OPINION
Sandwell council planning policy officers know they are up shit creek without a paddle let alone a battleship. 🙂 In fact the game of house building has long been one akin to Monopoly, and it is perhaps only “chance cards” that have kept some people out of jail.
Derived originally from “the landlord’s game”, it comes as little surprise that the political class players have a side hustle of private landlord rent collection properties on their board. Their “need” for housing drives more targets and that is a significant conflict of interest that is never declared in any of these plans or gameboard as it really is.
Added to this many of them and the senior officers of the council do not even live in the borough but in “greenbelt” areas protected from development and land banking farmers- another hustle into which they channel their wealth.
The stalled Sandwell Local Plan, years in the making, reveals that the council can only produce 80% of this Labour Government’s impossible and insane house building targets. But long before this in the 1990’s, senior officers in Sandwell’s VERY troubled planning department were having pained discussions about the same issue, even involving a water works. Some of this I have detailed before, but below is the full discussion and the context which I am making available now.
BR7P51 Aerial view of white phosphorus chemical waste disposal in Rattlechain Lagoon, St John’s Lane, Tividale, Sandwell, England, Britain, Uk
The following discussion took place between Robert Lee and John Baylay of SMBC planning, with reference to the former Tividale sewage works site, the adjacent one next to Rattlechain lagoon that became Callaghan and Wilson Drives. The context of this is the previous application by Mintworth, they of the years of “misery” inflicted on local residents for residential being turned down ref BCS2780 in July 1997, because of the adjacency to Rattlechain lagoon.
In an email dated 29th April 2002, after the Darlinson/Dyer application on the Mintworth owned land had been approved for business use, Robert Lee contacts Keith Bird (SMBC) and Tony Rice (SMBC) complaining that he is being forced to report a departure from the adopted Unitary Development Plan (UDP) to the cabinet advisory team (CAT). The UDP’s were the forerunner to the now titled “plans”. D/D were close associates of the drivers behind Mintworth, antecedent Birlee Industrial Ltd and they of the “offshore” investment companies who also spent a lot of time in Spain.
There is the mention of the name “STEVE”. In this matter I firmly believe that he is referring to the former officer Steve Gregory– “Director of Urban Form” who was heavily involved in regional housing strategy and regeneration at this point in time.
or if not, I can think of only one councillor by this name who ever held a cabinet position around this time.
What is clear from this whinge, is that the planning officers appear to be being put under great pressure politically to identify residential sites, even if they are shit ones like this, but when these are turned back towards business sites, they have to justify these “departures”.
John Baylay, principal planning officer, and the man whose name appeared on virtually all of the planning applications decided in this area around this time replies to Lee in no uncertain terms, with the most astute observation of all in that
“It’s a crap site for residential”
The more important point is that the correspondence appears to record professional concerns within Sandwell Council that the land should not have been allocated for housing because of the neighbouring chemical waste lagoon — and that those concerns were nevertheless overridden or ignored.
He reveals that Development control and building consultancy opposed the reallocation of the site from business in the adopted UDP to residential “BECAUSE OF THE PROXIMITY OF THE SITE TO ALBRIGHT AND WILSON LAGOON WHICH IS A CHEMICAL WASTE TIP, BUT THEIR CONCERNS WERE IGNORED.”
Building homes next to one of the most contaminated sites in Europe, that was still actively tipping a virtually unique hazardous waste stream must mean that the absolute cretin or cretins in SMBC, must have had some unexplained motive in doing so, in allowing a residential site next to this “potentially hazardous” neighbour “in both public safety and security terms”.
Baylay then outlines that SMBC are in the position of not being able to guarantee the safety of such a site in that they do not have any information from Rhodia who will not give up information into the public domain (don’t we know that), and that a risk assessment has not been carried out or agreed on by the EA or HSE.
Lee replies to this, again mentioning the mysterious “Steve” in that he will have to justify reasons for inconsistency. He then states that Steve would likely ask him about the “struggling housing figures” and that if other contaminated brownfield sites were investigated despite being lined up for housing, would this make all of them undeliverable?
