Perhaps a little light on what the fat cats at Westfield really think of the citizens of Bradford and their elected representatives.

=#0000FFT&A Friday 12th October-
[url=http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/9981022.Councillor_angry_at__hole_in_the_heart__of_city_over_Westfield_project_delays/?ref=mcLink[/url


=#0000FFT&A Thursday 18th October


According to one report,

[url=http://www.efinancialnews.com/digest/2012-10-18/european-retail-property-manager-buys-bradford-schemelink[/url

...and the T&A aren't even prepared to release the name of the paper they sourced it from. To save everyone's time, just assume I went on a right rant about what a set of incompetent pseudo journalists they are who have failed their customers for generations.

Right from the start, back in 2004/5(?) when it was first mothballed, and we were told "don't worry, it's [idefinitely[/i going ahead", my response was, 'if it's [idefinitely[/i going ahead, why don't you just get on with it, then'? Westfield are liars, cheats and a total waste of space; the spirit of Poulson lives on.

Also, how old is the hole? If I'd been asked to guess, I'd have guessed it would be a teenager before long. I'm sure it's a shedload more than the quoted 4 years, anyway.

I recall the reason been given for not completion was Westfield not having enough money or something sh11te like that. I wonder how they managed to build the massive Westfield centre at the Olympic Park site at the same time. Weird.

The old buildings in and around Forster Square were knocked down in 2004.

I've been out of Bradford for >4 years & I'm fairly sure worked had stopped before that. An interesting legal point (put the tissues away FA) is the planning permission. Normally development must commence within 3 years of the date of granting permission (it used to be 5). The key is what constitutes development & what were the conditions precedent within the permission. I'm not sure if Westfield were involved in the demolition, if so they could maybe claim that was sufficient; if they weren't they did do some ground works which again might qualify. If neither do, although there are now simpler grounds for extending the period of palnning approval, would the Council have the balls for a legal fight with Westfield over their failure to comply? In the current market, & without developers lining up to build, I would say no.

Westfield were not involved in the demolition, which started around March/April 2004 when they knocked down the Forster Square post office building directly facing the sorting office. My recollections of the time are that a special company called 'Connecting the City', or somesuch was set up to front the operation. I believe they were also the people who did the roadworks, connecting Cheapside with Canal Rd and which runs in front of the Midland Hotel and the Post Office.

Westfield were not even the initial developer, but inherited the job when they took over the original company, whose name escapes me, though IIRC this was some time around 2006. Some ground works have been done by Westfield, hidden behind the big fence around the current 'city park', which is of course just the outer area of the Westfield site. Going on dates from my photographs work was still continuing in July 2008, though I can't say that anything too meaningful was going on as it dribbled on for ages before they decamped.

Trouble is the Council gets to allow that many holes in the ground that it's easy to get confused with dates.

Like the Odeon which is I suppose now a virtual hole, though may as well be a real hole. How long has that been left to rot now?

Actually the Odeon site is one of my pet bugbears. One thing Bradford has been crying out for is a medium sized concert venue. St George's Hall is fine for smallish gigs but that's it. Leeds stole a march on us and now pretty much everywhere has decent indoor arenas where decent sized crowds can justify the top shows. Just look at any tour itinerary.

It seemed to me from day one that the Odeon site was tailor made for a concert venue. Not that it needs to be as huge as the MEN, but here's the two sites for comparison purposes



Surrounded by multistoreys and slap bang in the centre, it would be a great spot.

A large ERDF grant (over £1m) was spent on putting in utilities for the subsequent development that's never happened. I've often wondered how that would stand if the development never happened. Can't see much appetite for clawing it back but you never know

Its in the business section of today's The Times

I was told that the originally planned development was meant to be part financed by apartments above many of the retail outlets. It was the collapse in that market as much as the reduced retail demand that led to the failure of the development

Agree, it would make a terrific site for an arena, and to be honest if I were a big moneyed local citizen, after doing up Odsal to the level it deserves, I'd be right on it.

