ST HELEN'S HOUSE
A £5 million backlog of maintenance
work is forcing Derby City Council to consider
the future of a Grade I listed building as a base
for adult education. St Helen’s House on
King Street was inherited by the City Council in
1997, when it became a unitary authority, but has
been a home for adult and community learning for
more than 30 years.
The Council’s Adult Education Service, the
Workers Educational Association and the
University of Derby are all currently providing
courses there. However, a lengthening list of
essential repairs and modernisation work means
that the Council now has to make a decision about
the building.
This year, two classrooms have had to be shut for
health and safety reasons, the boiler replaced
with a temporary one because there was no heating
in the building, and asbestos was discovered in
an unused part of the building. On top of
essential maintenance, the whole of the building
needs extensive renovation.
The long-term future of the building has not been
decided but it is likely that it will be closed
on a phased basis. Students currently studying at
St Helen’s House will be able to see out
this academic year and will not have their
studies interrupted, unless health and safety
issues demand more emergency maintenance work.
The Council is working with the WEA and the
University of Derby to find alternative
accommodation in the city centre for use from
September 2004. Councillor Les Allen, Cabinet
Member for Lifelong Learning, said,
"Although the Education Service will be sad
to leave St Helen's House at this point, we see
this as an opportunity to develop more adult
learning provision in local neighbourhoods.”
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DERBYSHIRE HERITAGE IN DIRE
PERIL!
It is a criminal offence to neglect a
public listed building to the point where the
fabric of the building becomes damaged, if not
beyond repair, then certainly close to the point
of no return, where rescue is essential, and
where the cost of which was formerly thousands,
has now turned to millions. Such is the abysmal
situation with both Derby City, and County
Councils, regarding buildings in both the shire,
and the city. If it were a private individual or
organisation involved, no doubt the powers that
be would drop from a great height (and rightly
so) on that particular person or body, with the
full weight of the law.
However, the same question arises again and again
when it comes to the elected bodies that make up
the City and County Councils. A proportion of the
heavy taxes we have to pay (which are constantly
increased to keep up with inflation), is supposed
to go towards the upkeep of not only public
buildings but roads, infrastructure, and the day
to day running of the area. The question which
constantly keeps rearing it's ugly head is this
one: if there is insufficient money to pay for
roads, education, nursery schools, the placement
of the elderly in residential homes and
everything else that needs it, then where is the
money going'?
The latest casualty on the list of public
buildings is St Helen's House, a magnificent
piece of Georgian architecture built in the
1760s. This beautiful and historic building which
stands on the edge of the city is something of
which we should all cherish and be justly proud
of. That is, all of us it seems except Derbyshire
County Council, under whose stewardship it has
fallen into decay, and then the City Council, who
have continued the rot for the six or seven years
that they have had their equally neglectful and
totally incapable hands on the building. It comes
as no surprise that these councils between them
continue to prove that they are incapable of
governing anywhere efficiently. Only now are we
seeing the effects of years of dereliction of
duty, caused by their total incompetence,
beginning to bite.
The canker was probably already deep-seated when
we found a County Council that re-called every
bit of the stationery that it had issued with
it's name on the headings, to have 'Derbyshire,
Nuclear Free Zone' printed on it! This cavalier
ineptitude seems to have flooded into the City
Council even more since the whole fiasco became a
'unitary administration', which, unfortunately
for the people of both the County Town and the
Shire, means the even greater spread of top-heavy
administration which is incapable of doing the
job that it is supposedly elected to do, namely
to keep everything running smoothly and in good
repair for the electorate.
What we see is exactly the opposite, a body of
people, elected to govern, who obviously are not
capable of doing so. Why then, one might suppose,
did they stand for office in the first place? We
not only SEE the results of this first hand, we
feel our pockets getting lighter all the time and
the falling down and boarding up which is the
direct consequence of these people being in the
position that (unfortunately) they are in. It is
nothing short of highway robbery to keep taking
money from the electorate and throwing it down
the well of incompetence these administrators
have created.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of our money
wasted on an ill conceived and poorly thought out
road traffic system in Alvaston which saw the
introduction of speed bumps which had to be
discussed, modified, and then finally torn out,
to be replaced by speed cameras, which, properly
installed and maintained, would have been the
obvious choice from the outset. To make matters
worse, the statutory 'public consultation'
exercise was forced through by the council to
find out 'once and for all whether people really
did or didn't want them', when in fact, the
electorate were screaming for them to be removed.
A similar waste of money costing further hundreds
of thousands of pounds of OUR money has occurred
at Five Lamps where the traffic control measures
introduced to make traffic flow smoothly have
done anything but! And, having been supposedly
completed, have been modified, and are now due
for the standard 'public consultation', in other
words, the council asking the public who have
elected them to do the job, whether or not they
are doing it correctly. The poor people of
Alvaston are now suffering further at the hands
of the council by being asked whether they want
an extra link road being planned to join
Raynesway to go 'through the middle, or down the
side of' Alvaston Park.
We all know the answer to this - a resounding no!
This is why we are under the control of a unitary
authority which fiddles whilst the City and the
County burn. Why we see fine buildings which
could earn millions in tourist revenue alone
allowed to be either deliberately flattened
(Charles Aslin's bus station), or allowed to fall
down under criminal (but unpunished!) neglect,
Cromford Mill, Elvaston Castle, Allestree Hall,
St Helen's House, all places built and created by
men of vision capable of rational thought and
creativeness, the kind of people who created the
British Empire.
What a raw deal we are getting now by comparison.
The whining and the wringing of hands from the
present poor lot every time they hit a
self-inflicted problem for which they have to
first ask our opinion before once more raising
taxes to pay for their mistakes cuts no ice
anymore with this particular taxpayer! The
problem is that they are totally and irrevocably
damaging the town (sorry, city) and county where
I grew up, and which I love. Has anyone noticed
that, even though the taxes to pay for this
relentless incompetence keep rising through the
roof (whilst we have one!), the wages and
expenses for the perpetrators of such criminal
insanity NEVER go down!
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