The Planning Committee

On Wednesday 17th March Gateshead Ccouncil's Planning Committee met. On the agenda was the demolition of 154 homes in the Bensham area. This is part of the overall 440 demolitions and part of the consultant's recommendation that 1,200 demolitions should take place.

The undemocratic nature of demolition was highlighted by the scope of the Planning Committee's discussion. They could only discuss the method of demolition and not demolition as a policy. So residents could not discuss if their home was going to be bulldozed just which bulldozer they had a particular preference for. Those residents who wanted to object to demolition in principle were sidelined.

The theory of the committee is that councillors are there as the democratic bulwark to scrutinise the work and decisions of officers and, if necessary, to make them think again. However Gateshead Council has been run by one party for so long that most councillors believe they are in a sort of partnership with the officers carrying out mutual back scratching and admiration. The rubber stamp of officer led local government is alive and well in Gateshead Council. In fact the councillors that didn't even bother to turn up were only marginally less active than those that were present.

Nevertheless, despite its flaws, this was one of the few times that actual residents were allowed to speak directly to the council.

Objections were answered by officers with updated meeting papers. Three speakers on behalf of the residents were allowed. There was the question of whether an Environmental Impact Asssessment was needed, a question of the process of demolition in streets with families and young children and a graphic description of living with demolition by a resident. Due to the ristrictive nature of the application process only allowing the narrow question of "methods of demoition" the meeting was largely a pro-forma process in which the ability of the people facing losing their homes were marginalised. The chances of ordinary people engaging with largely professional politicians is remote.

One councillor asked about the EIA but his question was brushed aside by a legal officer whose long rambling answer was close to a foreign language and bore little relationship to the question. Almost no-one understood what she was saying and even she was forced to admit that her long and rambling answer was a specialist part of the law. She was basically arguing that if the legal eagles at the council really thought an EIA was necessary they would have gone ahead with a full planning application rather than using the "prior approvals" process. As usual the legal department provided no written formal opinion thus avoiding any embarrassment if Gateshead Council was taken to court.

Another councillor asked about the conflict of interest where the applicant was Gateshead Council, the EIA Screening Opinion was done by Gateshead Council and then Gateshead Council had to approve the application. This councillor was concerned about the independence of the procedure and that the public would see a conflict of interest. If the councillor had read this blog then she would know that the public are annoyed by the process in which planning seems self approval rather than proper scrutiny. At the meeting the official from the planning department assured the meeting that wearing multiple hats was quite normal and when acting as the planning authority they can be entirely independent of when they act as an applicant.

The general public may not be so sure about this "independence" when faced with a JCB knocking down their home.

The committee did not address the health and safety issues of demolishing one side of a street with families living a few feet away at the other side of the street. Dangerous substances such as asbestos were not discussed and the suggestion of even inconvenience was brushed aside by officials. So much for caring about the health and safety of the public.

Councillor Bob Goldsworthy, a leadership loyalist, congradulated the officers of the council for their report and fine work and moved acceptance of the scheme. Even the officials looked embarrassed at the obvious brown nosing by someone who is supposed to be holding them to account. Goldsworthy 's notes his interests as "housing" on the council website. He has now voted to have 154 fewer houses in the ward next to his own.

Cafe Culture

The current council leadership boasts about the development of the Sage concert hall, the Baltic art gallery and the Millenium Bridge. Each of these was conceived and brought forward under the last Leader of Gateshead Council George Gill. This is carefully forgotten now because George's political background was from the west of Gateshead rather than the centre.

Today's leadership should really be judged on the town centre redevelopment and the mass demolition of homes in Saltwell and Bensham. Here we have a slightly different story.

Many residents participated in surveys about what they wanted for a new town centre. One of the questions was; would you like large nationally known stores like Debenhams in the town centre? The answer would be yes please if you phrase a question like that. Officers of the council did presentations showing artists impressions and implying coffee shops would appear with internet connections, high fashion stores and continental bistros.

It's now a couple of years into the new town centre development. So we checked on progress.

This is not Selfridges or Debenhams but is the view visitors get when they leave the Metro Station in Gateshead. The pawnbroker.

When you have got your payday loan from the pornbroker one of the next convenient stores to spend your money is;

The betting shop.

