Tuesday 31 May 2011

Ferry Across The Mersey-Miserytravel.

The Crown Princess, one of the biggest Cruise Liners going, was in Liverpool last Thursday.......It rained all day,what a shame for all those American tourists it is said,spend

all their money in Liverpool when they get off the big ships down at the jetty.
In reality they go back to the ship for their dinner and it is very hard to get them to spend money in a city that they visit.
So the tour bus operators were lined up with the special deals of a hundred quid a go to visit the Cathedral. They can be whisked off to Strawberry Field to see the replica gates and stand in amazement at the Cavern Club....that was knocked down.
Or they could get on A Ferry...........well not with the balloons at Miserytravel running it they cant.
I wrote last week about the lack of a landing stage at The Pier Head and how £12,000,000 had been spent on a Terminal Ferry Carbuncle and we did not have a landing stage to depart the passengers from.
 Ferry Cross I was about this.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/neil-scales-of-miserytravel-where-is.html


So last week with a golden opportunity to show off the city and the disfigured waterfront to all those passengers, theycancelled all the ferries because the Crown Princess took up all the space needed at the Cruise Liner Jetty and they couldn't sail...................clever..........very clever............Miserytravel.
What an opportunity missed..what a joke.
Gerry Marsden has turned into Seasick Steve and recorded a blues version of On a Slow Boat To China.
You could not make this up.

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/neil-scales-and-merseytravel-spend.html After spending 67 million quid on the Ferries this is beyond a joke now.

£4.2 million cutting up the U534 http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-did-merseytravel-spend-42-million.html to...enhance the ferries. Herr Disector need to go!

 Was this reported in the local press http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/merseytravel-try-to-gag-us-we-will-not.html No wonder N eel Scales wants to gag us.

Thursday 26 May 2011

Welsh Presbyterian Chapel-Demolished by Morons.


They said they had demolish it because it wanted £60,000 worth of repairs............but it cost, how much to demolish? This building fronted to Penny Lane and was a landmark.

We tried to have listed but the English Heretics said no, preferring to let it be bulldozed instead. Click on the link below to see a picture of it before it was battered down with a bulldozer.

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/05/welsh-presbyterian-chapel-heathfield.html

IF IT WAS ALL THAT SIMPLE http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3076478

Church sued for £600k because some deal was going on under the pulpit.


http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/06/joe-anderson-to-save-liverpools.html

I recall getting a letter from the Doctor of..........what.
It looked to me it was an American doctorate.
 I know someone else who bought an American Unirversity Doctorate off the shelf for 750 quid, you know the ones that cant be confirmed and turned they into a spiv.
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/05/20/landmark-south-liverpool-welsh-chapel-to-be-demolished-after-more-than-80-years-92534-28728407/ 
Church minister Dr Ben Rees said: “It will be a shame, but it was something which had to be done.
The Daily Post proclaimed giving the..........err, Doctor a let off with the vandalism, that now lines itself up to be a car park for Tesco that have just opened up on Allerton Road, and the store backs on to the now empty site.  I did not see any action from SAVE or the other Welsh Street protestors though. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/04/save-us-from-save-britains-heritage.html

Liverpool Capital of Vandalism

Remember 2008 and all that, well what has changed, we still have 10 properties on English Heritage at Risk and we are soon to be placed on Unesco's World Heritage At Risk register despite givig assurances to Unesco.
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-life-features/liverpool-special-features/2008/01/29/living-on-the-eve-of-destruction-64375-20405391/ I did this walkabout article with Peter Elson of the Daily Post which I sent to Tristram who then wrote an article for the Times..........We ask what has changed since 2008?
From The Times March 8, 2008

Liverpool, Capital of Vandalism

The supposed city of culture has in fact been pulling down its great Victorian buildingsTristram Hunt
Amid the elegant Georgian terraces that run off Hanover Street, rising up the hill from Canning Dock, you can still get a sense of Liverpool's mercantile past: a lost age of transatlantic trade, civic pride and merchant princes. And just as Liverpool celebrates this proud heritage as European Capital of Culture, the council is cynically signing off on agreeing to the demolition of three of these Grade II listed houses - numbers 68, 70 and 72 Seel Street - for a shoddy new development. Learning nothing from its postwar history, Merseyside is in danger of turning into the Capital of Dereliction as town hall leaders sanction another assault on its architectural fabric.

By far the most elegiac and anger-inducing publication of recent months has been Gavin Stamp's Britain's Lost Cities. Stamp painfully outlines the postwar loss of Britain's urban civilisation and, in doing so, nails the lie that the German Luftwaffe was primarily responsible. Instead, it was the love of the motor car, rise of the town planner, arrival of Le Corbusier's Continental Modernism and an ugly animus for history that did for our regional centres.

“Behind all this,” Stamp writes of England's northern cities, “there was a sense of shame about the industrial past, a visceral and blinkered rejection of the dark but substantial legacy of the Victorians that could amount to little more than civic self-hatred and which resulted in relentless destruction.” Sadly, that shame still lingers.

From Plymouth to Coventry, Glasgow to Worcester, grandiose city plans were published that bulldozed the old and, in its place, laid out arterial roads, car parks, mass-production housing and shopping centres. “Cities must be extricated from their misery, come what may,” came Le Corbusier's battle cry. “Whole quarters of them must be destroyed and new cities built.” And so in Birmingham, the Central Library, Pugin's Bishop's House and the Market Hall fell victim to the Inner Ring Road. In Hull, almost all the dock warehouses, Georgian chapels and Victorian churches were destroyed in the name of postwar regeneration. But few cities suffered as much as Liverpool.

Between August 9, 1940, and May 9, 1941, Merseyside endured 68 air raids gutting much of the historic neighbourhood surrounding the docks. By far the worst architectural victim was John Foster's Greek revival Custom House, a testament to Liverpool's 19th-century ambition to play the Athens of the North: a city of commerce and culture reflected in an uniformly classical urban aesthetic. But rather than rebuilding this shattered civic icon, the postwar planners opted for demolition. It was a decision that set the tone for the ensuing decades of planning terror as dock warehouses, stuccoed Regency houses and elegant piazzas fell victim to the ring-roads and clearances.

Fifty years on, now that Liverpool basks in its status as Capital of Culture, one might have thought the demolitions would ease up. Yet rather than commemorating its extraordinary civic inheritance, the planners are repeating the mistakes of their postwar predecessors. For as Liverpool's prosperity accelerates, the council is still prone to dismiss its marvellous historic fabric as an impediment to growth.

Under the past ten years of control by the Liberal Democrats, some 36 listed buildings have been lost to the bulldozers. Whereas Merseyside once enjoyed a Georgian building stock comparable to Bath, what little remains is now under threat. In addition to the terraces of Seel Street, there are numerous properties in Duke Street, Dale Street and Great George Square - as well as such listed landmark churches as St Luke's, Berry Street and St Andrew's - equally at risk. And that is excluding the Toxteth terraces and Welsh Street houses that remain under planning blight.
The difference this time is that the threat comes as much from property developers, whose lawyers and bully-boy chicanery runs rings round council officers, as grandiose redevelopment schemes. But the results are the same as buildings slip into disrepair, night-time demolitions “happen” and inexplicable planning permissions are granted.
Unfairly, Liverpool has often been accused of wallowing in the past. If only it did. Today what every successful city requires, in the competition for new businesses and graduate residents, is a sense of place and authenticity that can only come from the historic fabric, architecture and attitude of its streets and spaces. The postwar redevelopment of Merseyside did everything it could to destroy that civic identity. If the choice facing the Capital of Culture this year is between the 1820s and 1950s, then it must save the Georgian terraces and ease up on any more Modernist monstrosities.
Tristram Hunt is author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3507204.ece


http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-life-features/music/music-news/2009/06/23/english-heritage-report-lists-merseyside-s-historic-sites-at-risk-92534-23947259/

Wednesday 25 May 2011

LOOKING AFTER LIVERPOOL by Gavin Stamp

Remember 2008 when everything was Fab.
We had Rongo playing drums in a........container, on top of St Georges Hall with the Geordie Dave Stewart, oh and Phil Redmond declaring "Its Cracker da'is"
Here is what some of the more intellectual writers were saying in the arts glossy Apollo magazine, I recall I could not find one in Liverpool when the article was written.

