I've been out of Bradford for >4 years & I'm fairly sure worked had stopped before that. An interesting legal point (put the tissues away FA) is the planning permission. Normally development must commence within 3 years of the date of granting permission (it used to be 5). The key is what constitutes development & what were the conditions precedent within the permission. I'm not sure if Westfield were involved in the demolition, if so they could maybe claim that was sufficient; if they weren't they did do some ground works which again might qualify. If neither do, although there are now simpler grounds for extending the period of palnning approval, would the Council have the balls for a legal fight with Westfield over their failure to comply? In the current market, & without developers lining up to build, I would say no.

Yeah, like the idea of extending the tram into Bradford - which would clearly be very beneficial to the city by bring thousands of Leeds folk into Bradford to do their shopping....

To be honest I've said all along that any money arriving under a 'Leeds' tag will stay in Leeds - why would they let others have any of it?. Imo, the Bradford Councillors involved in the 'City Region' racket must have secured super duper jobs nodding through money for Leeds, either that or maybe they all live in Leeds. When you look round, there are lots of tiny little places all over the country which have their own 'City Region' and it's a travesty that Bradford is stuck into a foreign one. The fourth largest actual city region in England just being an appendage to another area is just a joke, it's just like the Eighties and Thatcher all over again.

Quote: Bulliac "Not sure how the council could have specified how long the garden would be there though, given it was wholly dependent on when Westfield finally get their aaaahs into gear, at which point - if it ever arrives, of course - it would disappear under the shops.'" Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000

Quote: Bulliac "Not sure how the council could have specified how long the garden would be there though, given it was wholly dependent on when Westfield finally get their aaaahs into gear, at which point - if it ever arrives, of course - it would disappear under the shops.'" Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000

It is now much easier to renew expired planning permissions, the Council may well have done this. To be honest I'm not really bothered about the technicalities of this, more that the Council let Westfield treat the city with contempt.
As an aside, the Government like to blame the planning system for delaying development & holding up 'recovery', but the fact is there are 400,000 undeveloped houses with planning permission in this country. It is demand & the availability of funding that is the problem.

Oh, I agree, though I'd suggest that lack of demand is really another symptom of lack of funding; if there were sufficient jobs, of which people felt confident of assuming were long term [iand[/i which paid a reasonable day's wage for a reasonable day's work there would be little problem with demand....imo of course, Gids and Cams and the rest of the Bullingdon mob might have other ideas..