Political row over Ariston site sale (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)
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St Albans Tories and Lib Dems discuss community groups' and site's future
3:30pm Thursday 19th January 2012 in News By Manisha Mistry
A POLITICAL debate erupted in the district council chamber yesterday evening over the sale of the old fire station site in St Albans.
Councillors on Hertfordshire County Council's ruling Conservative cabinet approved in November last year proposals to advertise the Ariston Works site in Harpenden Road for sale.
The news came as a devastating blow to community groups such as the Pioneer Club and the St Albans Judo Club which are currently located on the site.
Despite HCC stating it will add conditions to ensure groups affected by the sell-off have are provided for on any new development, they are currently left in limbo, facing an uncertain future.
The county has said Section 106 money from any future development will be used to fund replacement facilities.
However, the Liberal Democrats proposed a motion at last night's meeting urging them not just to rely on these Section 106 contributions as millions of pounds pledged by developers in the past had not been spent on the community.
The motion over protecting community groups soon sparked a heated political debate when the district council's Conservative Party leader, Councillor Julian Daly, put forward their amendment.
This proposed the district council's planning brief of 2001 - which aims to provide a planning framework for the redevelopment of this site - should be taken into account.
However, this call was rejected by the Liberal Democrats, who disagreed, saying the council's power as a planning authority should not be relied on.
Following a debate, the Tory amendment won the majority vote.
The county council's cverview and scrutiny committee will meet at County Hall on Wednesday, January 25, to discuss its decision to sell the Ariston site.
Comments(4)
Also
says...
6:35pm Mon 23 Jan 12
There's currently £28m unspent in the county, and over £145,000 has had to be given back to developers.
That's nothing to do with when St Albans was a LibDem run administration- we're talking about the Tory run County Council, which has been Tory for nearly two decades I think.
Section 106 money can ONLY be used as specified in the Planning agreements, so if you've evidence of it's misuse or being siphoned off by any group of councillors- please do present it to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Honestly don't know about the DEFRA funds- a simple Freedom of Information Act request- or contacting your local councillor, might reveal an answer.
crazy cyclist
says...
8:47am Tue 24 Jan 12
busbee
says...
12:05pm Tue 24 Jan 12
Underspends are wrong, but mispends are worse. CCC is bad, but SADC is the pits when it comes to misappropriating public funds.
106 money might not have been used on the toosmallpool, but 106 money is mis-used by most councils to fund revenue work.
It seems that the libdems claimed millions will not be spent, because the County has refused to mis-allocate it?
Their point is hard to grasp. Also says we should just assume that the Libdem regime didn't cheat on the cheese, but implies that it's not safe to rely on SADC/CCC to dish out the cheese fairly.
Which is it? Do some councils cheat or don't they? yes or no? and is SADC one of the cheaters? yes or no?
busbee says...
10:09am Fri 20 Jan 12
Yes, hundreds of thousands of pounds, paid over to the district council by developers, was expropriated by their administration and siphoned over into dodgy prestige feel-good projects such as under-sized swimming pool s with over-sized saunas.
I can understand that they mistrust their partners in government, the tories, and suppose that they will mis-use theses funds in the same way as their administration did.
It's down to the public to hold their councillors to account, and ensure that funds are not mis-spent, just as pooltoosmall did.
What's happened to the 14k allocated by DEFRA to alleviate the air pollution on the Holywell Hill, Watson's Walk, and the London Rd?
That's the kind of question they should be asking. They don't, I suppose, because they never spent any of the money they were given for this purpose.