Gavin wrote Britains Lost Cities and did a Channel 5 series about Liverpool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Stamp He wrote Britains Lost Cities and lamented the Customs House now Park Gone Worst http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/15/britain-lost-cities-gavin-stamp

LOOKING AFTER LIVERPOOL


Liverpool is the new European capital of culture – a title it merits only because of the people who fought against its destructive redevelopment after the war.

Saturday, 1st March 2008

Behind the great 16-column Corinthian portico of St George’s Hall in Liverpool, which Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described as ‘the freest neo-Grecian building in England

and one of the finest in the world’, are four empty plinths (Figs 3 and 4). It has long been my fear that someone will propose that they should be occupied by statues of John, Paul, George and Ringo. It could happen: the Beatles now seem to be central to Liverpool’s image of itself, and it is all too easy to imagine the dire vulgarity of the result: more of the bronze-waxwork type of sculpture (by Paul Day?) that now constitutes public art all over Britain. And it would accord with the fatuous desire to be forward looking, demotic, and not to be too reverential about the past, that is characteristic of those who govern Liverpool and many other cities.

Needless to say, Ringo Starr was prominent in the noisy public ceremony in January that inaugurated Liverpool’s long-heralded year as European Capital of Culture. Now it would be wrong to be too cynical about this, for the city deserves credit for having pulled itself up from being Britain’s principal urban basketcase a quarter of a century ago, when it was known mostly for economic collapse, race riots and self-destructive militant socialism. But there is something so very exasperating about Liverpool’s smug self-satisfaction, its impregnable belief in its own superiority and peculiar proletarian charm, for the simple fact is that most of what is genuinely cultured about the city – at least visually – dates from the 19th and the early decades of the 20th century. Without that legacy, the Capital of Culture would be vacuous hype.

It was the city’s mercantile economy, primed by the slave trade (not for nothing did Liverpool support and supply ships to the Confederacy during the American Civil War) that paid for the stupendous and imaginative buildings that expressed its overweening civic pride: St George’s Hall, the two huge cathedrals (alas, Lutyens’s for the Roman Catholics was hardly begun, but the Anglicans finished theirs), the three grand Edwardian piles by Pierhead now known as the Three Graces. And it was the wealth and discrimination of the merchants and shipowners that filled Liverpool’s museums and galleries with the art treasures the city now boasts. Compared with this, the recent record is not impressive. The European cultural accolade has been used as an excuse to encourage crass commercial developments at the expense of yet more of the city’s historic buildings, and the one prestigious cultural project, the gratuitous new Museum of Liverpool that will disfigure Pierhead (Fig. 2), has been marred by delays and disputes – its Danish architects have been dismissed and there are rows about its stone cladding.

Liverpool has often been its own worst enemy and there would be rather less to boast about today if it were not for outside interference in recent decades. Of course, the moral effect of its inexorable economic decline as a great port – the end of the transatlantic liners in particular – should not be underestimated, but there is little excuse for the destructive policies pursued by its authorities. Things began badly immediately after World War ii, when the gutted but substantial ruin of the magnificent neo-classical Custom House (Fig. 1), by a talented local architect, John Foster, was demolished in order to ‘lessen unemployment’. Further relentless destruction of Liverpool’s Georgian and Victorian fabric continued for the next few decades – not even the original Cavern Club, where the Beatles first performed, was spared, thus denying the city a major tourist attraction.

Strange but true, it was the hated Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher that saved Liverpool from itself. After the 1981 Toxteth riots, Michael Heseltine, as Secretary of State for the Environment, set up a ‘Task Force’ to deal with urban deprivation and created the Merseyside Development Corporation. He also prevented the demolition of the former Lyceum Club, designed by Thomas Harrison, the architect of Chester Castle. Sited at the bottom of Bold Street, once the city’s smartest commercial street, this most handsome neo-classical building was to have been demolished to make way for a new shopping centre. And it was the Conservatives who rescued Liverpool’s museums and galleries from municipal control and mismanagement by establishing the independent National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside (now National Museums Liverpool).

Heseltine was also involved with the saving and restoration of two monumental structures that are today two of Liverpool’s principal cultural assets. One is St George’s Hall, the vast classical building of the 1840s designed by the young Harvey Lonsdale Elmes (who won the competition at the age of 25 and was dead at 34), which stands in the heart of the city and makes the area between the Walker Art Gallery and Lime Street Station seem like a Roman forum (‘spql’ those proud Liverpudlian oligarchs had cast on its great metal doors: The Senate and People of Liverpool). However magnificent, the building had long been neglected; after World War ii the sculpture in the great south pediment was taken down and apparently ended up as hardcore for road building.

Inside, in addition to Elmes’s vast, vaulted Great Hall and C.R. Cockerell’s exquisite concert hall, there were two handsome courts that remained in use. In 1984, however, following the completion of the Queen Elizabeth ii Law Courts – a peculiarly nasty brown concrete structure that blocks the vista from the Town Hall that once ended with the dome of the Custom House – these became redundant. The vast building was then unceremoniously handed back to the City Council, which had no use for it and could not afford to run it. Fortunately, public interest in the building grew and the Prince of Wales appealed for something to be done. And something was done. Thanks to the intervention of the World Monuments Fund and English Heritage, a £23m restoration (mostly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the European Regional Development Fund) was completed last year. Largely carried out by Purcell Miller Tritton architects, this has opened up the previously unused south portico entrance and allowed the public to have access to the whole building.

The real catalyst for the regeneration of Liverpool was the conversion of the Albert Dock. This magnificent 1840s structure, designed by Jesse Hartley, an engineer with a taste for the sublime, was perhaps the finest surviving example of what

J.M. Richards called the ‘Functional Tradition’ in Britain. Yet in 1966 it was threatened with demolition, although a report demonstrated that it was eminently suitable for conversion to other uses. ‘To pull down Albert Dock would be a black disgrace’, wrote Pevsner in the Buildings of England at about this time. He was then chairman of the Victorian Society, which for two decades fought hard against demolition and other crass proposals supported by the City Council, such as such as filling in the dock to create a car park. To assist these, in 1979, out of sheer malice, the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board opened the sluices to fill the dock with river mud.

Soon afterwards, Heseltine came to the rescue. The buildings were restored, bomb-damaged parts rebuilt, and today the Albert Dock is one of Liverpool’s glories, the home of the Tate Gallery and the Merseyside Maritime Museum. If anyone deserves a statue in Liverpool, it is the former Secretary of State for the Environment. As for the Victorian Society – which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year – its memorial is the fact that the Albert Dock, and many other fine buildings, are there to be enjoyed during the city’s reign as European Capital of Culture.

http://www.apollo-magazine.com/news-and-comment/architecture/502421/looking-after-liverpool.thtml

Oh and remember this one called Capital of Vandalism by Tristram Hunt.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3507204.ece

English Heritage Launches Listed Building Database

Today hardworking Richard Waite of the Architects Journal writes.
http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/

English Heritage launches listed building database


24 May, 2011
By Richard Waite
A new online database has been launched by English Heritage (EH) that provides the details of 400,000 listed buildings, registered parks, gardens and battlefields, protected shipwrecks and scheduled monuments
The National Heritage List for England allows users to search a central list for different types of heritage by category, postcode, date or grade.
It has been created to provide members of the public with information that would not have normally been easily accessed, in the hopes that people will better understand the importance of heritage in the country.
EH launched the list in conjunction with the unveiling of its latest programme, which has been guided by the National Heritage Protection Plan. This guidance sets out which parts of England’s vulnerable historic environment are to safeguarded, as well as stating how and why English Heritage will achieve this.
Developed in consultation with a wide range of partners, it shows where the threats are the greatest and will help English Heritage to prioritise its work. It will also help other heritage professionals and volunteers to contribute to the business of managing England’s heritage.
Architecture minister John Penrose said: ‘Our built heritage - which ranges from castles and cathedrals to troughs and telephone boxes - is one of the really great things about this country, and one of the reasons that people from all around the world most often cite for wanting to come here.
‘The information English Heritage compiles and makes available is not only interesting in itself but vital as a way of helping people develop a sense of history and identity in their own communities, making each place different from the next.
‘I am delighted that today sees the launch of the National Heritage List for England which makes information about nearly 400,000 designated places easily accessible to everyone.’