Many residents were surprised that the council didn't mention that having nationally recognised stores in the town centre was just an aspiration and not a firm plan. The street cafes and the bistros don't seem to have materialised. The only big national store we might get is Tesco - primarily because they own a lot of the land in the town centre.

Less than a mile away from the town centre is the cohesive community of Bensham. Streets of well planned late Victorian residences built ot a high standard for the Victorian craftsman who could afford to buy their own homes. Gateshead Council told residents 5 years ago that, just like the town centre, they had big plans. The shopping areas would be swept away and tree lined boulevards would replace shops. Whole streets would have their back lanes gated and new green arboretums would provide quality green space. New "family homes" with sumptuous gardens would replace ordinary flats and if the residents wanted to stay then Gateshead Council would help. Roads would be redesigned to make public transport more efficient ... and so on. They even had artists impressions of the new Bensham. Just 1200 homes would have to be bulldozed to provide this image of bliss.

Today there are no boulevards. No new homes. Residents have been "made offers they couldn't refuse" in order to move out. The master plan has 440 demlitions in mind and there are no plans for new building. Shop owners have watched their customers disappear as more people moved and many shops on Saltwell Road are struggling to survive.

The promise of cafe culture in the Town Centre and boulevards in Bensham have not been realised. Is it any wonder that the residents of Saltwell and Bensham have become sceptical and cynical when the new master plan is simply to demolish and grass over. No plan and no vision.

Challenging Gateshead Council

Citizens should be able to depend on their local councillors to fight on their behalf when officials come up with schemes that blight ordinary homes of ordinary people. People should feel safe behind their own front door.

Political parties like Labour and the Liberal Democrats claim to represent those who have difficulty representing themselves. In particular the hard working members of the community who have spent a lifetime buying their own home from relatively modest salaries. In Gateshead the Labour Party have been in power for so long they work hand in glove with council officials and never ask the crucial questions they need to in order to represent ordinary people. Unfortunately for ordinary families there are no councillors willing to ask the key questions.

SAVE Britain's Heritage, a national charity, have been supporting ordinary people. Along with residents they have lobbied for renovation and not demolition. In a letter to Gateshead Council they describe Saltwell and Bensham as;

"a carefully planned, cohesive, 19th-century residential development, served by good local shops and amenities. Demolition would not only represent a waste of good housing stock, but also a lost opportunity for the kind of small-scale, ground-level, ‘soft’ regeneration that is needed and is viable in this area "

Saltwell and Bensham Residents Association agree. We have been campaigning against mass demolition for 5 years. 

This week Gateshead Council are attempting, for the fourth time, to get planning permission for the demolition of 154 homes as the first group of 440 planned demolitions. They have no plans to build any replacements and openly admit that the space will be "grassed over" rather than provide any new houses for sale or rent. SAVE believe that this fourth attempt, like the three before it, is unlawful. 

The sadness of the situation is that SAVE are challenging the destruction of historic and viable homes in place of the political process. It is sad to see that councillors, elected by thre people, are defenders of wanton destruction and sit on the side of well paid bureaucrats and millionaire developers. Is it no-wonder people lose faith in the political process.

In the place of politicians properly scrutinising these crazy demolition SAVE have stepped in and are prepared to fight the council in court. 

SAVE Britain's Heritage is well named because they understand that although castles and cathedrals are part of Britain's Heritage so are well built Victorian and Edwardian homes in the centre of Gateshead. There is a lack of affordable housing for ordinary people in Gateshead and demolishing 440 decent homes wont help. Unfortunately Gateshead Council's priority is to create partnerships and profit with the private sector and not help local people have decent homes.

 

Audit Commission Praise Pathfinders

While the Audit Commission have been praising pathfinders for their regeneration efforts the small print in many of areas gives a different impression.

Renew North Staffordshire demolished three times more homes than it built last year. Over 500 homes bulldozed and just 146 built.

BridgingNewcastleGateshead, our very own pathfinder, was said to have performed strongly having demolished 930 homes and refurbished 2,226. The pathfinder is projected to build 24 new properties in 2009/10 of which 16 will be conversions of existing buildings. Over 190 demolitions are planned for the current financial year.

So how could the Audit Commission award the highest level of confidence in what are essentially demolition projects building tiny numbers of new homes?

