This has and is going on for some time. I attended the Midland Road 'open air' consultation. My 'concerns' are as follows:
1. We can all agree that more 'social housing' is desperately needed. One just has to look at the Borough Housing Department and Homelessness to see it. Long queues, ages to get through on the phone, a real run-around. People off the streets illiterate and drug or alcohol dependent faced with gathering personal data and a form of some 32 pages with 18 of 'guidance' - will struggle!
One of the main ways to reduce the load is to build more social housing! How tempting and 'trend-laden' to develop and indeed create more 'brownfield sites' or identify areas for 'redevelopment'. There was a time when rural places were allocated/chose some council housing/affordable housing for their own needs, but over the years, these places have become des-res, people not rural-based, but moving out from urban areas to escape squalor and then turn to prevent others likewise or limit others and inform a kind of 'drawbridge' mentality against more development, social housing especially. Many of these houses have multiple cars and that impacts the commute into/out of urban interfaces negatively mainly but for the spend in out of town retail locations and lengthening queues and parking demand for accessing rail services. On the one hand we have Sharnbrook as an example where a rejection of a new railway station and development on the old station site, locks in an A6 commute for shops and rail, on the other we have Stagsden where very little if any social housing exists, pub, chapel and shop has closed and one bus an hour few use, begs apart from dormitory status, what future for 'village life'? Then there's Biddenham, new 'Saxon Court' development, no shop as far as one can tell, one bus per hour (no X5 outwards access), and mainly a des-res development predicated on masse car usership from day one for majority of transport needs. Multiply that model, and we are conflicting with design-planning to inform lower congestion, lower emissions and free up parking spaces!
2. Coming to Greyfriars development itself, concerns are as follows:
a. Bus Station operational ability! Buses go into the bus station compound on the north side (off Greyfriars/Hassett Street) and out south. For the turning left out of the bus station, no problem (Kempston, South Bedford and beyond). For X5 (Oxford), 50 (Kettering) and No. 6 (Brickhill) they go over the carriageway and outwards north, utilising the dual carriageway and often clip the mature trees on the left because these big buses need the space for maneuver. My first question is, if the new development encroaches such as to say goodbye to the Greyfriars Roundabout, how will these buses get out?
It was hard to see the road design from the information provided nor what operational consideration to buses has been given.
For some, buses are marginal, but remember this, daily they bring hundreds of people to shop in the Bedford Town Centre. They would do this more if we made all buses loop the principal railway station and back from the Bus Station as part of overall journeys. Likewise if such linkages also served Tavistock Street, North Harpur Street and the High Street in redistributive manner, dropping off footfall and spend potential, more evenly spread, many more businesses would not be going bust or just hyper launched to become a 6-8 month wonder and then empty again. It is the lack of appreciation and comprehending a priori to funding, which compounds to the margins, this potential.
b. Social Housing at any cost, I'd prefer a Borough-wide evenly spread allocation, whereby every new development must have a quotient of social housing and accompanying infrastructures to service it properly from sewage to buses, from NHS outlets to considering more and better rail links and satellite stations. I was told by a town centre guide that Bedford has had over 15, 000 new people come to live here in the last 10 years, but what new infrastructure has come with such influxes? No wonder queues abound on all sides, no wonder cash-strapped councils and other public services struggle to cope and the public thoroughly cheesed off?! The scenario goes "you get what you pay for, I don't use buses so why should I contribute?" The principle carries across a spectrum.
c. On a personal note, as a local person, I see the Greyfriars/Bus Station area was a 1962 sort of era post-war development and so as one born 1967, has been a part of my awareness and life for the past 60 years. All to be swept away? The roundabout is a green space in a built urban setting. To lose it for flats with road redesign will just be a boring glass and steel development, upwards for the masses casting shadows on the area, letting less daylight direct to pavement interfaces. Okay in summer, winter months when it is dark by 4.30pm, not so good, okay for able-bodied, but disabled, elderly, partially sighted and mobility users, is a cause for concern, we have a scenario of policing absent on the beat in the town centre, 999 emergencies, 101 (takes ages) for everything else. So we treat incidents majoritively after they happen, not preventatively from Dixon policing grassroots/petty stuff upwards gathering intelligence for bigger players. In my view, if we want to make Bedford Town Centre an attractive place to dwell, shop and engage positively, we need to send signals of well-being, care and support when needed. Borough created alcohol free zones years ago, are they enforced? Likewise, smoking, as an ex-smoker I would like to walk around town without being exposed to passive smoking, which is everywhere currently. Why not make Pidgeon Square, Harpur Square and St Peters Green smoking areas and ban it from the rest of the pedestrian cordon with enforcement and fines? Likewise scooters on and cycling on pavements, fast, hazardous to vulnerable people and no care, no enforcement. All very well like the old arcade to put up signs galore, but with zero enforcement on the ground, gets a two-finger response and carry on as ever!
