It's OUR City!

They just don’t get it

THERE was a palpable air of excitement in the Courtyard foyer before the start of It’s Our City’s biggest public meeting, when nearly 400 supporters crowded into the arts centre on 19 October. The atmosphere was a cross between a theatrical first night and a local football derby. Only the ticket touts were missing.

There was an impressive programme of nine speakers, with the proceedings energetically chaired by the campaign’s founder Councillor Mark Hubbard (Ind; Central Ward).

, Sixth form student Alex Hempton-Smith opened in confident form. The council / ESG development was showing its ignorance about what Hereford had and what it wanted, he said. And what it did not want was to be a brash regional ’shopping experience’. Referring to the current scheme’s reliance upon retail expansion he warned: “We need to be 20 years ahead, not 20 years behind.”

This was followed by statements from the constituency’s three prospective Parliamentary candidates, Sarah Carr, Jesse Norman (read by the chairman in his absence) and Philippa Roberts. Their views on ESG chimed remarkably: yes to leisure, yes to housing, no to a big retail sector plonked down on the site of the old Livestock Market, “Let’s follow Ludlow rather than Cardiff’ was how Jesse Norman pithily put it.

Next to take the stage were Hereford Civic Society’s Hugh Heatherwick and Garry Thomas, who gave a snapshot view of a major report — The Edgar Street Grid Project — which it had published that week. It can be downloaded free from the society’s website (www.herefordshirecivicsociety.org). Thomas surprised the Courtyard audience by announcing that the previous evening ESG’s former chairman Sir Clive Richards had become a member of the HCS.

Then Cllr Gerald Dawe (Green Party; Hollington) raised the emotive subject of the council’s Scrutiny Committee, the cross-party vetting procedure charged with carrying out critical cost analyses of all major financial decisions made by the authority. To achieve transparency and clarity, he suggested, the cabinet should seriously consider replacing its current chairman with Cllr Mark Hubbard. That got the biggest round of applause of the evening.

There then followed an absorbing visual report from Cllr Hubbard himself on a recent fact-finding visit he’d made to Kidderminster, to look at the town’s six-year-old Weavers’ Wharf retail development. It was plainly apparent from the slides that the arrival of the brash multi-nationals had created a virtual dessert of empty units in the established town centre. “Remember: the money you spend in local shops stays in Hereford, whereas the opposite is true with the big high street multiples.”

Moving closer to home, the campaign’s organiser Bob Clay gave a withering summary of the myriad claims which had appeared in ESG’s propaganda material concerning new housing, new roads and new jobs. Its so-called transport interchange or ‘hub’, he suggested, should truthfully have been sold as ‘improvements to railway station forecourt’.

On this tense note it was time for Council Leader Roger Phillips to take the lectern. Facing a partisan home crowd and coming on late, Cllr Phillips somehow managed to misjudge the mood of the meeting. With a delivery like a soporific speak-your-weight machine, he treated his audience to a dry list of statistics, regional quangos and blue-sky aspirations.

In a rallying call before the final q&a session, Mark Hubbard said that It’s Our City was aiming to collect 40,000 signatures on its official petition forms. Door-to-door neighbourhood canvassing was being looked at, but volunteers and cash donations were urgently needed to maintain the campaign’s momentum.

With the programme over-running by 15 minutes, Jonathan Bretherton graciously waived his right to speak and a fascinating half-hour q&a session ended the evening, though not before Mr Bretherton had been brought to book over ESG’s costs and spending. The development company’s Chief Executive said that around £5-million had so far been spent acquiring buildings and land, while the £1.4-million spent on wages, premises and events, had come in annual £300,000 tranches from Advantage West Midlands and Herefordshire Council. He conceded that ESG’s adverts and leaflets weren’t truly ‘consultation’. “Our communications haven’t perhaps been as pro-active as they could have been over the last 12 months” he told the audience to wry laughter. “Some things – like the Link Road and the flood prevention measures – are fixed; while some things remain fluid”.