Church Road HMRI Dec 07 meeting

Notes from Church Road feedback meeting 12th December 2007

These notes were taken by me (James Kay) and have been written up in note format. They will be replaced on this blog in due course by formal minutes from the meeting. There are some key points that you might want to note.

Progress report
As at 12th December the developers were still waiting for outline planning permission on the whole development. This hasd been submitted back in April 2007. They could not go ahead with a detailed application until this was given. The obstacle seems to be the legal team at the council who are holding this up. The end result of our discussions was that Phil Davies – our ward Councillor and a Wirral MBC Cabinet member, promised to chase this up and try to get all the key players in one room to resolve it quickly. Phil is clearly committed to resolving this as soon as possible but he is up against a local council bureaucracy whose track record on doing anything on time is abysmal. Don’t hold your breath.

IF Phil is successful in his attempts to speed up the bureaucrats (by no means a certainty) the best timetable from now on looks like this:

* Outline planning permission in place by mid January
* Detailed planning permission to be submitted – end February 08
* Detailed planning permission granted – June 08 (at the best – the outline permission has taken them 9 months already instead of the promised 3 months)
* Earliest start date therefore on Abakan site for commercial development is about 12 weeks later – that is Sep 08
* To finish Phase 1 (mainly the shops on the Abakan site) will take about 9 months from start of work to doors opening for business – May/June 09.

This is (in my opinion JK) the earliest likely completion date for phase 1. It is quite possible that we might not see this first phase completed until the end of 2009.

The next meeting will be February 13th at Royal Standard House at 2.00pm