In 1988 the Kirkstall Valley Campaign (KVC) faced an enormous mountain. The Mountleigh scheme came at the peak of the UK property boom, and an orchestrated publicity chorus swung in action, extolling its virtues and the huge number of jobs it was expected to create. We now know those figures were completely bogus, but at the time they were extremely difficult to counter. Mountleigh / LCDC and the Leeds Development Corporation (LDC) shared the same public relations consultants (Infopress Associates) and it was often difficult to know whether it was the planning authority or the property developer that was speaking. Years later we discovered that an Infopress employee (Maggie Heaton) had covertly joined the Campaign, and was sending back confidential briefings to her employers about the KVC strategy.
Meanwhile Mountleigh, LCDC and LDC conducted all their business in secret, and the public could only guess at what was happening behind closed doors. Responding to the growing public concern, LDC called two public meetings to hear the residents' views: in Kirkstall in November 1988 and in Armley in January 1989. KVC had obtained leaked copies of the Mountleigh plans and the developers' traffic estimates and circulated these at the meetings. There was uproar, and the LDC board never again risked a face to face discussion with the public. [Click Armley and Kirkstall for a Leeds City Council officer's transcript of these meetings.]
An early attempt by KVC to seek a judicial review of the sale of Burley Mills Allotments to LCDC was an expensive failure, but an agricultural land survey was our first major success. This professional service by Ministry of Agriculture staff is mainly used for agricultural land valuations and strategic planning, but anybody could request one if they could raise a few hundred pounds to pay the bill. We had help from the National Farmers Union, because a commercial grower on the Burley Mills allotments was a member of the Campaign. The survey showed that the allotments were mainly grade 1 agricultural land, the very best, which was specially protected from development under the strategic government guidance for West Yorkshire. The developers were "gobsmacked".
The press conference on the agricultural land survey was a great success, but during the winter of 1989, the Campaign realised the need for a local alternative to the unacceptable proposals from Leeds City Development Company (LCDC) and the Leeds Development Corporation (LDC).
Our response was to do what Pieda Ltd had so signally failed to do, and involve the local people in planning the future of their own area. A huge (8 x 4 metre) scale model of the Kirkstall Valley was constructed from expanded polystyrene and 1:10,000 maps. The landform was modelled, and the major features: the river, the roads, the major buildings, the railway and the canal. The construction was painted and could be dis-assembled into sections for ease of transport. At the same time, a second smaller model was produced for more intimate consultations in local pubs, community centres and church halls.
For five weeks the Campaign moved their models around the area, leafletting each street to invite people to take part in the debate. The exercise concluded with a weekend conference in Kirkstall Middle School, seeking a public consensus about the future of the Valley. Volunteer workers from around the country, and from neighbouring planning authorities were on hand to provide objective professional advice. The essence of the operation was to provide adequate information, and to give people enough time to think. It was the antithesis of the snap decision.
The method of voting was ingenious. The hundreds of visitors to the final conference were issued with a limitless supply of paper flags on wooden "cocktail sticks". The idea was to write your wishes on the flag, and then stick it in the appropriate part of the polystyrene model. After two days the model came to resemble a giant hedgehog! The Campaign committee tried to summarise these responses, and produced a draft planning statement. A further, very well attended public meeting took place on 18 October 1989 to amend and approve the draft document, before printing and publication.
The "people's plan" was a huge success. Resourceful and sensitive to local needs, it was welcomed by Friends of the Earth and by many Leeds community groups, and eventually became the runner-up in a national environmental competition organised jointly by "The Times" newspaper and BBC Radio 4. The contrast between the people's plan and the brutal ignorance of the Mountleigh / LCDC proposals and the original LDC corporate plan could not have been more obvious.
On19
October 1989 LDC opened the first part of their meeting to the Press and
Public for the first time. The previous fifteen meetings had been held
in entirely private. There were no Kirkstall items in the public part of
the agenda, but after excluding the press and public the Chief Executive
gave a comprehensive report on the Kirkstall Valley. Mountleigh & LCDC could
not reach agreement and wished to submit separate planning applications
for their individual land holdings. It was resolved that the joint developers
should not be encouraged to submit separate applications, that LDC officers
should prepare a draft comprehensive plan for the valley, that public consultation
should take place after the board had accepted the draft plan, and that
a dialogue should be established with the Kirkstall Valley Campaign.
This lead to a period of generally better relations between the local residents and the planning authority. LDC published a consultation document in the summer of 1990, which was well received, although the geographical coverage was limited and the questionnaire was incomprehensible. The most important change from the residents' viewpoint was that LDC admitted for the first time that the valley was not entirely derelict. On the consultation document below only the orange fill areas were described as derelict. This, of course, was entirely the land-owners' fault.
The most significant point of contention was the playing fields at Bridge Road, which the LDC wished to designate as development land, while the public wanted to keep them as playing fields. This topic was not well covered in the questionnaire, so residents submitted a 300-name petition to underline their views. LDC would not concede this point, but gave a public undertaking during consultation that no large scale retail development would be permitted on this site. It was the enormous retail element in the Mountleigh plans which had previously given rise to the greatest public concern, because of the traffic implications of the development. Their undertaking came back to haunt the LDC when Kirkstall Valley Properties came on the scene in 1993 - 95.
By this stage it was obvious that the river island and the northern end of the Kirkstall power station site could not sensibly be regarded as development land. They were almost inaccessible because of the river and the railway, and in any case had been partially tipped with contaminated fly ash and colliery shale of doubtful load bearing capacity. LDC made a virtue out of necessity, and returned to the proposal for a Kirkstall Valley Nature Reserve, which conservation groups originally developed with Leeds City Council in 1987, during the European Year of the Environment.
The Kirkstall Valley Campaign and other conservation groups cooperated with LDC to establish the Nature Reserve, and the site is now managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.
In 1990 LDC hoped to establish a scientific research park on the power station site. Government money was not forthcoming to build the access roads for this development, and eventually the site was leased to a golf development company who have constructed a golf driving range and nine-hole golf course on the land. Although relatively innocuous, this work required a substantial subsidy from public funds, and lead to the loss of three excellent sports pitches which were much needed by the local community. The effect has been to convert potential public open space in an area of particular need and deprivation into private open space, largely used by the better-off.
|
|
|
|
|