularly relating to the access which Nirah wanted to take through the Wixams.

Nirah’s chairman and chairman designate, Peter May and Keith Edelman respectively, had been trying to get a meeting with Tony Gallagher, owner of the company, but two had been cancelled. County Councllor Richard Stay and I wrote to Mr Gallagher outlining why we thought Nirah was so important.

On Tuesday, the two Nirah men got to see Mr Gallagher and Gallagher’s MD David Carden. By all accounts it was a cordial meeting, which made it the more alarming when a letter to County leader Maeline Russell was deliveredd next day which appeared to be a complete refusal to contemplate an access through the Wixams. The letter was dated the day before the meeting between Nirah and the Gallagher directors.

The whole question of Nirah’s planning application was thrown into doubt, but without that outline planning permission Nirah would not be able to seek private investment to develop the
scheme further.

The planning meeting was due to start at 10am and I arrived at the Mid-Beds council offices at Chicksands shortly after nine. A private room had been set aside for Nirah and its lawyers. The mood when I entered was far from happy. Gallagher wanted the application delayed; failing that they would oppose it I scarcely had time to sit down when my PA, Phil Lotan entered with a message. Gallagher’s David Cardon wanted to talk to me. I went out and had a long chat. Mr Cardon was quite friendly and said that Gallagher wanted to see Nirah built but had a problem with the access route. He pressed for a deferment and still said that without that Gallagher would have to oppose the application.

Nirah felt that a deferment was impossible but were prepared to accept a condition that nothing should be built withoiut the route being settled.

The meeting started almost an hour late. There were times when I don’t think anybody could guess which way it was going to go. Gallagher’s representatives again asked for a deferment, failing which they opposed the application. Keith Edelman said if the scheme didn’t receive outline permission that day Nirah was effectively dead. I spoke to explain why the people of Bedford were so enthusiastic about Nirah.

Finally the vote: seven councillors voted that Nirah should have its outline planning permission on condition that work should not start until the access had been settled. One councillor abstained. The audience erupted in applause.

Gallagher has stated now that they will meet Nirah soon to try to work out an acceptable access solution.

As Churchill said after the Battle of El Alamein: “This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Hurrah. Work has finally started on the Western Bypass. It has only taken 70 years.

But it won’t reach its full potential until the part linking the A428 to the A6 is built. That’s the next thing in my sights.

One more stage in the revitalisation of Bedford has been passed. The borough’s planning committee reversed its opposition to the Riverside Square development after hearing that the developers had made concessions by reducing the height of the building by a floor and using natural stone on the facade.

In early summer the scheme had been turned down by a casting vote. This time it was passed by eight votes to four after hearing from the developers and opposition from architect Graham Wright. Fellow oppositionist Tony Mackay wasn’t there.

One of the tactics of the development’s opponents has been to hint that the architct was second best because the developers could not get Prince Charles’s favourite architect Quinlan Terry. That was put to bed when the developer read out some of his commissions which included work on Hampton Court, Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral and the setting for the terracotta warriors exhibition at the British Museum as well as many buildings. As somebody commented, good enough for the Queen but apparently not good enough for Bedford.

Work is expected to start on site early next year with completion in 2009.

BROADWAY - THE SHOW IS BACK ON THE ROAD

Riverside Square wasn’t the only success on Monday night. New social housing on the Polar Ford site on Broadway went through.

This had been turned down at the previousl planning meeting on grounds of design. Some cosmetic changes have been made incorporating brick panels and it got through. But several members of the planning committee, including one who had opposed both schemes felt that this one was worse. Some of the planners feel the same.

It is good that planning permission was given because this will enable Bedfordshire Pilgrims Housing Association (BPHA) to reassure tenants in the tower blocks which are to come down in the Town Centre West (bus station) redevelopment who want to stay in the town centre.

Then the question of design may be revisited in the developers agree.

CHURCH LANE SHOPS

This important project - another £20 million worth - got through despite a late intervention from the puffed-up group of architects which makes up CABE, a government quango charged with improving the ‘built environment’.

