On 28 February 1997 the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report on the Wind-up of the Leeds and Bristol Urban Development Corporations. These were the first UDCs to be dissolved, and most of this report concerns the detailed mechanics of closing down a Quango, and the lessons to be learned. The report confirmed officially what we already knew: that in March 1995 officers of the Leeds Development Corporation destroyed a major file relating to the Kirkstall Valley, despite the clear government policy that all such files should be retained and handed over to the successor planning authority. The missing file related to application 99-24/8/93/OT, but it also covered the pre-application discussions on later schemes which eventually received planning consent. It was the only LDC planning file to be destroyed, out of 1514 comparable files. It recorded a pivotal stage in the development of the Kirkstall Valley, attracting enormous interest and about 1,800 written comments from the public.
Although the main file was destoyed by the LDC officers, copies of individual items from the missing file have been discovered elsewhere. These include tape-recorded verbatim transcripts of the main LDC meetings, from which it is obvious that the board did not give independent consideration to the 1994 applications, notwithstanding the conclusion of the 1996 judicial review.
Robert West's traffic assessment:
On 18 March 1997 Robert West Consulting submitted a detailed assessment to Leeds City Council of the proposed highway works to serve the Morrisons development. They included TRANSYT computer models showing that their existing, extensively revised scheme would still not work properly, and proposed yet another series of amendments. These included a modified right turning system into Bridge Road, the deletion of the previously agreed (and funded) pedestrian crossing across Abbey Road, and major alterations to the junction of Kirkstall Lane and Morris Lane. Houses would require demolition, bus stops would be lost, and the roads would require widening to accommodate the extra traffic generated by the supermarket development. Morrisons would not be able to provide formal pedestrian crossing facilities at this junction.
Morrisons have appealed against the non-detemination of their application 24/44/96/OT and a Public Inquiry has been fixed for 23 - 25 September 1997 in Leeds Civic Hall. There have been over 1000 individual objections from the public to these proposals, and the Leeds City Council Highways Committee and the Planning Committee have both indicated that they would reject this scheme on highway safety grounds.
Write a letter: The best way to permanently remove the threat of an unwanted supermarket development from the Kirkstall Valley would be for the Secretary of State for the Environment in the present Labour government to refer the whole sorry business back to the Court of Appeal, acknowledging that the Leeds Development Corporation officers systematically and deliberately destroyed vital evidence before the Judicial Review, and that the previous Conservative government did not reveal these actions to the High Court.
Please write to:
| Rt. Hon. John Prescott MP Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions House of Commons London SW1A 0AA |
This website contains all the information that you need to compose your own letter. We hope you will study what we have to say, but to save you some time we have drafted below a short but suitable letter which you could use or adapt as you wish:
| Dear Mr Prescott, |
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| I understand that on 28 February 1997 the National Audit Office published a report on the wind up of the Leeds Development Corporation which confirmed that the officers of the Leeds Development Corporation, without good reason, had destroyed a planning file on the Kirkstall Valley. This file was needed for the above judicial review, but its fate was not revealed to the High Court. In these circumstances I ask you to refer this case back the Court of Appeal, so that further consideration may be given to the deliberate destruction of vital evidence needed for this case, and to the new evidence which has recently come to light. |
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Support KVC: We are an inner-city community group, desperately in need of funds. Very few of our members have big houses or healthy bank accounts, and everything we do is on a shoe-string budget. If you want to send money to support the Aims and Objectives of the KVC, it will be carefully and effectively used to defend the local environment of people living near the Kirkstall Valley. To avoid making an involuntary contribution to the Treasury Solicitor's High Court costs, all cheques intended for these purposes should be made payable to Kirkstall Village Community Association, (KVCA) which is a non-profit organisation and a registered charity 507822, which helped to establish the Kirkstall Valley Campaign in 1988. Their Treasurer is Geoff Hodgson, 8 Vesper Gate Drive, Leeds LS5 3NH. The KVCA has several projects under its wing, so please include a note saying what your money is for!
Link to our site: We depend on publicity to expose the abuses of government. If you maintain a site on the World Wide Web, tell your readers about our Campaign by including a link to our site, so that others can find us.
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