Surely the Audit Commission would be entirely independent able to review performance without any perceived conflict of interest. Ordinary members of the public whose homes face demolition would like to think so. Unfortunately if you list the board members you will find none other than Jim Coulter the Chairman of BridgingNewcastleGateshead our own local, and well praised, pathfinder. Does it surprise you?

Link
Audit Commission Reports

Then and Now 2004 - 2010

It seems incredible that the campaign to stop demolition in Saltwell and Bensham has been running for more than 5 years. In "celebration" lets remind ourselves of the press release issued by Gateshead Council on 27th May 2004.

Their press release was headed "Council Acts to Quash Rumour of 'Demolition Plans'" and continued with the following;

"Rumours being circulated in Bensham and Saltwell suggest that Gateshead Council is intending to demolish whole streets of houses, along with schools, nurseries and shops. None of this is true."

Now in 2010 we can look at the residents worries in perspective. One and half streets have been demolished. The original consultation back in 2005 showed the potential of 1200 homes being bulldozed with the council settling for 440. Shops are closing as residents have been bullied out of their homes by using the fear of ever lower rates of compensation if the council has to use compulsory purchase powers.

Back in 2004 the council said;

John Robinson, Director of Development and Enterprise for Gateshead Council says: “The poster declares that ‘…people across the area have not been told about the plans to demolish whole streets.’

“But it is not true to say that people have to save their homes from demolition. Nor is it true that they have to fight to keep their shops, their schools, their nurseries or their friends and neighbours."

(Well, that bit is true, because there were no plans in the sense of a written document committed to demolition. )

Technically he was right but substantially misleading the public. Plans did not formally exist for demolition but that is what was planned and announced in September 2005. Residents have been fighting since then to preserve their homes and their community.

The original drawings showing 1200 demolitions have never been formally taken off the table and could re-visit the area again.

The council said; "A wide range of options will be outlined and Gateshead Council’s consultants will be keen to hear people’s views on them. Those options could include .... the selective demolition of unwanted houses"

In fact all the demolished homes in the area had residents who wanted to stay, albeit with refurbishment, in their properties. To get people out council officials promised many incentives and suggested that families would get new houses as a kind of swap once new homes were built. These offers were always verbal and the Residents Association always cautioned people not to accept verbal offers but wait for offers in writing - something council officers were desperate to avoid.

The "selective demolition" has now turned into planning applications to demolish whole streets. On average the council has spent an estimated £80,000 per property buying perfectly structurally sound homes in order to demolish them. So far there are no plans to build new homes anywhere but rather to cover the area with grass.

After five years residents can see good things in the area. Primarily the refurnishment and renovation programme. The Residents Association called for this back in 2005 but it has only happened because of the campaign to stop demolition.

So far the Residents Association has saved hundreds of homes from the wreaking ball while in the meantime Gateshead has a massive housing shortage. Surely it is not beyond someone to point out that demolition is last century's dogmatic planning solution that now needs to be abandoned.

Pathfinder And The Butterfly Effect

In Gateshead the first council houses have been built in years. Only 100 houses have been built but it's a great start. This is at the end of a decade of housing failure throughout the North of England created by a bizarre academic theory and a government looking for a big idea.

Recently the sad story of pathfinder has been told in the Times. Environmental journalist Charles Clover has been one of few members of the national media who has noticed that the north has been bulldozed. The supporters of pathfinder housing renewal would like to persuade you that demolition and re-shaping the north has been a re-start of slum clearance. However this is a false impression. The vast majority of the older housing stock in the north was built for the well off working class who could afford decent well built properties. This is the case in Saltwell and Bensham.

Chares Clover wrote in a recent Times article that the origins of pathfinder are to be found in the academic ideas at Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) in the University of Birmingham. In the late 1990s academics led ny Brendan Nevin studied Liverpool and came to the conclusion people were leaving the north becuase there was insufficient good quality housing and if 400,000 homes were demolished this would provide a market incentive for re-development by the private sector.