Some of the priorities identified in the plan are:
:: Marine and coastal heritage;
:: 20th Century heritage; historic towns and suburbs;
:: Rescuing heritage at risk; supporting local authorities and building local capacity;
:: Ensuring heritage protection continues under changes to planning system;
:: Supporting the sale of public assets and encouraging their sympathetic re-use;
:: Safeguarding heritage amid increasing development pressures;
:: Tackling heritage crime; and
:: Understanding the energy performance of historic buildings and help homeowners adapt and ‘green up’ their properties in the most effective way

How will this help the Wellington Rooms?

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Neil Scales of Miserytravel-Where Is Our Mersey Ferry Landing Stage?

 I was down on the waterfront a couple of weeks ago playing with The Penny Lane Jazz Band. In all the excitement of playing a set of numbers for departing passengers I almost never caught the occasion of a Mersey Ferry stopping at the now redundant Cruise Liner Jetty. But I recall thinking why is that stopping there and not near the Terminal Ferry Carbuncle that N eel Scales, Herr Disector General of U534 commissioned with £12,000,000 of your money......strange I thought.

I then bumped into Rod Holmes in Princes Dock, who is always a nervous wreck when I see him. I told him we had just done a gig and he said he had just come from a Mersey Partnership party at the Albert Dock, how much did that cost us, I thought. 
"Did you notice the three Black Coffins on Mann Island" I asked
"Yes he replied as did numerous people who all seemed to say, Why did they obscure the views of the Three Graces".
Well at least he is honest and complimentary to the work we have done even though at several times I went head to head with him on planning matters. It is nice to know that an adversary can be pleasant and respectful to you knowing how hard you pushed them.  http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/06/rod-holmes-came-in-my-shop-today.html
"You have left us a Carbuncle yourself" I said "At One Park Worst" he had already agreed to that one.

John Daley asked me to do a talk for the WEA about One Park Gone West but I was having a kidney stone done..........painfull, you don't want one of those.
So I agreed the week after to join them at the Terminal Ferry Carbuncle. David a respected colleague of mine joined us. The group were a nice old bunch and John let me fill them in about the council corruption that has taken place that now creates a pigs ear at the Pier Head.
I put a strong argument forward.
It is always nice to support the Workers Education Authority as its where I learnt to etch copper plates and hone my life drawing skills that I now find invaluable.
Then, while talking I noticed out of the window there was nothing there, the morons at Miserytravel had built a £12,000,000 Terminal Ferry Carbuncle that was voted the worst building of 2009 by Building Design, the architects weekly.................and they forgot to put a landing stage in for the Ferries. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/08/liverpool-wins-carbuncle-cup.html
Remember when it sank into the Mersey a decade ago and they have not replaced it yet.


What sort of plonker is organising this, Fred Carno could do a better job.


Considering the Isle of Man Ferries are also using the Cruise Liner Cock up facility, some-ones head should roll.......and its a very big head indeed N eel.   


As if confirmation that the MPTE is in a mess here is todays news reporting on a near fatal accident when a train derailed.
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/05/24/merseyrail-ordered-to-pay-out-100-000-over-runaway-train-92534-28750348/ MERSEYRAIL was ordered to pay out more than £100,000 after a runway train careered onto the tracks.

The firm appeared at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday after the empty train derailed near Kirkdale, in June, 2009 – but only after missing a working commuter train by five seconds.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/07/liverpool-european-capital-ofbad.html


More work on safety and less on Bad Sculpture please, Herr Disector.
Lets hope less attention to empire building in future. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-did-merseytravel-spend-42-million.html
And less on image building for Herr Disector
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/merseytravel-try-to-gag-us-we-will-not.html
No wonder they want to gag us because the more you look into Miserytravel, the more you find they are out of control.
I think we will ask the audit commission a few questions about them.

Wayne

Monday 23 May 2011

CABE Slam Liverpool Waters.

Liverpool Waters


Liverpool http://www.cabe.org.uk/transfer/liverpool-waters.pdf

A mixed-use masterplan including tall buildings for the central docks in Liverpool's Northshore. Designed by Chapman Taylor.

25 February 2011

Planning application: 10O/2424

We applaud Peel for responding to the advice of CABE and English Heritage during the design development process and for working with a CABE enabler with the aim of ensuring the outline planning process delivers a high quality scheme and can evolve over the 30 year timeframe. In our view, the planning application does not fully articulate the nature of what is being applied for in the material submitted and, in its current form, does not provide the confidence that a high quality scheme will emerge. It is critical that the planning application contains a clear, unambiguous written description of development that confirms this. This written description should relate directly to a defined set of scheme-specific principles to guide and manage future development on the Liverpool Waters site. We recognise that Peel is in the process of restructuring the planning application material to enable Liverpool City Council to progress the assessment of the development. We would like to comment on the restructured application alongside the qualitative aspects of the scheme once submitted.

Scheme principles

In our view, the principles detailed in the Masterplan and Key Principles document are mostly generic and are not organised or expressed in a meaningful way. A case in point is the principle relating to land use: ‘making the most efficient use of the land to meet the anticipated needs and aspirations of all sections of the future Liverpool Waters community’. It is difficult to grasp how this principle and the explanation that accompanies it reflect the unique opportunities and challenges particular to this site and this scheme, leaving it open to interpretation by the planning authority and developers. It is, therefore, critical that scheme-specific principles are developed to provide the local planning authority with a clear sense of the rationale underpinning the scheme parameters that flow from them.

Planning parameters

We support the strategy for a parameters-based planning application. This could prove an effective way of implementing agreed principles by setting the physical confines within which development should come forward. However, in our view, the parameters proposed in the drawings and referenced in the documents submitted will neither provide an effective mechanism to assess reserved matters applications against, nor give developers the necessary direction on what will, or will not, be acceptable. There is a crucial need for a greater level of commitment in the parameters. For example, whilst the submission seeks to fix maximum floorspace for each use class across the neighbourhoods proposed, this is not translated into identifiable block footprints with limits of deviation. Likewise, whilst the application sets maximum building heights relating to each illustrative plot, it does not provide minimum height thresholds. As a consequence, the usability of these parameters is severely limited as it leaves developers without a prescribed building ‘envelope’ to adhere to. Further, by not defining the ratio of uses across development parcels - in particular, how uses could be arranged both horizontally and vertically within buildings - it gives the local planning authority little sense of how richness across neighbourhoods will be secured in relation to the overall masterplan character. It is imperative that the outline application addresses this to provide a sense of the special quality and typology of the buildings proposed; this is particularly critical for the tall buildings, civic buildings and buildings addressing water, public spaces and key routes within the development.

Our concerns are not limited to those examples expressed above. Rather, they highlight a need to re-cast the parameters proposed to provide a more practical tool to guide those implementing future phases by setting ground rules that establish what is fixed in the masterplan and what can change over time. Other parameters might establish building lines onto major public spaces and the relationship of buildings to defined street types through the use of street sections. This could identify where active building frontages should be focussed. Given the significant heritage context for Liverpool Waters, parameters should be explicit about what highly significant historic fabric should be retained and incorporated to ensure that proposals protect historic features, waterfront character and key views across the City. We would expect the line of the building frontage along the waterfront to be exactly set out, for example. Parameters could prove a useful means to distinguish between background and landmark buildings and identify key groupings of buildings (such as those addressing public spaces). Equally, they provide an opportunity to define a hierarchy of public spaces, key vehicular movement and parking strategies, and principal connections to Northshore and the City Centre. Taken alongside parameters that promote architectural variety across the site and set out a key materials palette for the public realm, the suite of parameters can start to paint a clear picture of the nature of the neighbourhoods proposed.

We note the inclusion of a development parcel phasing diagram but think its scope could be extended to include triggers for physical and social infrastructure delivery on a phased basis. In our view, parameters could also be employed to codify sustainability targets, setting a baseline against which developments should be measured. Inevitably, some parameters will need to be fixed and some will remain loose. Therefore, clarity about their status in the approved submission will be essential.

Ultimately, the key test for any set of parameters should be whether it allows the masterplan intentions to be clearly understood and, in turn, how it can ensure design quality is maintained over the lifetime of the development. We do not yet have the confidence that the parameters submitted will provide a sound basis by which to control design quality across the Liverpool Waters site. We ask that the design team revise them to address the concerns raised above.