It might even do so if it stopped behaving with its present high-handed arrogance. Two days before the planning application was due to be heard it called for the scheme to be reconsidered - absolutely impossible as it would have meant the deadline for Government funding would have passed.

There was concern among local activists when they heard of this pronunciamento. Indefatigable campaigner Gloria Jakes asked: ‘Do we have to stop now? We have fought so long and hard to get this far’.

I reassured her. It is not surprising that even architects are getting fed up with CABE.

NO TEARS TO BE SHED IN EASTCOTTS AND CARDINGTON

The future is looking brighter for Shed 1 at Cardington now that the plan for homes has gone through. As part of the planning gain the developers had pledged to put it into good repair at a cost of about £6 million.

They had the interesting idea of a public open space in the middle of the development of the size and shape of the R101 to remind residents and visitors of the area’s history.

And on Friday the county council will be asked to grant outline planning permission to Nirah. As i have said before, this is truly momentous week for Bedford.

It seems inconceivable that the county council should go ahead with its judicial review after the result of another judicial review over unitary status in Shropshire.

The Judge rejected the argument that the Government had acted in advance of receiving power to do so from Parliament and awarded costs estimated at a minimum of £400,000 against the council that brought the review. It will also have to pay its own costs which, it is fair to assume, will approach those of its opposition - say around £750,000 in all or ten times as much as Bedfordshire County Council is predicting for its case. It also dwarfs my original estimate of £300,000.

More to the point, in the Shropshire case the judge had little patience with nit-picking attempts to reverse Government decisions through the courts and I would say that the Shropshire complainants had a rather better case than our county council.

Despite this, the county council has pressed the start button for its case to proceed. From now on the barristers’ clocks are running. As this case involves four councils and their counsels, costs of £1million or more are by no means impossible. But it’s all right. It’s only your money.

Next week is the big one; the week when much of Bedford’s future is decided for good or ill.

On Monday the Riverside Square proposal comes forward again to the borough planning committee in the teeth of much opposition.

That same meeting sees the housing application for the former Charles King site in The Broadway re-presented after it was knocked back at a previous meeting.

And the proposal for housing on part of the land surrounding the Cardington airship sheds.

And the refurbishment of the Church Lane, Goldington, Shops.

All have had intricate backgrounds but need to move forward if Bedford is to progress.

And on Friday, the biggest of the lot, Nirah, comes before the county planning committee.

That, believe it or not, is something like £700m worth of new development. Let’s take them in order.

RIVERSIDE SQUARE

This is an exercise in classical architecture. A group led by local architects Tony Mackay and Graham Wright, both living in the verdant Victorian area of Castle Ward have taken against this proposal. They come up with all sorts of reasons, but the real one is precisely that it is a classical design. At a town centre exhibition a couple of years ago people voted massively in favour of such a design produced by Quinlan Terry who has an international reputation as a classical architect.

In the end he wasn’t chosen because his design methods, being deeply traditional, were too expensive, but the architect who was chosen also has a classical background and has done a great deal of work for English Heritage. He has produced a mixed scheme of residential, restaurants, bars and shops surrounding a square opening on to the river and a cycle and pedestrian bridge across the river to St Mary’s Gardens.

Mackay picks on the fact that it wasn’t by Terry, oblivious to the fact he was just as hostile to Terry’s work as to the present design.

When it last came before the plannning committee it was rejected on grounds of being too big so the developers lopped a floor off it at a cost to the council taxpayer of more than £1m (because it is to be built on council-owned land) and the taxpayer who would have benefitted to the tune of £5m will now get only £3.9m.

If this gets rejected, those who complain that Bedford doesn’t make use of its river will have another decade or so to wait.

CHARLES KING SITE, BROADWAY

The Charles King site was also rejected on its previous presentation - for precisely the opposite reason. Councillors said it was too modern. The scheme, by BPHA, will provide town centre homes for, among others, those who will be displaced from the Town Centre West site which received outline planning permission at the last planning meeting.

