MAYOR of Liverpool Joe Anderson took to Twitter yesterday to express his fury after it was announced that there is to be a public inquiry into the Welsh Streets regeneration scheme.
The go-ahead for the £15 million plan was given in July, but the plans were frozen just hours later by Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, to give him time to consider whether a public inquiry was needed.
Yesterday he decided it was.
The Govenment had said all along that it wanted planning applications to be decided by local councils, but Pickles qualified the decision, saying it "considers in this instance that the proposal may conflict with national policy and has greater than local importance".
The plan
Housing association Plus Dane, which is managing the project, said any delays could jeopardise its funding - half of it coming from the same Government - as to qualify building must be completed by March 2015.
Mayor Anderson branded the decision malicious and hypocritical.
"Tory hypocrites spout localism+ then ignore community voices. Calling in the Welsh Streets plan is political malice. #shameful" he tweeted.
Later, a much longer statement was issued from the Mayor's Office in which Anderson said: “I am personally fed up with government interference like this, which has now delayed local people having the good quality homes they deserve. All this community wants is certainty and the government has slapped them in the face with this decision.
Ringo
"I am absolutely incensed that Mr Pickles, who supposedly champions localism, has ignored the overwhelming views of local people, and called this in, particularly when his own department has allocated funds towards the project.”
The City Council’s planning committee on 23 July had approved plans for a regeneration scheme which would have seen 150 new high-quality homes built, the refurbishment of 37 terraced properties and the demolition of 280 homes. The frontage of Ringo Starr's birthplace in Madryn Street will remain.
Mayor Anderson said: “These proposals were drawn up after extensive consultation with residents. It is residents that have been badly let down by this decision."
Planning Minister Nick Boles said: "The government is committed to giving power to councils and communities to decide their own planning decisions and only calls-in cases very rarely.
"Each case is always carefully considered on its own facts.
"The Welsh Streets application has attracted national controversy and has broader implications for the historic environment. It involves issues of more than local importance."
Pickles said arrangements for the public inquiry "will be made shortly" and details advertised locally nearer the time.
Anderson urged: “We’ve been forced into this and so it must take place as quickly as possible. The uncertainty that this community have faced for far too long shouldn’t be prolonged for a moment longer than it needs to be."
The case for keeping
Dingle supporters of the Plus Dane plan say their lives have been blighted for 13 years, forcing them to live in a rat invested environment in damp and squalid homes, but heritage campaigners believe there is a middle way.
Jonathan Brown told Confidential in July: “We are not opposing people having new homes if that is what they want, but there is scope here to save far more houses. As things stand fewer than 10 percent of the houses in the Welsh Street area will be refurbished and the rest cleared. It has already cost at least £20m just to buy and board up these houses. This has been a policy of managed decline.”
Clementine Cecil, of Save Britain’s Heritage, added at the time: “It has been demonstrated around the country that if there is a will, old houses are capable of being restored and re-used,” she said. “It could happen her in the Welsh streets... If every one of the houses in Welsh streets were restored there would be more than enough people eager to move in.”
