CONNECTING DERBY

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
 

Nobody should be too surprised that the council has now performed what amounts to, if not a U-turn, a juddering brake on Connecting Derby. The planning application for stage two, for which the authority gave itself planning approval in March, has now been withdrawn. Suddenly there appears to be a panic that the authority could come a legal cropper for not being seen to consider the planning merits of stages two and three together. The legal representatives of Derby Heart, the pressure group which is fighting the whole scheme, had warned the council that it could be in breach of planning and EU law by the approach it was taking.

Why that very point was not properly addressed then, only those in power in the Council House at that time can answer, because planning circumstances do not appear to have changed since then. And the result is yet another shambles. It may be now that the new Lib Dem-Tory alliance is anxious to distance itself from the previous Labour administration. Or perhaps somebody has taken the view that as we've waited more than 30 years, a few more months can't hurt that much.

It has now emerged from the authority's cabinet that the move has cost the city council an estimated £23,900. Of that money, £18,000 was spent on an environmental impact assessment that accompanied the aborted application. About £5,350 was spent on wasted officer time and £550 on legal fees, after the council called on a barrister to look into the legal challenge. However, the city council has said that fighting legal action would have proved far more costly to the taxpayer. So, we should all be eternally grateful then.

There has been much recent controversy over the outgoing city council's resolve to run the next phase of the laughably-titled 'Connecting Derby' across Friargate on the flat, where Ford Street and Stafford Street now meet, to the inevitable disfigurement of our premier conservation area. I thought then what a missed opportunity it was to have chosen this - the cheapest - solution over that which involved the Handyside Bridge, further up Friargate. This solution had been proposed decades ago when this section of this destructive and out-dated traffic engineering was first mooted, and had some merit.

After all, had the then Ministry of Transport bothered to consult with their colleagues in the nationalised railway industry undertaking when the road was being planned, they would have learned of the imminent demise of the former Great Northern Railway line through Derby, and taken the appropriate steps: to plan to run the road along the rail line from a point east of King Street to Stafford Street. This would have avoided the destruction of our only Georgian square (St Alkmund's Church Yard), Bridge Gate, with its plenitude of fine early buildings, many listed, and much more.

The old GNR was, after all, laid with four tracks, two up and two down, which gives about the same width as a modern two-lane-in-each-direction dual carriageway (in Connecting Derby the dual carriageway vanishes into thin air where Friary Street joins). That the idea to run the extension from Ford Street onwards over Friargate, over the historic bridge (using a pair of hidden concrete rafts so that the 19th century cast iron structure did not have to take the strain itself), was a serious one underlines the point that the entire route hereabouts would have been ideally suited to accommodate the new road.

This version of the scheme would have given the Handyside bridge a role, whereas today it is just an unused relic, which is being neglected by its owners, the city council. Soon it will just become a 'feature' punctuating the Clowes housing development soon to be commenced on the site of the Friargate Station. So this magnificently ornate bridge will have to be maintained as a monument to the achievements of the late Andrew Handyside, but one without a useful function.