This 2002 correspondence is potentially very important because it appears to show that senior Sandwell planning officers were openly questioning the suitability of land adjoining the Rattlechain chemical waste lagoon for residential development. Privately, I am aware that those same concerns still exist.
Taken together, this raises a legitimate historical governance question:
Why was land apparently promoted or retained for residential development when Sandwell’s own professional officers were raising serious concerns about contamination, risk and the absence of sufficient technical information?
By 2000 the Government was strongly promoting brownfield-first development and seeking around 60% of additional housing on previously developed land. Sandwell was also dealing with questions over housing-land supply during the review of its UDP.
There may therefore genuinely have been pressure to identify additional urban housing land. But that does not excuse what the emails appear to reveal. In fact, it potentially makes the issue more serious.
The question becomes:
Did pressure to meet housing targets result in land being treated as suitable for housing despite significant warnings from Sandwell’s own professional officers?
If the Council’s own officers believed this was an inappropriate residential location, why had the Council’s planning strategy put housing there in the first place?
“GREGO”
Steve Gregory appears on my radar regards this matter and for some as yet unspecified reason he also appears to have entered the radar of Sandwell Council itself. Though I allege no wrong doing on his part, or that of his part in the chain of how this site WRONGLY got transferred over to residential against his own officers advice, it is not unreasonable to deduce that obviously someone at SMBC DID ALLEGE THAT HIS CONDUCT WAS IN SOME WAY QUESTIONABLE AS TO JUSTIFY HIS SUSPENSION FROM HIS VERY WELL PAID JOB. AS REVEALED IN THE EXPRESS AND STAR ARTICLE OF 29th August 2009 , HE HAD NOW LEFT THE COUNCIL THOUGH FOR WHAT IS NOW PERHAPS LOST TO HISTORY- OR IS IT?
It may also be speculated as to whether he may have rumbled certain councillors flogging off council assets on the cheap to their offspring, allegedly, and that powder keg would blow up just a few years later.
Gregory had been a fixture at Freeth Street towers since the late 1980’s, a career in planning passing GO many times around the board. His appointment is very interesting given the context of the planning history at Rattlechain is all I will say. 😉
Birmingham Daily Post 4th August 1997
His responsibilities here to this post fit closely with the subjects being discussed in the officer emails from 2002:
– housing allocations;
– housing delivery figures;
– brownfield development;
– regeneration;
– movement of employment land into housing;
– Urban Form/planning strategy.
The phrase about “struggling housing figures” particularly sounds like something that might have arisen with an officer responsible for strategic planning, housing delivery or regeneration.
Interestingly, before this he had also spoken out publicly about “waste” of using consultants and his £56,000 salary to be making strategic decisions is noted 😉
Express and Star 11th July 1997
Is it not interesting that Grego, who incidentally used to catch a plane at weekends to a residence in Spain, 😉 here is backed by a politico who believes that people in the council as officers should make decisions themselves rather than relying on experts from outside who may offer a stark assessment that may not go along with a plan that wanted to build houses on “crap sites”? When those same officers within the council urge caution and restraint and are totally ignored , that becomes a matter of integrity and the question of it, does it not, when their concerns are overridden by dark forces that are not publicly named.
His “retirement” LOL at the age of 50 and a signed golden goodbye deal with the council to keep his mouth shut and pursue “projects overseas” is something this rotten borough council did many times after this with others, many of them from planning and legal services also. Who cares if the community chest is raided to sign a confidentiality agreement or NDA as they are known? What secrets did they take with them, or what individuals had they got information about that may have been damning to those unnamed individuals? In the absence of facts, we can only speculate, but when those facts have been purposefully buried and out of the eyes of real scrutiny- that is a cover up.
If Sandwell’s own professional officers were warning more than twenty years ago that housing beside Rattlechain presented unresolved problems, the obvious contemporary question is:
What has materially changed?