Spatial masterplan

It is critical that the outline submission includes a fully illustrative spatial masterplan for the whole site in sufficient detail to demonstrate that the scheme principles could be applied so as to achieve a positive outcome. The planning application refers at various points to the ‘spatial masterplan’ although no such document has been submitted. In our view, the 2-D ‘Illustrative Masterplan’ (Drawing CTL-016-01), submitted as one of the scheduled submitted plans, does not fulfil this role. It neither articulates a vision for Liverpool Waters, nor demonstrates how land use, landscape, transport, energy, infrastructure and building form considerations have been integrated into a coherent whole.

We recognise that the masterplan will need to be adaptable enough to accommodate change over the 30 year build-out of the site. Nevertheless, it is an important instrument to be used alongside the planning parameters to set a scheme which is ‘fixed for now’, that establishes a quality benchmark against which the impact of any future departures proposed can be measured. In other words, it should provide a full illustration of a potentially positive outcome for Liverpool Waters. We urge the design team to provide such a plan in its submission.

Masterplanning process

In order to help both the planning authority and client control the evolution and detailed design phases of the masterplan, we think that the outline application should be explicit about what will be defined at a later stage through detailed neighbourhood masterplans and reserved matters planning applications. We understand that a design panel would be established to review individual detailed planning applications but there will be a need to step back to review the scheme as a whole as it develops. Reviews of the masterplan will need to take place at key points in build-out of site to ensure that the intentions expressed in the approved masterplan are carried through. In our view, it is essential that an independent design review process is a condition of the planning consent as proposed.

The framing of planning conditions will be a crucial element in the delivery of a successful scheme for this historic and highly significant site. Their role will be vital in ensuring that the pace of development is managed so as to ensure successive phases do not commence until the necessary social and physical infrastructure is in place. Equally, the conditioning of any outline approval should ensure that detailed masterplans and reserved matters applications which deviate from the approved masterplan and associated parameters will not be permitted unless it can be demonstrated that they improve upon or equate to the permitted scheme. The local planning authority will need to work closely with Peel Holdings to develop a set of robust conditions to the satisfaction of both parties.

Friday 20 May 2011

Don't Let Them Shanghai This Historic Jewel.

I think we will just print Martin Samuels article on page 18 of todays Daily Mail. click on the photo to enlarge.
Lets hope this is the start of a concerted effort by the press to evaluate what a mess the Arrogant Peel Holdings and their poodles in Liverpool City Council are trying to do.........talking of which this is what the Council Leader has to say about it,





LIVERPOOL Council leader Joe Anderson last night waded into a heritage row threatening to derail a £5.5bn regeneration scheme for the city’s northern docklands.

Cllr Anderson will convene top-level talks over the Liverpool Waters project, which a new report said would damage the city’s World Heritage Site (WHS) status.
He told the Daily Post: “I do not believe that a certificate on the wall enhances the beauty of the Three Graces – they speak for themselves. http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/05/18/liverpool-council-leader-joe-anderson-to-convene-crunch-talks-on-liverpool-waters-scheme-92534-28712391/
“But the accolade of having a Unesco World Heritage Site is one we are proud of, because the city rightly deserves the merit.”
Government advisor English Heritage (EH) has demanded changes to the huge skyscraper scheme.
A new report commissioned by EH warned the project would cause “significant damage” to the WHS.
Peel Holdings, which rejected the report’s findings, wants to regenerate the city’s northern docklands with a series of skyscrapers. It claims it will create more than 25,000 jobs and 14,000 apartments.
Last night, Cllr Anderson said: “I think we are in a situation where English Heritage is asking too much.
“I have plans in my office showing the Liver Building. People were objecting to it because of its size when it was suggested.

“Now it is recognised as one of the most iconic buildings in Europe.
“It is only by being visionary and imaginative that we can keep pace with the rest of the world.
“There is a balance to be had between protecting our heritage and making sure we move forward as a city.
“When you look at the balance, I think it gets it right. The historic waterfront is untouched.
“The city desperately needs jobs and new businesses.”
EH wants concessions, including removing a cluster of skyscrapers from the central area around Clarence Dock, leaving only one group of tall buildings around Princes Dock instead.
Peel has refused to agree to EH’s demands to remove any skyscrapers.
Last night, Cllr Anderson said EH was demanding too much, but added he wanted to arrange crunch talks to thrash out a compromise.
If EH objects to the scheme, as seems likely at the moment, and the council grants planning permission, the scheme would automatically be referred to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, dramatically increasing the chances of a lengthy and costly public inquiry.

WELL IF WE WERE ALL AS CLEVER AS JOE ANDERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is English Heritage report in full. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/liverpool-waters-english-heritage.html There does not look like much room for a compromise for me.

Thursday 19 May 2011

Museum of Liverpool Sues 3XN-Architects.

The Museum of Liverpool has issued legal proceedings against Danish architects 3XN – more than three and a half years after dropping the practice from the £72 million project

Revealed following a Freedom of Information request to the museum by the AJ, the move is the latest in a series of legal wrangles involving the team building the waterfront landmark and comes just two months before the museum opens its doors on 19 July.
Last year Manchester-based practice AEW Architects, which was brought in to replace 3XN on the job in late 2007, went to arbitration, successfully recouping £500,000 in unpaid fees for work on the museum (AJ 04.06.10).
Details of the museum’s claim against 3XN remain unclear but, with a proposed mediation appearing to have failed, it is understood the museum needed to begin litigation before it ran out of time to do so.
The move will undoubtedly elicit a counterclaim from the Danes. In 2008, 3XN admitted to the AJ that it had sought legal advice over ‘a substantial amount’ of unpaid fees and potential copyright infringement relating to the Liverpool museum job (AJ 22.04.08).
A spokesman for the museum said: ‘We can confirm we have issued legal proceedings against 3XN and therefore can make no further comment at this stage.’

Kim Nielsen of 3XN said: ‘At this time, it would be inappropriate to respond.’

While the local press are acting as PR for Liverppol Museums the Architects Journal have made a freedom of information act request.  http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/02/liverpool-museums-how-much-have-they.html









pic ROME MAXXI which opened last year, well they look the same anyhow

Liverpool Waters-English Heritage Report

If there are images in this attachment, they will not be displayed. Download the original attachment


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Prepared by: Stephen Bond MA HonDArt FSA MRICS GradDipConsAA 8th March 2011
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Assessment of the potential impact of the proposed Liverpool Waters master plan on OUV at Liverpool Maritime Mercantile WHS

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1 Impact assessment of the Liverpool Waters Application on the Outstanding Universal Value of the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile World Heritage Site: Executive Summary Introduction ES1 An independent assessment of the impact of the Liverpool Waters Master Plan on the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile World Heritage Site (WHS) was commissioned by English Heritage in late December 2010. The Liverpool Waters Master Plan was the subject of an outline planning application, submitted on behalf of Peel Land & Property (Ports) Ltd by its agent, the WYG Group, about which English Heritage received formal statutory consultation on 5th November 2010. It is intended that the impact assessment will contribute to the formulation of English Heritage’s statutory advice to Liverpool City Council, as Local Planning Authority, and also to the Department of Culture Media and Sport, as State Party with respect to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, which oversees the World Heritage List. ES2 The Liverpool Waters Master Plan is largely unprecedented in UK planning terms. It covers a site of 60ha immediately to the north of Liverpool’s Pier Head, extending from Princes Dock in the south to Bramley Moore Dock at the northernmost extent of the site. This area is generally known as the ‘Central Docks’. The current outline planning application brings forward proposals for 9,152 residential units, 305,499 sq m of commercial business space (Class B1), 69,735 sq m of hotel and conference space (Class C1) as well as retail, leisure and community facilities. The Master Plan incorporates a series of public spaces, a cruise ship terminal and several neighbourhood centres. The scheme proposes a high density of development and incorporates two clusters of tall buildings, with towers up to approximately 195 metres in height. The Master Plan also incorporates a series of medium rise blocks, many approaching 45 metres high, along the river frontage. The scheme is to be developed over a 30+ year period. The site lies entirely within the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile WHS and its Buffer Zone (BZ). ES3 The Master Plan has huge development and regeneration potential, lying close to disadvantaged communities in north Liverpool, with the ability to transform an enormous vacant and derelict site close to the City Centre and Liverpool’s renowned waterfront which includes Pier Head, Albert Dock, the new Museum, Mann Island and Echo Arena. However, it is also located within an historic environment of international importance that reinforces the distinctiveness of Liverpool, allowing the City to be instantly recognisable, legible and rooted in its highly influential history. ES4 The WHS was inscribed by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in 2004, based on criteria (ii), (iii) and (iv), as defined in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (see Figure 1 for the WHS boundaries).

