A renewed focus on the future on the whole of the Birmingham Road Site development plan is needed, the chair of a task group on the issue has said.
Lichfield District Council put forward proposals for the land previously earmarked for Friarsgate last year.
It outlined how different phases of the scheme would progress along with the creation of a timeline covering a five year period.
But with work due to to start on the demolition of the multi-storey car park and land where Tempest Ford once stood now being offered up to housing developers, Cllr Colin Ball has called for a renewed focus on the overall plans.
The chair of the city centre masterplan task group told a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee:
“One of the biggest things I want us to be doing is having a task group in May or early June which will look in detail at the site overall.
“I’ve been in communication with the leader and cabinet member about a meeting as it is worth waiting to get the relevant people there to tie down what is going to happen on the site overall, when things will happen, what the cost will be etc.
“I’m increasingly concerned that this is developing in a piecemeal and ad-hoc way and we don’t have a complete overview. There was one, but we seem to have drifted away from it.”
Cllr Colin Ball
Fellow task group member Cllr Paul Ray said he too was keen to see the bigger picture explored.
“In the last council, we had a presentation from the project manager and it was exciting with the vision laid out. But that has got lost.
“The task group needs to have that so we can see the overall vision, because our role isn’t to project manage, but to scrutinise and advise on the vision.”
Cllr Paul Ray
Cllr Ball said he also hoped to see the focus return to the whole city centre rather than just the Birmingham Road Site in future.
The council drew up an overall masterplan a number of years ago, with the document envisaging the creation of four distinct quarters.
Cathedral Quarter, Market Quarter, Business and Learning Quarter, and Southern Gateway Quarter were designed to help shape the long term future of the city centre area.
Cllr Ball said that while he recognised the immediate aims of starting work on the former Friarsgate land, he wanted to see attention switched to wider redevelopment plans.
“We are a city centre masterplan task group – but it’s becoming a Birmingham Road Site task group as that’s the focus in the moment.
“In a year or 18 months we need to look at the whole of the city centre again to scope out the future plans.
“The role of the task group is to shape policy and approach as well as testing and questioning rather than just rubber-stamping aspects of it as we go through – that’s what I want us to get to.”
Cllr Colin Ball
Blah, blah, blah. It’s now six years since the collapse of the original ill-fated plan for this site, a plan that saw a long-standing business evicted and the site levelled, but without the funding in place to do anything with it. It’s obvious that the council still don’t have a clue what to do with it. I sometimes look at the pictures on the hoardings and think that looks a nice place, I wonder where it is?
Everything is so painstakingly slow with this Council. It takes years and years for anything to even start, if it ever does. They just talk and talk, consultation after consultation. Nothing ever actually happens.
Strewth!! Eight years, and now it has become apparent that a task group would be a good idea.
Shrewd thinking 🤔.
What do they do all day? Appallingly slow progress. How do they not know what is being done and what it will cost yet? How long do they need? Would not surprise me if they knocked down the multi story car park and that site too lay abandoned for a decade.
Well yes it’s all bla bla.. but for once work is starting……. Yep it’s happening…. Actually… jokes aside…surely it is…scheduled… to take place…
I’ve noticed there’s no proposed finish date for existing plans…
Even then so much time has elapsed that quite frankly we have forgotten about the old plans! Which could be the new ones…so darn frustrating isn’t it all this uncertainty…
How much seriously would it have cost to remove the rubble and.. let’s kick the bill boards in and plant some wee little flowers…
I would say same for ex marks and Spencer’s site … there should be no space left to rubble or waste lands… either build on it, create to good environmental use or heck let’s not take pride in our environments if then were going to become ignorant for years of rubbled lands, waste sites and billboarding..
we’re in the heart of the country and yet….. someone travelling to this city would say just look around the hearts are not here!
Question. What is the only thing this council have built in the last eight years?
Answer. The fence around the Tempest Ford site!
You lot have mastered the art of doing nothing.
This just sums up these completely incompetent set of Councillors who claim to be looking after our interests but are only interested in their own. The one same Councillor in this article who doesn’t want paddle board in his patch and wants to save green spaces but is happy to support the destruction of Stychbrook Park and cause misery to residents with a so called leisure centre. Yet here we are once more debating a derelict site in a central location with the closest transport links you could wish for. A site of adequate size perfect for a leisure complex with swimming pool and the regeneration that could bring directly to the city centre. We have the vision; it’s a shame these Councillors don’t, and cannot even have the decency to listen to their residents.
This Council does not know the know the difference from their seat to their elbow. Delayed yet again🥴
A housing development on the Birmingham Road site is not really a ‘city gateway’ as I had imagined. It also is not a full community use of the space or a much needed medical centre. I don’t understand why the developers still seem to hold all the cards.
The piecemeal nature is by design. Disguise the fact they now just want it off their hands since the original intention fell through and have a housing estate in mind, to then slowly build its slice of the pie as the other parts that have more public support become unviable or a third party has some form of contractual provision or arrangement which has meant it is no longer applicable. The sad part is that the bus station (in its already brilliant location) remains in danger as developers are going to want it gone to make the housing more appealing to buyers and I personally don’t have a lot of faith the council has the integrity or the foresight to do the right thing, whole subject reeks of self interest.
I do wonder what is driving this Council – Tory, Labour and LibDem alike – to pursue a policy that is not supported by or in the interest of their constituents. Nobody but the Council appears to want more housing on this site. Nobody but the Council wants to lose the existing bus station. Nobody but the Council wants to put the new leisure centre on Stychbrook Park. Most people also want to keep the multi-storey car park. I presume it’s about the money, but from what I’ve seen the sums don’t add up.
What’s happening with the cinema? Or is this no longer part of the Birmingham Road development?