You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2008.
Coming soon to a High Town near you: lots and lots of empty shops.
Butchers! Bakers! Candlestick makers! Forget it, they’ve all closed down!
“We’ve got to avoid preservation,” the words of Jonathan Bretherton, ESG Herefordshire chief executive, speaking to a recent public meeting about the plans for the Edgar Street Grid.
The meeting, organised by the Hereford Civic Society, was told how the city should become a tourist destination for day-trippers by encouraging top name retailers to set up shop here.
Among the plans are a hotel with banqueting facilities, a Waitrose food hall and more trendy wine bars. Who’s going to be using those then? Not the people of Hereford. Other plans include a new leisure quarter on the site of the cattle market, a civic quarter with new library as well as houses and new office space. There is no doubt that Hereford will benefit from these being so close to the existing city centre.
The major flaw in the plan is a new retail development outside the existing shopping core of High Town. With shops surely to be closing left, right and centre this will destroy the existing character of the town, which already has around 40 vacant shops.
Hereford’s Buttermarket stallholders have recently formed an Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) after fears were raised that they would be ignored by Herefordshire Council when drawing up plans to redevelop the indoor market. As it stands, the Buttermarket is likely to be severely affected by the ESG development.
“It is essential that the existing traders are protected during the regenerations works,” Len Tawn, chairman of the BIRA, told the Hereford Heckler. The Independent Retailers Association now has 100% membership of stall holders within the market, but will the council listen to its traders …?
ESG Herefordshire, in collaboration with London developers Stanhope, are also wheeling out the old chestnut of a new multi-screen cinema in their plans; so far, the only concrete idea they’ve had to appeal specifically to young people. We have to be a bit cynical though. No one goes to the existing Odeon partly because it’s old and uncomfortable but partly because everyone gets the latest films on TV now anyway. It’s a populist idea they’re using to sweeten a bitter pill of shops, trendy wine bars and, er, more shops. Oh, and a new multi-story car park that will replace the old one that’s earmarked for demolition.
The solution to Hereford’s apparently poor economy is to invite large corporations into the city where the majority of the money spent will be taken out by international shareholders. Yet more low paid menial jobs will be created. Big shiny department stores will dazzle us. This is an easy solution, but we should be looking at what Hereford has already got and how to work within those qualities.
In 1845 Hereford finally opened its canal after 68 years of work towards this goal. The canal was in operation for 17 years but was closed due to the railways taking its place as the dominant form of transport. Is Hereford about to repeat the same mistake, redeveloping an area based upon attracting retail tourists just before we stop travelling long distances to shop? Welcome to the Hereford Ghost Town.
Herefordshire Council couldn’t care less about sport and education if it tried. That was the decision made recently at a cabinet meeting when councillors voted against reopening the LEA pool because of ‘insufficient funds’.
The meeting, which took place on 31st July, heard that £72,500 would be needed to reopen the pool. An additional £210,000 was also needed to provide non-urgent upgrades.
Bradbury Lines builders Wimpey UK Ltd have paid the council £182,000 towards local education provision, which is more than enough to cover the initial repair work. An unsecured further £100,000 is also expected from the second phase of the housing development.
Which basically amounts to this: Herefordshire Council will not gamble this £100,000 to spend on upgrading an important sporting resource for our schools. But they are quite happy to gamble millions on the building of the Rotherwas Access Road, which was to be paid for by selling land for 300 homes.
And also this: Herefordshire Council have given the people of this county yet more proof, after proposals earlier in the year to close almost 40 schools, that they really don’t give a monkeys about anything other than getting into bed with top company bosses. You scratch my back …
But hang on, why should they have to gamble any money at all: six council bosses are now being paid salaries of between £100,000 and £150,000 each. Cut from the top, not the bottom, and there’s plenty of money; give ‘em all the boot.
Under the national curriculum every child is expected to able to swim 25 metres by the time they leave primary school, yet the council has now closed the only purpose built teaching pool in the county. School pupils are currently using the Halo Leisure Pool, presumably in between the times when the wave machine is turned on.
But remember, just because the council says the LEA pool is now closed, that doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to be. They only have the power to do such things because we sit back and let them do it. The power is with us, not them. The pool stays open, or Roger Phillips goes to the crocodiles!