d. I fear these developments will be slum ghettos and that the consultation is an aesthetic exercise, the plan is already determined with powerful professionally focused support 'social housing demand = must have whatever the cost', bull in china shop push, no matter what. HS2 one end of the scale, Bedford North Riverside Development another example. As we know, Aspects, bereft of bus services has diminished to closure and now des-res flats overlooking the river seem likely? In such names, beit post war new town status bids, image, modernism or people paid to know the 'cost of everything, but the value of nothing'; Bedford lost a very great deal of a rich and arguably 'unique' historical built heritage e.g. Bunyan House at Elstow (circa 1968) for an A6 widening which was never implemented, 1968/9 Newnham Priory (over 500 years old, became a Council Depot and then Aspects), a Medieval Fulling Mill (1962 compulsorily purchased, burnt down), became a car park (1970's) and then des-res flats. Arguably, the threatening and closure of the Bedford-Cambridge Railway was part of that trend and a diminished regard and status for the vicinity ever since?
We lost the Granada (1980/early 90's), and nearly lost the facade of both the Harpur Centre and Howard Chapel. It was a campaign which saved them and we owe a debt of gratitude to the late Richard Wildman for these efforts via the Bedford Society; can we learn anything now? His book, Bedford Then and Now (available in Bedford Central Library), deserves more recognition, maybe a plaque at the Harpur Centre? We do need to check and balance 'progress'. Yes we need Social Housing, but a more Borough-wide spread would make more regenerative sense than clustering at any cost and let us be under no illusion, since privatisation of buses, town centre bus stations have been lost and sold and redeveloped.
20 years ago it was 'leisure' (St Modwen) now... could ours succumb to 'more brownfield Social Housing' or other 'development' with buses diminished or on-street only? Is that really the trend we wish to unleash and will it commend or repel Bedford's image, rather than being another copycat 'Harlow' or South East London regurgitated regardless of fit and balancing ambiance with necessities?
These are my concerns and I hope may be of some interest. There is a call for a rethink, maybe a local referendum, but if not, you may face 60 more years of 'blight' minus green spaces and operational hazards for buses and public transport in and around Bedford. One redeeming answer could be to make all buses turn left out of the bus station and 50, X5 and No. 6 loop round to serve the railway station en route out and back? That would be a gain for bus-rail interfaces, but I saw no sign of that being considered on the back of a single junctional set of traffic lights?
In summary, I support a redistributive growth of social housing provision throughout the Borough, urban AND rural rather than cluster concentrate bereft of or challenged by inadequate services and infrastructure. One other idea is the fuss made to retain the former Perrings, now Wetherspoons on the corner of River Street and Midland Road from a road widening and resurrection of Batts Ford River Bridge. Take that external architecture and maybe make the facade of the new development all along Greyfriars and the corner, so we have a more pleasant, not garish design and in keeping with enhancing the charm of aesthetics, not just bog standard plonk of glass and steel.
BRTA
Bedford Forum Agenda – Wednesday 9 October 12pm lunch – 1-3pm business
Venue: Costa Coffee (upstairs) 20 Silver Street, Bedford, MK40 1SU.
Venue Website: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g190737-d12674960-Reviews-Costa_Coffee-Bedford_Bedfordshire_England.html
Venue Phone: 01234-346722 Main BRTA Contact Richard Pill BRTA CEO 01234
225068 or richard.brta@gmail.com
Note:
Please sign the attendance list if new so we can follow up.
1.
Apologies
for absence
2.
Minutes
of previous meeting and matters arising/feedback
3.
Mayor’s
Update (or Deputy) if present
4.
Universal
Leisure Development and what may be in it for BRTA’s rail-based aspirations?
a.
East
West Rail
b.
Bedford-Bletchley
(electrification, retaining Stewartby for Kimberley College, 4 coach
lengthening of platforms, better parking at stations along the line, Retail
Park Kempston New Station).
c.
Oxford-Bedford
Midland Station
d.
Bedford-Tempsford/ECML
and beyond to Cambridge/getting Richard Fuller MP on board for unison
Borough-East Beds joint pursuit of the railway not just no on the back of
Northern Route escapade.
e.
A
new route for a new-build Northampton-Brackmills-A509/A428
Roundabout-Lavendon-Stevington Walk and flyover to slows to enter Bedford
Midland
f.
Remodelling
Bedford Midland.
g.
Wixams
Midland Main Line
5.
Stations
North of Bedford
6.
Ampthill Parkway Station
7.
More
freight by rail (Forders Sidings/better use and routing through Bedford east
and north for example.
8.
Better
buses – regular inclusion of Bedford Midland in all bus routes/looping back and
out to Bedford Bus Station and through routes via High Street
(Woodside-Hospital-Kempston (amalgamate Nos 1 and 7 for example or 1 and 5).
9.
Any
Other Business
10.Day, Date, Time and Place of Next Meeting.
Notes:
1.
BRTA
needs a new webmaster, all reliable offers welcome.
2.
Join
BRTA as a member and offer to help as a volunteer – lots of opportunities.
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