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2 ES5 A revised Statement of Outstanding Universal Value (SOUV) for the WHS was approved by the World Heritage Committee in 2010. The SOUV observes that Liverpool was ‘one of the world’s major trading centres in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries’ and ‘the supreme example of a commercial port at the time of Britain's greatest global influence’. It then sets out its international significance thus: ‘Liverpool grew into a major commercial port in the 18th century, when it was also crucial for the organisation of the trans‐Atlantic slave trade. In the 19th century, Liverpool became a world mercantile centre for general cargo and mass European emigration to the New World. It had major significance on world trade as one of the principal ports of the British Commonwealth. Its innovative techniques and types of dock, dock facilities and warehouse construction had worldwide influence. Liverpool was instrumental in the development of industrial canals in the British Isles in the 18th century, and of railway transport in the 19th century. All through this period, and particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Liverpool gave attention to the quality and innovation of its architecture and cultural activities’. Relating the WHS’s OUV to the authenticity and integrity within its six Character Areas, the SOUV states that: ‘The key areas that demonstrate Outstanding Universal Value in terms of innovative technologies and dock construction from the 18th to the early 20th century and the quality and innovation of its architecture and cultural activities are contained within the boundaries of the six areas forming the property…’ ‘Within the property, the major dock structures, and commercial and cultural buildings still testify to the Outstanding Universal Value in terms of form and design, materials, and to some extent, use and function…No significant loss of historical authenticity has occurred, as the physical evidence of the City and its great past remain prominent and visible, and in some cases has been enhanced. The main docks survive as water‐filled basins within the property and in the buffer zone. The impact on the setting of the property of further new development on obsolete dockland is a fundamental consideration. It is essential that future development within the World Heritage property and its setting, including the buffer zone, should respect and transmit its Outstanding Universal Value’. ES6 The impact assessment was based as strictly as possible upon the content of Peel Land & Property’s outline planning application, although additional background documentation was provided by the applicant and its advisors, by Liverpool City Council, and by English Heritage. This supplementary data was used to inform the assessment process in tandem with field analysis, which was undertaken during January and early February 2011. ES7 The assessment of the planning application’s impact on OUV was undertaken by a team led by Stephen Bond from the appointed consultant, Heritage Places. The team included senior professionals from the disciplines of conservation architecture, heritage planning, archaeology and strategic urban planning. Heritage Places was founded in 2008 and provides advice and professional services relating to the historic environment and its conservation for national and

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3 local government, public sector funding bodies, property management, development and institutional clients, charitable trusts, and other professional advisors. ES8 The methodology adopted for undertaking the impact assessment was based on the Department of Transport’s DMRB method, which previously has been applied to proposals within other WHSs, including some promoted and supported by English Heritage, and has been subject to scrutiny within the planning system, including Public Inquiries. This methodology uses significance as weighting to assessed impacts, so that the significance of effects of change resulting from implementation of the application can be evaluated. The assessment process was informed by English Heritage’s Conservation Principles (2008), particularly with respect to the identification of heritage values, and its ‘Seeing the History in the View’ draft guidance (2008) for the analysis of views. ES9 The assessment covered: • Direct and indirect impacts on 33 heritage assets previously identified as WHS attributes of OUV; • The impact on key views to and the setting of 15 strategic heritage assets within the wider WHS and its Buffer Zone; • The impact on 31 key views of the Central Docks identified during pre‐application consultations; • The impact on the 6 constituent WHS character areas; • The degree to which the proposals comply or vary from relevant local, national and international policy; • The degree to which the proposals comply with or vary from the guidance provided in the Liverpool WHS SPD; • The application’s delivery of ‘innovation’, being one intangible attribute of OUV that has consistently been identified as being of considerable importance to the WHS; • The cumulative impact of the application on the WHS and its OUV. ES10 During the assessment process, an anomaly was recognised in the DMRB methodology when applied to a regenerative scheme affecting a complex historic environment such as this. The methodology requires that all change impacting on a physical heritage asset and its setting is ascribed as being either wholly positive or wholly negative in its nature. It cannot deal with a situation where some change flowing from a particular aspect of development proposals is positive and some negative in impact. Thus, the methodology does not reflect the reality of a major development where heritage benefits and dis‐benefits may well accrue simultaneously. In order to overcome this anomaly, the assessment process established the two extremes of possible effects that could flow from rigorous adoption of the DMRB methodology, and a conclusion was then reached on the probable ‘true’ overall effect of the application, taking into account the specific circumstances [section 4.0.11]. 1 References in square parentheses to ‘section...’ in this Executive Summary relate to the main impact assessment report.

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Figure 1: WHS Character Areas (©LCC)

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Figure 2: General scheme overview provided to English Heritage as part of pre‐application information (© Peel Holdings/Chapman Taylor)

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Figure 3: Concept image of the ‘canal corridor’ from the application (©Peel Holdings/Chapman Taylor)

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4 Overview of principal findings ES11 The significance of the effects of the application upon key heritage assets and their settings within the application site and its wider setting will be [section 4.34]: Very large positive Large positive Moderate positive Slight positive Neutral/No change Slight negative Moderate negative Large negative Very large negative 0 0 0 1 9 4 6 7 6 Taken on balance, the application is deemed overall to have a moderate negative effect upon heritage assets within the WHS and its Buffer Zone that have been agreed as being key attributes of OUV. ES12 The impacts upon views to landmarks, key views to the application site and WHS, and on the WHS’s six Character Areas will be [sections 5.1.16, 5.2.32 and 6.7 respectively]: Major positive Moderate positive Minor positive Negligible positive Neutral/No change Negligible negative Minor negative Moderate negative Major negative Views to landmarks 0 0 0 0 8 0 1 4 2 Key views 0 0 1 1 5 3 6 7 8 Character areas 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 1 ES13 There are significant issues of non‐compliance with international, national and local policies, including Liverpool City Council’s UDP [section 7.4]. ES14 Compliance of the application against key policies in the SPD is [section 8.0]:

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5 Compliance with the SPD Partial compliance Neutral/too early to make assessment Yes No TOTALS 4 8 12 8 ES15 Cumulatively, despite delivery of some positive impacts including the safeguarding of the future of the principal individual heritage assets on the site through repair and reuse, the application will have a significantly damaging negative impact on the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile World Heritage Site and its OUV. The application will result in an array of negative impacts on OUV (a number of which will be of major magnitude), whilst harming aspects of the integrity and authenticity of the Stanley Dock Character Area and its intimate setting [section 10.2.1‐3]. ES16 The primary concerns about the application are that: • The vital relationship of the WHS Character Area with the river will be severely compromised through the placement of closely sited and some interlinked mid‐rise buildings on the river/sea wall • The two ‘islands’ of the single WHS Character Area will be divorced rather than linked by the excessive density and height of development in the intervening Buffer Zone • The legibility of the Central Docks and the central commercial core of the City will be damaged by the secondary cluster of tall buildings in the Buffer Zone • The nature of the proposed urbanisation of the canal corridor will accentuate its longitudinal characteristics at the expense of the important transverse form of Hartley’s docks within the WHS and Buffer Zone • The cumulative effect of the development in the Buffer Zone (that is, both the canal corridor and secondary cluster) will be to overwhelm the defining traditional characteristics of the area with opposing modern ones (in other words, low, horizontal and transverse historic emphases will be replaced by height, verticality and the longitudinal) • The setting of key heritage assets will be damaged by the scale and density of the development and its failure to respect fundamental notions of form and function which will damage the WHS’s authenticity • Key views to and from the Victoria Clock Tower, reflecting its symbolic and actual importance in historic dock management, will be lost • On the basis of information provided, there are significant concerns that the application may cause harm to the integrity of waterfront archaeology • The application seemingly fails to deliver technological innovation to a level commensurate with historical precedent • In summary, the development fails to deliver satisfactorily against the principal test set by WHS nomination and the Statement of Outstanding Universal Value, namely that, in both the WHS Character Area ‘islands’ and in the Buffer Zone, the development should protect, respect and transmit the WHS’s OUV.

