One Step Forward Then Two Back - The Gateshead Council Planning Dance

On the 4th February Gateshead Council are applying to Gateshead Council for Planning Permission to demolish 154 homes including half of MacAdam Street. The rationale for this is that the area needs more family homes and fewer flats.

At the same time residents in MacAdam Street have received a letter from Gateshead Council saying that they have bought two flats in the street and propose to bring them back into use to help Gateshead's homeless. The two flats will be knocked together to create an ultra-modern environmentally sustainable family home.

So on one side of the street flats are being demolished and on the other side a totally different policy of renovation. The flats on both side of the street are the same. In fact the council is proposing to demolish an 11 roomed family home while, on the opposite side of the street, it is knocking walls out of two flats to turn it into a family home. 

Gateshead Council now seems to have developed two different housing policies for the same street! If you live in odd numbered property then you can have your home renovated and improved. If you live in even numbered property then you need to have your home demolished.

Top Award For BridgingNewcastleGateshead

Just over a year ago the National Audit Office gave the whole pathfinder programme a stinging rebuke. It's report said that that pathfinder was no more successful than doing nothing and a complete waste of money. 

In particular the report from the National Audit Office criticised all pathfinders for the methods they used to consult the public.

Fast forward to this month and BridgingNewcastleGateshead (BNG) announce to residents that they have received a top award from the Audit Commission. BNG have been rated as "performing strongly". 

The National Audit Office (NAO) are not civil servants and independent of government whereas the Audit Commission are civil servants and report to government. In fact the Audit Commission is appointed by the people who fund pathfinder  - the Department for Communities.

 

So we now know that the auditors who report to the Department of Communities have found a project funded by the Department of Communities is "performing strongly". By coincidence the Chairman of BridgingNewcastleGateshead from 2005 to the end of 2008 was Jim Coulter who also happens to be a Commissioner of the Audit Commission. Mr Coulter even declares his Chairmanship of BNG as an "interest". 

All this information was omitted from the glowing report to residents in a recent edition of "Great Places to Live" leaving the impression that there was no connection between BNG and the Audit Commission. No mention of the damning report on pathfinder by the National Audit Office either. 

Unhealthy and Unsafe

Armstrong Street on a winters day. On the left demolition has been replaced by a builders yard where contractors employed by Gateshead Council are currently cutting up sandstone blocks. 

You can see a grey mist rising up. In fact the mist is a thick sandstone dust. As local residents walk up and down the street only a slight wind blows the dust into their faces. A small amount of thought could have provided a covered area to keep the dust in check. However this is Gateshead Council, as disinterested in enforcing high standards among contractors as they are in protecting the environment. 

Just a few months ago during the first phase of demolition skips stood openly with asbestos piled in them. Now it's sandstone dust. It's no wonder residents are worried about air pollution if Gateshead are allowed to continue with mass demolition. 

Just one question - would you like to live with this mess on your doorstep? According to the Council this is demolition that causes minimal disruption!

What Everyone Wants!

On Radio 4's PM programme Stuart Timiss, Planning Officer for Gateshead Council gushed. He claimed that residents had been consulted and what they wanted was 2, 3 and 4 bedroomed homes a garden and a place to park their car.

Yes, yes, yes that what residents want. It is also the dream of millions in Britain. Unfortunately even the 2 bedroomed houses built recently in Gateshead cost £99,000 or 4 times the average salary for the area. It is also questionable as to whether a 2 bedroomed house is a "family home" unless you have a one child family.

However let's take apart his statement. If you asked the man in the street if he would like a 4 bedroomed family home instead of a small rented flat he is going to say yes. Of course Gateshead Council didn't even ask this loaded question in a vacuum. At the time they surveyed people they gave the impression that residents renting in the area would be magically swapped into this new vision of urban living and placed in a 4 bedroomed council house available for rent at a reasonable amount. Whereas the truth is around 20% may be affordable rented houses as an absolute maximum.

Gateshead have their dream already on Sunderland Road. It is a half built development with few houses sold to people who can pay 10 times the tyneside average salary for a 4 bedroomed family home. That is 4 reasonably small bedrooms!

Gateshead Council sold hard working families the dream home they couldn't afford when surveying their opinion. They equated forthcoming demolition with a lifestyle they knew people couldn't afford.

Everyone wants the kind of image of a home that Gateshead Council promote. Everyone wants to win the lottery. In the real world most people don't win the lottery and most people would benefit from renovating the home they can afford rather than having it demolished.

Radio 4 PM Programme Exposes Mass Demolition

The Radio 4 PM programme on 13th Jan exposed the council to rare national publicity on the issue of mass demolition of the north.

Reporter Luke Walton exposed the situation of over 12,000 demolitions nationally and only 2,000 homes built. He reports that Gateshead Council see little prospect of private building for at least 3 years. Gateshead Council claim they are building houses people want. In actuality they have built no replacement houses in Saltwell and Bensham at all and in the places that have had development houses are been 6 and 10 times the average local annual salary. Most of these new properties are standing empty. Drilling down into the questions asked by Gateshead Council in their surveys of local opinion reveal such gems as "do you want more open space" and "should there be more choice of housing in the area". The question "do you want your home demolished to make way for luxury appartments you can't afford" was sadly not included! The point being that questions were weighted to get support for demolition without mentioning demolition.

Little wonder that some Labour MPs label the process as "ethnic cleansing" of the working class from inner cities. Our residents association would not take such a dramatic stand but a recent report by Labour's favourite think-tank the IPPR said that the government were perceived to have "abandoned the white working class".

Over the water in Newcastle the "success" of demolishing the homes of hard working families was paid for by Labour losing the city council. Some nine council seats were lost just down to de-populating Labour voting areas.

Nationally the budget for market renewal is falling year by year. Private developers are not building. In Lancashire and the North West, with many marginal Labour seats, demolition of thousands of homes will make a number of MPs aware that demolishing your own voters property is not the best way to get them to vote Labour. An abrupt end to pathfinder is on the cards.

Links
Radio 4 PM Programme

Web Address

For the incredibly sharp amongst you today you will have noticed that the website was unavailable at its normally full-service address. This is because we were doing a little maintenance on something called the DNS record. The idea being that at some later point we can mess around with publishing other material relevant to the campaign.

The very, very observant will have noticed the internal address of the website www1.sbresidents.org - this is again an internal fiddly thing to do with the tiny bits of web hosting. Don't worry www.sbresidents.org will get you here I just do a bit of moving between servers at some point.

So sincere apologies that we were not here for part of the day. But the site is back and doing stuff. Actually it was never away just redirected to blank page for while.

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