Real Planning for Lancaster

Real Planning for Lancaster was formed by a group of local people in October last year in reaction of a threat of a major development in Lancaster on the triangle bounded by Leonardsgate, the canal and Moor Lane. This is the Carillion-Chelverton plan and includes a superstore, a new road and big box retail space.

The area between the canal, St Leonards Gate and Moor Lane was once a place where many people lived and worked: there were terraced houses, a brewery and a chemical works. Most of the houses were demolished several decades ago, the plan being to build an 'Eastern Relief Road'. However, the road did not get built, and the land has just been used for car parking.

The brewery has now closed and the developer Carillion (former Tarmag) plans put in a planning application for the area (including the laundry and garage at the north end of the Kingsway site). They want to build a supermarket on the northern part of the Kingsway site and 'big box retail units' (large stores, operated by national chains, surrounded by car parking) on the old brewery site and surrounding land (including the car parks, which are owned by the City Council).

These plans do not fit with the vision that Lancaster City Council has for the area, which is for it to be developed as Lancaster's 'cultural quarter': the area already contains the Dukes Theatre, the Grand Theatre and the Musicians Co-op and the Council want developments in the area to make the most of these assets, rather than having retail development that competes with the shops in the city centre.

We think that the people of Lancaster, rather than outside developers, should decide what happens to our town. We are therefore consulting local people to find out what people do want.

Carrillion, (the company that used to be called Tarmac)are likely to submit a planning application in the summer. Even if the application does not fit in with the Council's plans for the area it may be difficult for the Council to refuse it. If it is clear that the people of Lancaster do not want the development proposed by Carrillion, but want another type of development there, it will be difficult for the Council to approve the application.

The history of Real Planning for Lancaster

RPFL brings together a number of people who hava between them a whole range of experience, insight and ideas about the area. Above all, we feel that the proposed development would once more largely ignore the wishes of the community; come from outside in pursuit of profit and have a huge negative impact on the local economy, traffic and quality of life in Lancaster.

It has quickly drawn in many more people who are also keen to see an active role for the community and wished to contribute to a project that opposes bad planning with good planning.

The first meeting

was held at the Gregson Community centre on October 10th. It was agreed then that the group would try to envisage a plan of its own and place it on the table with the Chelverton plan should such a plan ever be submitted. This was to ensure that the local community would not be locked out of the process as it is understood that whilst a developer who is refused approval can launch a legal challenge there is no third party right of appeal. In other words, if a developer does gain approval the people of Lancaster do NOT have the right to launch a legal challenge against it. This just did not seem right and has been an encouragement to us to fight for the right of Lancaster people to be included in a process which will so significantly impact on OUR city. In effect, we felt we were left with no choice but to produce our own planning application. The meeting went on to agree that the only genuine form of consultation is one which takes place BEFORE the pretty pictures and expensive models get produced. We agreed that despite the challenge of such an undertaking, we would attempt to do that consultation. Finally, in order to have a set of examples of what the development might include the group brainstormed and produced around 100 ideas for a wish list. This ranged from the almost surreal suggestion of mountains and rivers to the clearly obvious provision of affordable housing. It was further recognised that this list needed to be distilled into a feasible plan to which end we divided it into four clearly evident areas of interest:

Housing (affordable and sustainable)
Open (green) Space
Recreation (indoor, outdoor and for all ages)
Small Business (existing and new).

The second meeting

was held at the Kings Centre. It was here when we discovered that to submit a planning application for this size of site would cost Ł5,500. Later in the day it was suggested that an outline plan would not be accepted (as claimed by the planning department) and that it would need to be a full application. This was later reduced to only needing a retail survey and a traffic survey (by Andrew Dobson, Head of the Planning Dept., Lancaster see separate report of the meeting held with him on October 30th) so that we were on a level playing field with any multi-million pound business that we might happen to be competing against. BUT all of this is yet to be clarified and could be changing as you read this. A complicated situation but one which we cannot control. The meeting agreed to divide into four working groups in order to concentrate on four identified areas:

Fund Raising. ,
Consultation (to include awareness raising)
The Planning process and the plan
The Formalising of the group structure

These areas were taken forward during the rest of the day. (7)

The third meeting was again at the Gregson and was more of a working groups in one place situation than a formal meeting. It was during this that the need for a summary of the groups history and its direction became apparent in order to clarify and to bring new people up to speed. It is also hoped it will feed into the aims and objectives needed in order to draw up a constitution. Progress was made in the areas of consultation and group structure.

Outside of these meetings a number of things have occurred which have taken their direction from full meetings, and include: Publicity articles in The Citizen (three so far), The Guardian (three), The Visitor (two including one excellent one). Radio Lancashire (a tea time broadcast) Outreach a meeting has been held with Andrew Dobson, Head of Planning. At which we were told our approach is greatly appreciated and our existence conducive to the desire for a more inclusive process. (See separate report) Leafletting the immediate area of housing has been leafleted at least three times, most city centre shops once, other local businesses twice.

The group will have to raise Ł5,500 to submit a planning application!