Renovation Works! Demoliton is a dead end.

Renovation is going well in Saltwell and Bensham. Now that the millionaire developers cant raise funds to build expensive houses we find the council is reduced to renovating. This is the policy our association favours.

This is just one photo of an old terrance house restored to it's best with new frontage, railings and it now looks like it did when it was built.

The planners hate this. They want to be involved in modernism and removing the old. However the record of planners in Gateshead is awful. Buildings costing millions some 40 years ago are hated by the community and are at last being demolished. Gateshead hideous car park that starred in the Michael Caine movie "Get Carter", the Dunstan "Rocket" - a tower block that owes more to NASA than good design will follow St Cuthberts Village into the dustbin of history. These hated buildings share one thing in common - championed by professional planners.

Meanwhile in the real world what people want is capital to invest in their own home not consigning old buildings to the bulldozer for no good reason.

Renovation is not a soft option - it's the way forward.

Young Planners Get Exposed To Gateshead Council Demolition Promotion Team

Over the last 4 years of resident resistance to demolition Gateshead Council have become more and more sophisticated at taking on the anger about demolition.

One of the latest tactics is to point young planners of tomorrow towards the notion that hard working families who live in old houses need to have them demolished whereas well-off people who live in old houses in affluent areas need their homes preserved for the nation.

Planning Resource have reported that delegates to this years' Young Planners Conference in NewcastleGateshead were shown the "success" of regeneration in Saltwell and Bensham. I doubt whether the council advertised the fact that there is a homeless crisis in Gateshead. Despite there being (allegedly) 600 empty properties in Saltwell and Bensham there are huge numbers of people waiting to be housed. The young planners will have been told that Gateshead now has 90 street captains advising them of what is going on. What they may not have mentioned is that the identities of the street captains are a secret so no-one actually knows who they are or how to contact them. They may not have mentioned the petition of 1,400 local people who rejected Gateshead Council's proposals.

Gateshead Council, at there last planning meeting to discussed development in Saltwell and Bensham, said they had no plans for the area other than to demolish and grass over the land. If Gateshead Council are influencing Young Planners of the future we can look forward to vast areas of green wilderness rather than housing.

AGM 2009 - 11th November 2009

Our Annual General Meeting will be held at Whitehall Road Methodist Church Hall on Wednesday 11th November 2009 at 7pm.

All residents of Saltwell and Bensham are welcome to attend and stand for election to the committee. The majority of the meeting will report the activity of the association over the last 12 months plus your experience of demolition in the area.

If you have any business for the meeting please notify the secretary in advance.