As regards the dates on Waste of a field, I got mine from the photographs I took at the time, so the initial knocking down is very accurate and last work on the site is at least fairly accurate as it is the date of last photo I took and I pretty much stopped when the work did, though as I said it did dribble on for a while (as I could easily see from the canteen window of the post office, where I was working at the time) but my last photo is pretty fair reflection of when they took the mechanical stuff away, though I confess they probably had security and even the odd bloke clearing water out of the site for some time after that.

Would the work towards turning it into a temporary "open grassy urban space" count for planning? That was less than 3 yrs ago wasn't it?

I can fairly confidently say that the urban space was mentioned in neither the approval notice nor the approved plans. So no.
Strictly I would think a separate planning approval for change of use would be required from that given for the retail development, it would be interesting to check whether the Council bothered with that..

It was, and is, only 'temporary' though, so it's only an interim change of use at best - a bit like a demolished office block becomes a car park before it re-emerges as a supermarket. Can't see why it would require more than local approval, which no doubt, the council would have obtained from itself.

True, the Council could deem officer approval, rather than Plans Panel, but I was asking whether an application had actually been made. And if it was for a temporary use, what was the length of time granted for the temporary use?

There was never a chance of that happening, what with the people who had the decision making power fully committed to building an arena in Leeds, I mean we're all one big happy city region aren't we, so why spread any investment around? The Leeds arena will work wonders for Bradford, as will the trolley bus system that they are using the "regions" money to pay for.

Not sure how the council could have specified how long the garden would be there though, given it was wholly dependent on when Westfield finally get their aaaahs into gear, at which point - if it ever arrives, of course - it would disappear under the shops.

Yeah, like the idea of extending the tram into Bradford - which would clearly be very beneficial to the city by bring thousands of Leeds folk into Bradford to do their shopping....

To be honest I've said all along that any money arriving under a 'Leeds' tag will stay in Leeds - why would they let others have any of it?. Imo, the Bradford Councillors involved in the 'City Region' racket must have secured super duper jobs nodding through money for Leeds, either that or maybe they all live in Leeds. When you look round, there are lots of tiny little places all over the country which have their own 'City Region' and it's a travesty that Bradford is stuck into a foreign one. The fourth largest actual city region in England just being an appendage to another area is just a joke, it's just like the Eighties and Thatcher all over again.

Quote ="Bulliac"Not sure how the council could have specified how long the garden would be there though, given it was wholly dependent on when Westfield finally get their aaaahs into gear, at which point - if it ever arrives, of course - it would disappear under the shops.'" Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000

Quote ="Bulliac"Not sure how the council could have specified how long the garden would be there though, given it was wholly dependent on when Westfield finally get their aaaahs into gear, at which point - if it ever arrives, of course - it would disappear under the shops.'" Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000

Quote ="tigertot"Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000'" Does this mean the garden is now an illegal 'development', or is the council just awaiting planning permission to remove it... Actually, I'm thinking of starting a 'save the urban garden' (which I must remember to call it, not 'City Park', which is something entirely different), movement; save the the Bradford Urban Garden or "BURG", has a sort of ring to it, don't you think?

Quote ="tigertot"Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000'" Does this mean the garden is now an illegal 'development', or is the council just awaiting planning permission to remove it... Actually, I'm thinking of starting a 'save the urban garden' (which I must remember to call it, not 'City Park', which is something entirely different), movement; save the the Bradford Urban Garden or "BURG", has a sort of ring to it, don't you think?

It is now much easier to renew expired planning permissions, the Council may well have done this. To be honest I'm not really bothered about the technicalities of this, more that the Council let Westfield treat the city with contempt.
As an aside, the Government like to blame the planning system for delaying development & holding up 'recovery', but the fact is there are 400,000 undeveloped houses with planning permission in this country. It is demand & the availability of funding that is the problem.

Oh, I agree, though I'd suggest that lack of demand is really another symptom of lack of funding; if there were sufficient jobs, of which people felt confident of assuming were long term [iand[/i which paid a reasonable day's wage for a reasonable day's work there would be little problem with demand....imo of course, Gids and Cams and the rest of the Bullingdon mob might have other ideas..