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6 In addition to the foregoing, the application is deficient in the following areas: • The desk‐based archaeological assessments that have been carried out so far provide a baseline of known data, but not an adequate characterisation of deposit or structural survival within the development area or satisfactory assessments of significance, the impact of proposals and associated mitigation strategies • Insufficient information is provided about the intended management strategy towards the conservation and repair of heritage assets • No information is provided on the approach that will be adopted towards the urgent repair of heritage assets, such as the Bramley Moore Hydraulic Engine House, that are in dilapidated and deteriorating condition • ‘Before’ and ‘after’ photomontages do not appear to have been provided in the application; those provided as pre‐application material appear to contain substantive errors, are not of appropriate form to convey the impacts of tall buildings, and fall a long way short of affording an adequate coverage of the site in order to assess the impact of the application properly. Additional detail about key findings ES17 Master plans spanning a period of as much as 30 years have a long history of partial implementation. The Liverpool Waters development is phased to commence in Princes Dock at the southern end of the site and will not approach the southern end of the WHS’s Stanley Dock Character Area (see Figure 1) for another 10 years. Development in the WHS itself, which includes the bulk of repair of surviving heritage assets such as dock walls, associated historic buildings and the historic dock infrastructure, will only start in around 25 years time. By that time, if planning permission is granted, the two tall buildings’ clusters in Princes Dock/King Edward Triangle and centrally in the Buffer Zone (see Figure 2), and urbanisation of the canal corridor (see Figures 2 and 3) and adjoining sea wall will be completed. There is a clear risk to the WHS’s OUV presented through partial implementation of this programme. This will need to be considered in any agreements that are negotiated as part of any approval process [section 10.2.3]. ES18 The impact assessment was conducted on the basis that the WHS boundary stands as it is. At the time of nomination, the boundary for WHS Character Area 3 was drawn tightly around the most visually coherent and demonstrably best preserved elements within the Central Docks system; the remainder was left within the WHS Buffer Zone. As a result, the single Character Area was divided into two ‘islands’ set in excess of 0.5km apart (see Figure 1 to this Executive Summary) and separated by Buffer Zone in which major regenerative development was foreseen – an arrangement that was always likely to lead to major conflicting development pressure and the risk of compromise and harm to OUV. Map regression and analysis of aerial photographs undertaken during the impact assessment process indicate strongly that the integrity of the infilled docks (which lie beneath the central ‘secondary’ tall buildings cluster and the adjoining mid‐rise development shown in Figure 2) may be substantially greater than was recognised at the time of WHS nomination and inscription. These three early docks form an integral and important part of the Central Docks, but now lie within the WHS’s Buffer Zone. Their exclusion from the WHS is potentially a serious anomaly. There are also grounds for considering that West Waterloo Dock to their south should be included within the WHS boundary. The boundary of the WHS is relevant to the impact assessment. The Operational

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7 Guidelines state that ‘[WHS] boundaries should be drawn to include all those areas and attributes which are a direct tangible expression of the outstanding universal value of the property, as well as those areas which in the light of future research possibilities offer potential to contribute to and enhance such understanding’. On these grounds, it is contended that the WHS boundaries to Character Area 3 may well have been too tightly drawn [sections 4.18, 4.33, 6.3 and 7.1.1]. ES19 Through its inscription in 2004, Liverpool’s WHS was recognised as being a place of significance transcending national boundaries that should be protected and preserved for the benefit of the international community as an ‘irreplaceable source of life and inspiration’. Its Buffer Zone has three specific functions: it is to be used to protect the OUV of the WHS and, as set out in the amended Statement of Outstanding Universal Value in 2010, development within it must ‘respect’ and ‘transmit’ that OUV ‐ those are immutable and non‐negotiable guiding principles for redevelopment in the Buffer Zone of the WHS [sections 10 and 6.3]. ES20 The protection of the WHS and its OUV is jeopardised by the intensive scale and density of the development proposed within the application. The river (or ‘sea’) wall will be the location for some of the larger mid‐rise buildings in the development (Figures 2 and 3), with the maximum height of many only just falling short of the WHS SPD’s definition of tall buildings (45m). The spacing between these buildings will mainly be low and some blocks will be interlinked, creating a long wall of development along the waterfront. As a result, views to and from the river and from surviving historic buildings will be severely curtailed. In the Buffer Zone between the two WHS Character Area islands, the planned secondary cluster of tall buildings and its undergrowth of mid‐rise buildings and the dense urbanisation of the corridor formed by the new extension to the Leeds‐Liverpool canal will greatly damage rather than ‘protect, respect and transmit’ the WHS’s OUV. The development proposals in this section of the Buffer Zone will: • Separate, not knit together, the two islands of the single WHS Character Area; • Sever historic connections and relationships between spaces, buildings and topographical elements, including the river; • Cuts across and obscure the important transverse historic orientation of the Central Docks; • Divert attention from the crucial continuity of character between the two WHS ‘islands’; • Undermine the central importance in the landscape and to OUV of heritage assets such as the Victoria Clock Tower, Clarence Graving Dock, and the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse; and, • Damage the legibility of the historic (and modern urban) environment [sections 5.2, 6.3 and 10.2.2]. ES21 The application contains proposals for two clusters of tall buildings – one (dubbed the ‘dominant cluster’ in the City Council’s WHS SPD) at the southern end of the site close to the commercial heart of the City and a second (the ‘secondary cluster’) in the Buffer Zone separating the two WHS Character Area ‘islands’. The impact assessment found that there are grounds to support the ‘dominant cluster’ of tall buildings at the southern end of the Liverpool Waters site on the basis of improved urban form and morphology for the City’s commercial

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8 district, although the placement of tall buildings within the dock wall on the east side of Princes Dock is non‐compliant with SPD policy. There are also problems with their impact on some individual heritage assets, and doubts over whether the distribution and positioning of the tall buildings in the dominant southern cluster have currently been planned satisfactorily to generate the desired positive outcomes. The impacts of the secondary cluster on the WHS and its OUV are considered to be seriously and consistently negative, including divorcing the two ‘islands’ of the WHS Character Area, diminishing the dominance of key heritage assets such as the Waterloo and Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouses in the landscape, and damaging the legibility of the historic (and modern urban) environment [sections 5.2, 6.3, 10.2.1 and 10.2.2]. ES22 Taking the application at face value, many key heritage assets within the WHS will not be repaired for 25 to 30 years. This could result in great harm to their fabric, integrity and contribution to OUV. When the time arrives for their repair, no certainty is provided within the application of the approach that will be adopted to their repair or the materials and skills that will be utilised. Again, this could result in lasting harm to their fabric, integrity and contribution to OUV. Balanced against these concerns, if repaired appropriately and always in a timely fashion, the impact of the proposals should be benign and positive on their fabric. The application does not provide sufficient information to determine which of these impacts is the more likely. Accordingly, within the assessment, the impact of repair proposals on the fabric of heritage assets was scored as ‘neutral’ or ‘no change’, unless specific cause existed to score otherwise. ES23 The information provided within the application is deficient in another significant way. In theory, there is considerable potential for development activities at Liverpool Waters to cause major harm to archaeological remains of very high significance both in the WHS and in its Buffer Zone within the dock walls. The application ‐ whilst containing some very useful accounts of cultural heritage assets including archaeology – fails to provide sufficient information to demonstrate the probable degree of survival of remains of importance in areas of potential conflict. Accepting that this is an outline application, it does not provide sufficient analysis to comply with PPS5 Policy HE6.1 which requires an applicant ‘to provide a description of the significance of the heritage assets affected... sufficient to understand the potential impact of the proposal on the significance of the heritage asset... Where an application site includes, or is considered to have the potential to include, heritage assets with archaeological interest, local planning authorities should require developers to submit an appropriate desk‐based assessment and, where desk‐based research is insufficient to properly assess the interest, a field evaluation’. The applicant’s own impact assessment is a desk‐based exercise – no targeted geophysical survey or trenching have been carried out to support claims in the application that there will be no negative impacts whatsoever from intervention into historic fabric, including buried archaeology. This independent impact assessment has concluded that the proposals in the application as they are shown have the potential to compromise archaeology of importance: • Through insertion of underground parking across historic dock walls, into the bottoms of dock basins, and into the fill of historic quaysides;

