A member of the working group examining the future of the land previously earmarked for Friarsgate has questioned the cost of creating a short-term fix for the site.
The area of the city centre – now rebranded the Birmingham Road Site by Lichfield District Council – has stood empty since the long-awaited redevelopment scheme bit the dust last year.
The local authority’s leader, Cllr Mike Wilcox, said that a short term change could see the demolition of existing structures and temporary toilets, landscaping, more car parking and a bigger bus station introduced as a short-term solution.
But Cllr Colin Ball, Labour’s representative for the Curborough ward – who also sits on the Birmingham Road Site Working Group – said “frustration” from residents meant the council could not afford to delay progress on a permanent plan for the land.
“I’ve made my position on this clear at a number of meetings of the working group and am very surprised to see this back on the table now,” he said.
“We had been told last Autumn that the Tory Cabinet at Lichfield District Council had abandoned any plans for temporary works due to the high cost of around £1.5million.
“At a working group meeting in January, we were told that there would now be some works on a much smaller scale carried out. Imagine my horror in reading that these ‘works on a much smaller scale’ will cost not much short of £750,000.
“I dread to think how the people of Lichfield district will view this.
“At a time of continuing Tory austerity cuts to public services, it seems to me very wasteful for Lichfield District Council to think about spending so much public money on this, especially as most of it will be wasted money, given that only the demolition of the police station and shop units and toilets will help genuinely towards the longer term redevelopment of the site.”
Cllr Wilcox said a spruce up of the site was necessary.
“We know from feedback local people want us to improve the site in the short-term, while we work on plans for a longer-term development that is both deliverable and sustainable,” he said.
But Cllr Ball accused the Conservative leader of not moving quickly enough to clean up the mess left behind by his failure to get Friarsgate over the line.
“I believe that if the working group had been set up earlier and the numbers had been limited to four or five, we could have got people together more often and focused more on driving this forward quickly,” he said.
“I initially suggested the idea of a cross party working group in June last year, calling directly on Conservative leader Mike Wilcox to set it up at the count for my by-election which he attended, on 5th July.
“But the first meeting of the working group was not until 4th October, so we effectively wasted the summer months, when, if we had met regularly then, we would have been much further forward on by now.”
