twowheelsgood

My thoughts exactly - it’s the kiss of death if the council push in to lead this.

dippy - yes its listed (the L in the application number) and yes it’s the old New Market Tavern, now the Old Market Inn, in the new Old Market development! Formerly owned by the Council, hence its shockingly neglected state prior to the development, I suspect this valuable freehold and free house was bundled into the giveaway deal to British Land.

Presumably the works to the 'Old Market Inn' have already been done ahead of any planning decision - one rule for the big boys, one for the rest of us ...

Ask a neighbour if they have space - we have reciprocal arrangements with several of ours. Make sure card is folded flat and plastic milk cartons are squashed down, but don't squash tins (makes them harder to sort at the other end). We only have the smaller green bin and my wife and I manage to fill that comfortably every fortnight - and we're obsessive about recycling everything possible. If you have some clear recycling bags, use those, but, ultimately, you may have to black bin bag it to just to catch up. Ubique - having walked up and down Bewell St a couple of times yesterday and today, the amount of litter and rubbish piled up and lying everywhere is just unbelievable. A disgrace. Bewell St could be a little jewel for shopping like Church St, but sadly it resembles an open sewer, made worse by the terrible failing paving. It reminded me why I do most of my shopping online.

I saw one of these being installed in Falmouth recently - clearly, BT have done a deal with someone to replace phone boxes with money boxes, retaining a basic stand in the rain phone on one side. If they weren't festooned with writing they wouldn't look ok, but in a conservation area surrounded by listed buildings, somewhat garish. Perhaps they've done a deal with the council as well. Such is progress I guess.

It's not 9 months work! It's a £130k contract over about 9 months, split into 'Phase 1 scoping 1-2 days a week and then Phase 2 mobilisation 3-4 weeks days a week' with no more specific detail. So, considerably less than full time.

Along with the Pizza Hut on Newtown Road - another dereliction of duty by Planners and a poor greeting to city visitors (as indeed KFC by the railway).

I meant the roof of the Waitrose multi-storey, where the unsavoury doggy-doings at the Garrick could be observed at a safe distance by the puffers.

Send them to the top storey car park - I don't want to be served by staff who smell of smoke, who hang around a back door, letting smoke waft back into the building, who stand/slouch/sit on the side of the A49 for all the world to see and who, invariably, toss their stinking butts in the road. Smokers are the worst litterers in the country, with cigarette ends and matchsticks being the most common form of litter. Around 122 million tonnes of cigarette litter is dropped EVERY DAY across the UK, which costs Councils (ie you and me) £342m a year to clean up in England alone (albeit nothing at all in Hereford as they abandon sweeping the streets). Worst still, a cigarette butt contains about 4000 dangerous chemicals which wash into waterways, harming wildlife and creating a serious biohazard. A butt takes 12 years or more to biodegrade. Despite all this, most smokers don't regard themselves as creating a problem.

Indeed, quite please with that one - perhaps it should have its own thread - word of the week.

I understand the Magistrates building was a paean to the folly that is PFI - in other words, we'll still be paying for it even if it is knocked down!

For £90m, they could have straightened the photo up ...

As we've covered in the posts above, courtesy of info from the HT.

This was forced on them by Planning, who were told to protect the OLM above anything else.

I agree - this could only have been written by someone in the public sector. Incomprehensible. Perhaps that's the idea.

Report says ' parking has been divided into two phases, the first of which is owned by British Land and the second Herefordshire Council. There will be 604 spaces, including the Waitrose multi-storey. Of these, 153 are within the phase two Herefordshire Council area. The council can retain 92.5%of income from phase two ...' I'm guessing that logically the ground level spaces would be the Council ones, as they're talking about 'ownership'. I wish HT would interrogate these press releases a little further rather than just reproducing them.

Well, well, I stand corrected - I've just read in my modestly priced HT that, contrary to what they've been saying for ages now, the Council don't get all the parking revenue. Council telling porkies - who'd have thought it. Apparently, they keep 92.5% of revenue from 153 spaces out of 604. The rest goes to Stanhope. They keep the Garrick house revenue. So, the whole thing an even worse deal than previously thought.

The Council have been boasting for ages of the £1m+ pa car parking revenue they will take from the OLM and Garrick House parking combined 1000 spaces.

The site is private property, so it is in the developers interests to keep it clean (and no doubt they charge the tenants for it) - but they won't go beyond the OLM. Sadly it is surrounded by increasing levels of litter and decay, uncut grass and bare soil where there used to be planting, as it is now obvious that the deal with Balfour is markedly even worse than the previous one with Amey.

Perhaps an own goal? If the traffic flows smoothly, why the need for an expensive inner link? Spend the money on the existing roads instead - there's a novel solution.

I'll moan - they're looking scruffy already - did no one realise that that tyres scrub as they turn a corner? The exits into and out of Widemarsh St are a mass of rubber skidmarks already. That's value engineering for you.

mg - you overlooked the cost of the new Rockfield carpark, which seems to have consumed the county's entire allocation of tarmac. I'll wager that, with demolition, there was no change from £0.25m. That's a mere drop in a pothole compared to the cost of 125 parcels of compulsorily purchased land and all of the legal add-on's £??m. Oh, and how could you overlook the redesign and resubmission for planning permission when it was realised that the whole road was 600mm too low to allow drainage by gravity and had to be redesigned? Consultants fees - £0.1m 'A mile of new motorway costs on average £30m' according to the Highways Agency - and that’s for 6 lanes. We're getting just two lanes at a substantially higher cost! Is something awry?

Yes, my first and subsequent thoughts on reading this news were 'how much has this cost us'? Because, lets face it, the council were over a barrel, as a result of their own stupidity (not for the first time), and the two key players knew it. But weren't Jewson's due to be cleared out anyway? So probably a double pay day for them.

Idiotic own goal by the Council - no way was there ever going to be 20000 people, but no doubt a lot have stayed away as a result. Walked down Bath St a couple of times this morning and its been deserted.

The salty hulk (partly) opens tomorrow - on the Councils website they say 'We expect around 15,000 to 20,000 visitors to Old Market on 1 May. For those planning to travel inside the city, walking and cycling is recommended.' Oh dear lord, the traffic will be stationery for a 10 mile radius. At say 2 to a car, that’s up to 10,000 cars - the council, in a masterly understatement to avoid widespread panic, say 'with large visitor numbers anticipated, car parks on the Old Market site may become full.' For once, they may be right. Never mind the jambs, count the money from the car parks …