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9 • By ‘sandwiching’ of historic dock walls between two separate underground parking structures; • Through the impact of building foundations; • As a result of site servicing infrastructure; • Through impact from proposed landscaping features [section 4.33]. Such potential compromise of archaeological remains across the site would, in PPS5 terms, amount to substantial harm to the significance of waterfront archaeology. Policy HE9.2 of PPS5 requires the local planning authority to refuse consent in such circumstances unless the applicant can demonstrate that the substantial harm to or loss of significance can be justified. No justification is provided for substantial harm of this kind anywhere in the application. ES24 The application is also non‐compliant with PPS5 in that: • The information contained within the application is insufficient to demonstrate the level of survival of archaeological remains. The assessment of significance of such remains in the WHS Buffer Zone has been found to be deficient and accordingly the impact assessment accompanying the application is believed to be unreliable in certain aspects (PPS5 Policy HE6.1). • Irrespective of the outline status of the application, it is probable that desk‐based research will not be sufficient ‘to properly assess the interest’ of waterfront archaeology as a heritage asset, in which case, additional field evaluation is called for by PPS5 Policy HE6.1. • The development will have a major negative impact on the Stanley Dock Character Area of the WHS because some proposals in its Buffer Zone fail to protect, respect and transmit OUV and will lead to harm being caused to the significance and OUV of the WHS (PPS5 Policies HE7.2, HE7.4, HE10.1 & HE10.2). • The concept proposals within the application do not exhibit sufficient local distinctiveness to respect the character and value of the WHS (PPS5 Policy HE7.5) – see Figure 3. • The scale, density and massing of the proposed development are of an inappropriate nature and degree, given the sensitivity of the site and the heritage assets involved. This relates especially (but not exclusively) to the proposals along the length of the listed sea wall, in the secondary cluster of tall and mid‐rise buildings on the infilled Clarence and Trafalgar Docks, in the urbanisation of the canal corridor, and around Clarence Graving Dock. These issues represent a significant negative impact on the WHS’s OUV (PPS5 Policy HE7.5). ES25 Circular 07/2009 on the ‘Protection of World Heritage Sites’ provides updated guidance on the level of protection and management required for World Heritage Sites. It is supported by an English Heritage ‘Guidance Note on the Protection of World Heritage Sites’, which has been endorsed by the Government. Paragraph 12 of the Circular requires local planning authorities in England to protect WHSs and their settings, including any buffer zones, from inappropriate development, whilst paragraph 7.11 of the Guidance Note reinforces the point that ‘Protection of a site is about the prevention of activities which might damage its Outstanding Universal Value, authenticity and integrity either in the site itself or through the effects of development in its setting, including any buffer zone’. The impact assessment demonstrates that in many different ways the application puts at risk Liverpool WHS’s OUV and, accordingly,

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10 it constitutes inappropriate development. Grant of planning permission for the application as its stands would constitute non‐compliance on the part of Liverpool City Council with the spirit and intent of Circular 07/2009 and the related English Heritage Guidance Note [section 7.2.3]. ES26 Liverpool City Council is currently preparing its Core Strategy. The policies in the adopted Unitary Development Plan (2002) have been retained until the adoption of a Local Development Framework. The application is non‐compliant with the City Council’s UDP in relation to its policies HD5 (development affecting the setting of a listed building), HD11 (new development in conservation areas ‐ sub clauses 1 (i) and (ii) and 2 (i), (ii) and (iii) thereof), HD12 (new development adjacent to conservation areas), HD16 (scheduled monuments), HD17 (protection of archaeological remains) and HD18 (general design requirements ‐ sub clauses (i) and (ii) thereof). On those grounds, the City Council’s UDP demands that planning permission should not be granted for the application as its stands [section 7.3]. ES27 The World Heritage Convention requires member states to identify, protect, conserve, present and transmit to future generations their World Heritage Sites. This requirement is expanded in the ‘Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention’ (2008). The impact assessment demonstrates that the application will have a negative impact upon different attributes of the WHS’s OUV. In a number of instances, after careful consideration, the cumulative impact has been found to be moderate negative or major negative on attributes of OUV, with identifiable risks being posed to the WHS’s integrity and authenticity. The City Council is tasked under paragraph 98 of the Operational Guidelines with having in place and implementing regulatory measures that ‘assure the survival of the [Liverpool WHS] and its protection against development and change that might negatively impact the OUV, or the integrity and authenticity of the property’. The grant of planning permission for the application as its stands would constitute non‐compliance on the part of Liverpool City Council with paragraph 98 of the ‘Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention’ (2008) [section 7.1.1]. ES28 Objective 5.2 of the approved WHS Management Plan (2003) states that Liverpool City Council will ‘Ensure that new development respects the significance of the Site and is appropriate to the historic urban grain and the architectural and townscape context’. The impact assessment has found that the application fails to protect, respect and transmit the WHS’s OUV. The grant of planning permission for the application as its stands would constitute non‐compliance on the part of Liverpool City Council with this objective of the WHS Management Plan [section 7.1.1].

Merseytravel Could Be Asked To Run The Local Rail Network-Neil Scales Empire Building Could Be Complete.

MERSEYSIDE is poised to become the first part of Britain to run its own rail network, under a radical government shake-up to be unveiled today. Rob Merrick reported


A groundbreaking report will propose “vertical integration” to drive down costs, allowing some areas to take control of both track and trains – ending the divide imposed by privatisation 15 years ago.

Merseytravel, the passenger authority, has pressed to be given the new powers for many years, but was thwarted by the last Labour government.
Now the Daily Post has learned that ministers believe Merseyside is the “obvious candidate” to carry out a trial of the new approach, because – unlike inter-city trains – it covers a small area.
Local transport bosses believe the benefits will include the ability to:


Carry out track maintenance at more convenient times – preventing complete shutdowns of vital lines;

Improve existing lines – perhaps completing the electrification of the Bidston-to-Wrexham line, which will only be electrified on the Welsh side of the border, under current plans;
Assume responsibility for track failures – which passengers wrongly blame on Merseytravel, rather than on Network Rail, which is responsible for infrastructure.
Carry out improvements at stations – again, currently the responsibility of Network Rail.

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/05/19/merseytravel-set-to-win-control-of-railway-tracks-92534-28721186/
Previously, the authority’s chief executive, Neil Scales, has called for the switch by saying: “Vertical integration is not something that would work across the country.

“But it is admirably suited to the Merseyrail network, which is self-contained and largely separated from the rest of the UK network.”
Today, transport secretary Philip Hammond will announce the setting- up of a rail delivery group of industry leaders, to prepare a White Paper to be published in the autumn.
Mr Hammond will not commit himself to vertical integration, but is expected to praise the interesting ideas put forward by Sir Roy McNulty, a former chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority.
The review is expected to conclude that the rail network costs up to 30% more than it should to operate, high costs he will blame on the fragmentation that accompanied privatisation in the mid-1990s.


After the South Parkway Station Mess where they at Miserytravel spent £30,000,000 and did not think to move a set of points so as the London Trains could stop. Is this wise? http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/02/liverpool-south-parkway-station.html

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce-And Its Invested Interests. What You Dont Know Can Harm You.

Is the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce now a Collective Spiv for Peel Holdings?

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/07/liver-peel-conflicts-of-interest-begin.html

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce appoints top Peel surveyor to board

by Neil Hodgson, Liverpool Daily Post
May 3 2011
LIVERPOOL Chamber of Commerce has appointed a senior member of developer Peel’s team to its main board.
It will enable Peel development investment surveyor Ian Pollitt to forge closer links with the business community.
He said: “It is a great honour to be asked by the Chamber to join the main board, and I look forward to working closely with Chamber members over the coming years.
“These are both exciting and difficult times for the business community, and the Chamber is an increasingly important player.”
Liverpool Chamber chief executive Jack Stopforth said: “I am pleased to welcome Ian on to the board. The Chamber’s board prides itself on having many of the key business figures in Liverpool representing the city’s business community and Ian’s appointment will bring one of the city’s largest investors round the table to provide a valuable input into the Chamber’s management process.”
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/ldpbusiness/business-local/2011/05/03/liverpool-chamber-of-commerce-appoints-top-peel-surveyor-to-board-92534-28622154/


So the Chamber of Commerce that cant even add its own books up, the LCC the organisation that lost £750,000 last year  http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/views/liverpool-columnists/rex-makin/2011/01/28/rex-makin-things-seem-a-bit-stormy-at-liverpool-chamber-of-commerce-100252-28069770/ is thought of as being a organisation responsible for Liverpools Regeneration............more like a group of vested interested individuals, dole-ing out European Objective One money to each other.
Here is the crew that are promoting themselves and now it appears Peel Holdings through the new appointment.

