A large ERDF grant (over £1m) was spent on putting in utilities for the subsequent development that's never happened. I've often wondered how that would stand if the development never happened. Can't see much appetite for clawing it back but you never know

Its in the business section of today's The Times

I was told that the originally planned development was meant to be part financed by apartments above many of the retail outlets. It was the collapse in that market as much as the reduced retail demand that led to the failure of the development

Agree, it would make a terrific site for an arena, and to be honest if I were a big moneyed local citizen, after doing up Odsal to the level it deserves, I'd be right on it.

As regards the dates on Waste of a field, I got mine from the photographs I took at the time, so the initial knocking down is very accurate and last work on the site is at least fairly accurate as it is the date of last photo I took and I pretty much stopped when the work did, though as I said it did dribble on for a while (as I could easily see from the canteen window of the post office, where I was working at the time) but my last photo is pretty fair reflection of when they took the mechanical stuff away, though I confess they probably had security and even the odd bloke clearing water out of the site for some time after that.

Would the work towards turning it into a temporary "open grassy urban space" count for planning? That was less than 3 yrs ago wasn't it?

I can fairly confidently say that the urban space was mentioned in neither the approval notice nor the approved plans. So no.
Strictly I would think a separate planning approval for change of use would be required from that given for the retail development, it would be interesting to check whether the Council bothered with that..

It was, and is, only 'temporary' though, so it's only an interim change of use at best - a bit like a demolished office block becomes a car park before it re-emerges as a supermarket. Can't see why it would require more than local approval, which no doubt, the council would have obtained from itself.

There was never a chance of that happening, what with the people who had the decision making power fully committed to building an arena in Leeds, I mean we're all one big happy city region aren't we, so why spread any investment around? The Leeds arena will work wonders for Bradford, as will the trolley bus system that they are using the "regions" money to pay for.

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.

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..