On 25 May 1992 the Mountleigh group went into receivership. The assets of Mountleigh Northern at Bridge Road were eventually acquired by White Rose Development Enterprises Ltd, who later renewed the housing consent that had been granted on the former Waddington's site.
Meanwhile Leeds Development Corporation (LDC) was approached by two other property companies: First Consolidated Ltd (Directed by JE Brown) and Tewin Estate & Land (Directed by RJS Palmer) who were also interested in the land near Bridge Road. On 20 July 1992 these parents established a joint development company, which was later re-named as Kirkstall Valley Properties Ltd. The auditors and registered office address for the new company were Rawlinson & Hunter, of One Hanover Square, London W1A 4SR.
Active discusions and negotiations continued through the summer and autumn of 1992, involving LDC officers (Goodrum, Kenny & Wolfe), Mountleigh's receiver (Howard Mallinson) and David Richardson (LDC board member, who also acted for the rugby club at Bridge Road).
Headingley FC owned three rugby pitches at Bridge Road, and in 1991 - 92 were amalgamating with Roundhay rugby club to form the new Leeds RUFC. Their future president would be Mike Palmer-Jones, who was Leeds City Council Director of Leisure Services from 1973 - 89, and retired from the Council in November 1991. The new club hoped to buy some Leisure Services land from the Council, to the east of Roundhay Park Lane in Shadwell. This site was in the North Leeds green belt, and had originally been acquired in 1983 for a possible extension to a municipal golf course.
The land on the other side of Roundhay Park Lane was mostly owned by a trust (the PAH Hartley 1972 Settlement) established by the LDC chairman to benefit his immediate family. The trustees were Rawlinson & Hunter, of St Helier, Jersey. A smaller interlocking site was owned directly by Mr Hartley and his wife. It was their family home, and became an important focus for Conservative Party activities in NE Leeds.
Since 1986 Mr Hartley had been trying to exclude the whole of the land to the west of Roundhay Park Lane from the North Leeds green belt, so that it could be developed in the longer term. He made an unsuccessful personal submission to the Public Inquiry into the North Leeds Local Plan, and during 1992 Rawlinson & Hunter continued to lobby Leeds City Council to make a similar change to the Unitary Development Plan. If this alteration could be achieved, it is estimated that the value of the combined Hartley family lands would increase by about twenty million pounds.
The main developer interest submission 5E/7/21 from Rawlinson & Hunter was made by their local agent, David Simmonds, on 3 July 1992. Mr Simmonds was a former employee of Mr Hartley. In it he pointed out that that the relocation of Leeds RUFC from the Kirkstall Valley to the eastern side of Roundhay Park Lane would isolate the whole of the Hartley land, and "immeasurably strengthen" the case for excluding it from the green belt.
In a letter to the LDC Chief Executive dated 18 August 1992, the architects acting for Kirkstall Valley Properties Ltd pointed out that the relocation of the Leeds RUFC from Kirkstall Valley to the land at Shadwell depended on their obtaining "commercial site values" at Bridge Road.
On 10 December 1992 a major meeting took place in private between Mr Hartley, LDC officers and representatives from Kirkstall Valley Properties Ltd. The LDC side agreed to recommend to the full board that they should "show flexibility on the interpretation of their local shopping policy". They invited the developer to make a presentation to the next board meeting. The minutes record that "this rare opportunity to make a direct presentation to the Board is to be kept as a private and confidential matter."
On 21 January 1993, after excluding the press and public, Mr Hartley introduced a presentation by Kirkstall Valley Properties Ltd to the full LDC board. Mr Richardson declared an interest in this item, but remaind in the room. The board agreed to invite a planning application, although the scale of the development was plainly incompatible with their 1990 planning framework, or with the public assurances given at the time that there would be no large scale retail development at Bridge Road.
A planning application was submitted on 1 April 1993. The developer's publicity leaflets described it as "a new heart for Kirkstall". Mr RJS Palmer lived 200 miles away in Berkshire, and Kirkstall residents dubbed it "The Berkshire Plan".
It seems to have been the intention to approve the scheme very quickly, and Mr Goodrum brought a report to the LDC Board meeting in May 1993 already recommending acceptance. Conscious of the previous opposition to retail development, and the extensive public consultation over the KVC "People's Plan" and the LDC 1990 planning framework, the developer organised a series of public exhibitions modelled on the KVC Planning for Real exercise, and paid for a public opinion survey by a team led by Professor Howard Green of Leeds Metropolitan University. The survey results were claimed to show public support for the proposals.
It was a curious survey. Visitors to the travelling exhibition were subjected to a presentation by the developer's representatives, much of which was factually incorrect, and then immediately asked to complete a questionnaire without having time to think. People complained about the one-sided nature of the exercise, so after the first few days opponents of the scheme were allowed to enter the exhibition, but could not interrupt the presentation, or refer to any of the developer's materials in order to put a contrary point of view. A parallel "door to door" survey was totally one-sided, since the respondents only heard the developer's case.
In fact the questionnaire had been designed by the developer, and the format made it quite difficult to oppose the scheme. Many people wrote hostile comments on the back of the form, but these do not appear to have been fully analysed. It is difficult to be certain about this, because the developer refused at the time to release the raw data for independent scrutiny or statistical analysis, and all the original questionnaires have subsequently been destroyed. In contrast to the normal system used for public comments on planning applications (where the planning authority confirms the identity of the person making comments) in this case there was no evidence for the bona fides of those taking part in the survey.
Nevertheless, LDC placed great store by this "independent scientific survey" and reports on it occupied 50% of the papers placed before the board in May and June 1993. Unfortunately for the developer, it proved impossible to make the road layout work properly, and Leeds City Council Highways officers would not agree to the proposals. This delayed the scheme by many months, during which period there was an extensive public debate. This eventually produced over 1000 individual written objections to the plans.
Supporters tried to counter this, and circulated photocopied messages of support to be signed by visiting rugby teams. This resulted in an extraordinary geographical split, with the public opposition concentrated around the proposed development, and supporters (many of whom professed a deep concern for the welfare of inner-city residents) scattered over more distant and prosperous parts of Leeds, and far-flung areas of the country, such as Norfolk, London and Penzance.
The whole enterprise ended in farce, when a lady complained that her husband (who suffered from Alzheimer's disease) could not possibly have signed his letter of support. This was reported by the local newspaper, causing others to also complain that they had never signed their letters of support. The Police were called in, but reported that (apart from the one established case) there had been no fraud. It was simply that many of the supporting messages had been gathered "on social occasions" when the rugby enthusiasts were too drunk to remember what they had done!
LDC officers made a final attempt to get the scheme accepted in October 1993. There was a dramatic intervention by Councillor Trickett, who produced a letter from the Council's Highway officers saying that the road proposals were unsafe. Independent highway consultants Travers Morgan were called in to adjudicate, and reported in January 1994 that the Council officers were correct. Although the original scheme was still a live planning application, the developer started work on modified proposals, which were submitted in the Spring of 1994.
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