MOOR POOL LOSES CONSERVATION BATTLE

10-07-2009

Conservation area? What conservation area? Birmingham Council's planning committee has made a mockery of efforts to preserve some of the most historic parts of the city by giving the go-ahead for 16 new homes on the Moorpool Estate in Harborne.

Their decision - on a majority vote - flies in the face of advice by English Heritage, whose advisor Mervyn Miller said: "I see no alternative but refusal of the present application.".

Garden Suburbs expert David Davidson warned that Moorpool would be “extremely damaged" if the proposal - by Grainger Homes - went ahead. As well as the new houses, 12 of which are in the key "Valley" area of the site, 137 garages and 12 allotments will be destroyed.

Moorpool was a "model village" built in the early 20th century by industrialist John Sutton Nettlefold, and was designed to offer workers an alterantive to the grim back to to backs that dominated the inner city landscape.

The latest decision maintains the City Council's disturbing trend of bowing the knee to developers rather than fighting to preserve the best of our local heritage.

In a recent Birmingham Mail column, The Stirrer suggested that the Planning Department should be renamed the Do Anything You Like, We Really Don't Mind Department.

After this decison, few would quibble with that!

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