SAVE Visit AGM

The highlight of this year's AGM was a keynote address by Will Palin of SAVE Britain's Heritage. Will, pictured on the right with our Chairman Tony Bone, came to talk about the work of SAVE with reference to the pathfinder programme.

SAVE have existed for 30 years as a charity devoted to stopping the destruction of our built environment. Will highlighted SAVE's controversial report on pathfinder back in 2004. Subsequently SAVE have spoken to pathfinder projects in Manchester and Lancashire about renovation rather than demolition.

This year SAVE took legal action against Gateshead Council over the issue of Enironmental Impact Assessments. Gateshead Council were forced to admit that they had acted unlawfully over demolition. Will explained that this was an important ruling because it forced councils into assessing the overall impact of demolishing houses that had stood for 100 years and replacing them with new houses that had an expected life of around 35 years.

On the day of the AGM Will had toured Scotswood. This is an area of Newcastle that has enough space to build 3,000 houses but was now a vacant space of grass. BridgingNewcastleGateshead, the pathfinder body for both Newcastle and Gateshead, admitted in their last annual report that only 63 houses had been built despite the demolition of thousands. Today both Newcastle and Gateshead have record numbers of homeless families.

After Will's address the formal AGM business began. The existing committee was re-elected but members were reminded that all committee meetings were open to members to bring their concerns about the area they lived in.