You would have thought that the Labour Party, whoose core vote was in the north, would understand that it was jobs that had move people south not house prices. However Nevin's bonkers ideas gained credence in the DLTR - John Prescott's monster department. In 2002 a little noticed pledge to spend billions on demolishing the north was passed by Parliament. This created a number of well paid executive jobs in undemocratic bureaucracies to carry out the work. Not surprisingly the guru of housing demolition, Bernard Nevin, is now Chief Executive of the pathfinder demolishing Bootle and Edge Hill in Liverpool.

Prescott found the £2 billion to pay for demolition from Ed Balls at the Treasury and by coincidence Ed's wife Yvette Cooper became the minister responsible for demolition and chief supporter. If anyone with commonsense had been involved they would question the premise that you demolish houses working people can afford and replace them with houses they can't afford in order to stimulate the housing market. Unfortunately for the Labour Party no one with commonsense was available for the rest of the decade. While New Labour was winning huge landslide victories it's core vote in the north were having their housing costs artificially raised by lack of housing and demolition. In Newcastle the enthusiastic demolition of traditional working class areas led to a decline in the Labour vote and the city council was lost in 2005. The population decline lost the city half a Parliamentary seat and the boundaries have now created two potentially marginal seats.

Looking into Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire where elections can be won or lost Labour would dearly like it's traditional supporters to come out and vote in force. Unfortunately many Labour voters have been affected by the mis-directed pathfinder. Young people can't find the cheap housing because it's been demolished. They no longer have to move south for work but they have now found New Labour have scuppered the chance of them owning their own home.

In Gateshead the businesses of Saltwell Road are already suffering a dive in trade due to people being moved out. The prospect of 440 demolitions will reduce the affordable houses that are available for people. Unfortunately Gateshead's Labour Party, despite seeing the disaster that happened in Newcastle, think demolition won't take them out of power. So far Gateshead's Liberal Democrats have not worked out how big an issue housing is.

All of this is the perfect example of the butterfly effect. This is the semi-scientific theory that a butterfly flaps its wings in New Zealand the unintended consequence is a hurricane force wind Europe. In the same way a highly specialised academic theory on housing that should have been ignored by sensible people became Labour Party policy and may help those in the pathfinder areas abandon Labour.

If the Conservatives were in power this drive headlines ot "the ethnic cleansing of the working class", as one Labour MP claimed, fortunately the London based media rarely cover the North and Labour have gotten away with mass demolition. However the housing crisis may come back to bite them!


Links
The Times

Fourth Attempt At Demolition By Gateshead Planners

On Thursday 18th February Gateshead Council put out notices on lamp posts saying they were applying for permission to demolish homes in the pathfinder area. This is the surreal world of Gateshead Council where the public sector is facing massive financial cutbacks and a huge housing shortage it is going to spend money demolishing houses people want to live in.

The process is; one department in Gateshead Council goes to Gateshead Council and asks permission, as the planning authority, to authorise the method of demolition they have choosen. This is not on the principle of demolition just the methodology. As usual the residents are last in the list of people who are considered in this process. The council will listen to residents views, tell them to shut up, and demolish. The first time this matter came to Gateshead Council the Secretary of Saltwell and Bensham Residents Association was told to shut up or she would be thrown out. Such is the contempt Gateshead Council has for it's own residents.

On the 3 previous occasions Gateshead Council planners went through the motions and the application was found to be unlawful. It took the actions of a national charity taking them to the high court before they "discovered" this on the first two occasions. Later on even the Secretary of State, through Government Office North East (GONE), told them they needed an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

This all very dry and bureaucratic stuff but basically European Law says you have to assess the damage to the environment of demolition. Something most ordinary citizens would expect a 21st century local authority would want to do. Unfortunately Gateshead Council is not a 21st century council but is embedded somewhere between the Jurassic and Medieval regarding itself as immune from European Law. So after 6 months of thinking about doing an Environmental Impact Assessment it has decided it, as the planning authority, doesn't need one. This is called a "screening opinion". This may leave them open to further legal challenge.

Silent in all of this is Gateshead Council's highly paid legal advisers. So far they have allowed 3 unlawful planning applications go to committee. Will this be a further embarrasing own goal.

Once again residents will have to send their objections into Gateshead Council so that the Planning Committee can carry out the usual condescending process of ignoring local people. If the screening opinion is not legal then once again Gateshead Council may have to explain to a Judge why it doesn't have to obey the law.