CARDINGTON AIRSHIP SHEDS

The proposal for housing on the Cardington Sheds site can be considered a lucky break for local people but there is still opposition. There had been a proposal for a huge warehouse which would have been awful set against the Grade II* listed sheds. In return for getting planning permission the developers promised to put Shed 1 - currently close to ruin -into good repair. English Heritage was reluctantly prepared to accept it as the only way of saving Shed I.

A rather more sympathetic housing development hasnow been offered. Central to it will be a small park exactly the size and shape of the R101. There is still opposition from some people but it looks to be the best solution to an intractable problem.

CHURCH LANE, GOLDINGTON, SHOPS

The Church Lane scheme seems to have met general approval from the locality although there are still some people who want more out of the scheme than the developers are prepared to give. The derelict P & A supermarket is already coming down because it is a danger to the public, and there will be planting and a car park out front. Aldi, a German firm of value grocers, is prepared to take the small supermarket so people without cars will be able to shop locally. The area will also get an enlarged community centre and a cafe. The Century - a pub with a chequered history - will be demolished.

DECISION DAY FOR NIRAH

All these schemes are dwarfed by the outline application for the £500m Nirah project which will be heard by the county planning committee meeting in the new Mid-Bedfordshire HQ at Chicksands.

Even getting the project this far has been a triumph given the way various interests tried to do it to death less than 18 months ago. Both the borough and Mid-Beds have formally opposed it, not because they are against - they agree it would be a great thing for Bedfordshire - but because they are concerned about access problems.
County planners have recommended approval. That doesn’t mean they are not concerned about these issues, but are happy for them to be worked out at the detailed planning stage.

Gallaghers, developer of The Wixhams is also opposing on similar grounds but it is hoped negotiations will find a way round its problems.

The reason the county planning committee is deciding this is because Nirah will be built in a disused clay pit and the county is the arbiter for any applicaiton involving minerals extraction.

So there it is: crunch time for Bedford and, indeed, the whole northern half of the county.I’ve got my fingers - and arms and legs - that the right decisions will be made for all our futures.

WAS it Oscar Wilde who wrote: ‘I know of no sight so ridiculous as the British people in one of its fits of morality’? Or perhaps it was about him.

Whatever, something even more ridiculous was to be seen on Thursday when a gang of borough councillors were convinced they had got the drop on me over the Bradgate Road, Bedford, garages.

The story so far: The borough owns 20 dilapidated garages off Bradgate Road. They are a fire risk and the old-fashioned hinged wooden doors are wonky. It is also evident that not all are used for garaging cars.

The council decided the demands of health and safety meant they should be repaired or demolished. As the cost of repair would be a minimum of £17,000 and probably more, and as the rent on them is a mere £320 a year and it is evident that only eight of the 20 are being used as garages, Officers decided that demolition was the best bet and gave the occupiers two months notice.

The two councillors for the area, Lib-Dem David Sawyer, and Tory Tarsem Paul saw votes in this and started kicking up a song and dance. It turned out that the formalities in doing so might not have been strictly observed, but as only five tenants objected it was hardly a great issue until they tried to make it one.

Tarsem Paul compared the cost of repair with such examples of lavish spending as making sure staff working at heights didn’t kill themselves and the roof of Kempston Pool didn’t fall in on the swimmers.

He said garages were needed more than homes - which might otherwise be built on the site - and quoted some council as having 1000 garages. He said Bedford ought to do likewise at a cost per garage of £5,000, totalling £5million, equivalent to two-thirds of a year’s council tax. I have heard some strange ideas in my time…

Cllr Sawyer was equally lachrymose about the distress demolition would cause to the garage tenants even as he shot himself in the foot by admitting that half used the garages for storage. His other point was that there had not been enough consultation.

But he suddenly went shtum when I read out a memorandum from an officer saying that the buildings were in a poor state and might have to be demolished for health and safety reasons.

The addressees were none other than Cllrs Sawyer and Paul and it was dated February 12 this year. Neither of them had responded to it.

This wrecked their case that there had been no consultation, but of course that didn’t stop the scrutiny committee voting to recommend to that I kept the garages or built new ones.

I am afraid that, unlike Cllr Paul, I think homes are more important than 20 clapped-out garages, only eight of which are in regular use for keeping cars.