The Earl of Derby DL (President) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-12860942


Neil Scales (Chair) - Merseytravel http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/neil-scales-and-merseytravel-spend.html

Vincent Owen (Vice-Chair)

David Wade Smith  
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/03/david-wade-smith-carping-on-with-same.html

Michael J Prince

Brian McCann

Dougal Paver

John Sutcliffe

Jack Stopforth - Chief Executive, Liverpool Chamber of Commerce
 http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/09/trevor-jones-and-hole-in-ground.html

The Earl of Derby is on the board....whats his interest then? He was a trustee of NML when they decided to build the new Carbuncle in the WHS.............and what else is he connected with, lets see, Oh the proposals for Hatchfields Farm  http://www.historicnewmarket.co.uk/lord-derbys-disingenuous-statements.html where it is said Lord Derby’s statements on his proposed Hatchfield Farm Development 26th January 2010 despite a campaign against it called save historic Newmarket. http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/01/13/get-on-board-liverpool-cruise-campaign-banked-by-earl-of-derby-92534-27977844/


Lord Derby at last came clean with the real reason for his plans to develop Hatchfield Farm last week in the Evening Standard (20th January). Save Historic Newmarket has been concerned since Lord Derby’s plans to develop Hatchfield Farm have come into the public domain that a number of statements have been made which are misleading.
Lord Derby is obtaining planning permission purely for financial reasons and does not as he says he has have the best interests of the racing industry at heart and a strong desire to deliver the government affordable housing targets. In the Evening Standard on 20th January: “Asked about his motives for the scheme, Lord Derby said’ Clearly Inheritance tax takes quite a hold on things, we have spent the past 15 years trying to improve the estate and clearly I carry quite a debt burden at the moment.”
Despite Lord Derby’s continual assurances that it is better to have a developer who understands racing, it has become clear after in depth studying of his planning application that he intends to sell Hatchfield Farm once he obtains permission:
Daily Telegraph, 18th December, Lord Derby is quoted saying: “And I would argue that it is far better to have someone who understands racing and its concerns working on this development than someone with no interest at all.”
On page 7, para 12.1 of this document (http://fhdcrw.onesuffolk.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/D602021A-0C11-434C-8586-18229E298CEC/0/HSM85830.pdf)  contained within the 17-box planning application submitted by Lord Derby’s consultants to Forest Heath District in December , there was a line that indicates that Lord Derby will not be the developer but will sell Hatchfield Farm with planning permission to a developer.
“12.1 It is only possible to speak on behalf of Lord Derby and the Hatchfield Farm site. In this case, a planning application will be submitted shortly and it is envisaged that planning permission could be granted later in 2010, after the adoption of the Core Strategy. This will allow the site to be brought to the market in 2010/2011. For those reasons, the recession has had no impact on the delivery programme for Hatchfield Farm.”
Prior to the submission of his application, Lord Derby had publicly implied that the application was purely a housing development and had not raised the fact he was also intending it to be a significant mixed use commercial development. As well as 1,200 dwellings, the application comprises an 80 bedroom hotel, 27,000 square metres of offices, a cinema, restaurants,bars and retain outlets and a park and ride facility.
These will significantly increase all the traffic issues around Fordham road, where over 1,000 horses cross the roads daily and the urbanisation of rural Newmarket resulting in the demise of the town as HQ of racing. A summary of his application can be found on: http://www.historicnewmarket.co.uk/timetable-and-planning-application.html
Rachel Hood, Chair of Save Historic Newmarket said:
“Lord Derby has continually insisted that his motives are to help the government achieve its affordable housing targets and that he has insisted that he is the best developer for Newmarket as he is part of the racing industry. We have always disputed his “philanthropic” rationale and his developer credentials and plans. We are now clear that his motives are purely financial and he has no intention of being the developer - he plans to sell Hatchfield Farm once he has planning permission.
“I urge all residents of Newmarket to join Save Historic Newmarket Action Group in our efforts to stop this disastrous development for our town. Please come to the Newmarket Town Hall meeting on 1st February and sign our petition at http://www.historicnewmarket.co.uk/petition.html. ”

He is also on board the Cruise Liner Campaign which ensures he stays sweet with the local press


Neil Scales, Chairman http://www.liverpoolchamber.org.uk/board-of-directors.html Self styled....Director General of Miserytravel. His resume goes.

Neil Scales, Chief Executive and Director General Merseytravel, which promotes an integrated transport network responsible for 300 million passenger journeys per year by train, bus, ferries and through the Mersey Tunnels - which provide cross river links 365 days a year.
Merseytravel, which controls assets of £1 billion, owns and operates the Mersey Tunnels. It is also the franchising body for the Merseyrail Electrics Concession and is unique in controlling a 25 year franchise for the locally controlled railway, managed on a devolved basis, with a record for delivering high quality service, running trains to 67 stations across the region.
Merseytravel also owns and operates the famous Mersey Ferries and associated tourism attractions, contributing more than £34 million a year to the region's tourism economy.
Under Neil Scales' leadership Merseytravel has been transformed into an award-winning learning organisation with the establishment of Merseylearn, a leader in its field and is the first PTA/PTE to achieve the ISO 14001
Before joining Merseytravel Neil Scales was an independent transport and engineering consultant working for the World Bank on projects across Europe. Educated at a technical school, he has a BSc in engineering, an MSc in Control Engineering and Computer systems, an MBA and is a Fellow of the three major engineering institutions.
Neil is Chair of pteg, the organisation that represents PTEs in England to government and is the elected President of European Platform on Mobility Management (EPOMM) which are a network of governments in European countries that are engaged in mobility management. Amongst his other responsibilities, he chairs ACT TravelWise which promotes sustainable travel, is a board member of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership and until recently, after nine years Chaired ITSO, the Integrated Smartcard Organisation
He was elected Chair of Liverpool Chamber in 2010
Now we are not saying anything is being carried out that is wrong, but............
What is a unelected public servant such as Herr Director N eel Scales, doing sitting with all these business people at the Chamber........someone needs to take a long hard look at the cosy relationship that is being played out right before your very eyes and ask Is this a conflict of Interests?
He should be getting the buses to run in time shouldnt he?

This is what he said in a letter to the Liverpool Daily Post
 
Full support

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/views/letters-to-editor/2011/02/28/worrying-changes-to-neptune-plans-92534-28246559/
LIVERPOOL Chamber of Commerce would like to extend our full support for the Liverpool Waters initiative. In light of the current recession and imminent public sector cuts, we are pleased to see the private sector drawing up this ambitious road map to the future.
Peel Holdings recently made a presentation to Chamber members, explaining the full scale and ambition of the project, the focus on local job creation and the visual impact of the development.

Following the meeting, several members cited examples of waterfronts that successfully marry the old with the new, including Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Vancouver and Seattle.
We would like to encourage Peel to be even bolder in its design aspirations for both building height and design.
Many of our members also made the trip to the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and understand the global value of a spectacular waterfront. Liverpool’s waterfront is magnificent, and any development planned for the next generation must ensure that it remains an iconic symbol of great design and heritage for the future.
This project, we believe, has the potential to be a world-class exemplar of a modern waterfront city weaving around the historical footprint.
On the issue of heritage, we are pleased to note that Peel intend to bring the historic and architecturally interesting Jesse Hartley Clock back into use.
We would also recommend the approach adopted by Liverpool One, who implemented a policy of integration with the city by restoring all of the historical links to the old dock.
We would urge members of the region’s business community who wish to see Liverpool regain its rightful place as a world-class city, and see it prosper throughout the twenty-first century, to make their support known to both Peel and Liverpool City Council.

Neil Scales OBE, MSc, MBA, C Eng, Chairman, Liverpool Chamber of Commerce


David Wade Smith said all the same shit about Mann Island that decimated the World Heritage Site  http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/views/letters-to-editor/2011/02/28/worrying-changes-to-neptune-plans-92534-28246559/ and guess what he was the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce at the time.

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce...............Are they Spivs for Peel Holdings.