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“A FIASCO OF THE HIGHEST ORDER!”
Posted on Thursday, January 28 @ 18:31:39 GMT by |
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(28/01/10) That is how Liberal Democrat group leader on the City Council, Cllr Darren Fower has described the recent announcement that the Local Authority would not enforce a previously agreed planning application with the developers of the Werrington Centre, to guarantee a community car park. The decision is likely to cost local tax payers tens of thousands of pounds:
Members of the South Werrington and North Gunthorpe FOCUS Team, that the long and short of the situation is that:
1. Last year the Council agreed an application which provided assurances of a community car park being built, as Tesco are rumoured to be keen to charge people to park in the coming years, once they have expanded the existing car park at the centre.
2. This agreed planning application cited the tennis courts at Ken Stimpson School as the preferred location. On top of this there were alternative options agreed if any problems arose, like building on other nearby Council owned land.
3. Sadly, the Council failed to check the legal position in regards to the Private Finance Agreement that exist on the aforementioned school and so that option became invalid!
4. On top of this, one of the back up options mentioned in point 2, relating to Council land could not be used………. As there was no Council owned land in this radius!
To make matters worse, it turns out that the City Council hugely under estimated the actual cost of building a car park!
This has now led to the Councils own planning committee deciding not to enforce the previous planning agreement, instead they agreed to make alterations to the previous agreement which relinquished the developers responsibility to have build and pay for the community car park. Instead, they will now make a contribution which is insufficient and thus leaving the Council to make up the rest of the money needed to build a community car park.
Cllr Darren Fower, who attended the planning committee said:
“We know that the money that the developers agreed to pay is insufficient and additional money will be required, given the financial position of this authority agreeing these latest recommendations are madness!
“The committee had the option of progressing with option 2 of the previous agreement but chickened out, in my opinion, because the developers spouted out an unsubstantiated claim that the development was worth £12m, they may as well have said £13m!
“The bottom line is that the developers signed the original agreement requiring, as advocated by this very committee, that spaces be reserved until there was an alternative site provided either by them or the Council.
“At least now when people ask me how much influence Tesco has over our local authority, I’ll be able to cite a valid example of how they can get the local authority to change its mind and previous agreements. This episode has proved to be a fiasco of the highest order!”
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