Plans for the regeneration of Telford town centre, including 2,500 new homes, more shops and high-rise buildings, will make the town more like a city, it was claimed today.
Residents hit out at the multi-million pound proposals, claiming that if people wanted to live in a city they would move to Birmingham or Manchester, with concerns that the town is too over-developed already.
The comments were made at a meeting of Telford & Wrekin Senior Citizens’ forum, which heard from Michael Barker, head of environment and planning at the borough council.
The meeting was titled The Changing Face of Telford for Better or Worse? and the plan covered central Telford, Old Park, Hollinswood and Malinslee.
Mr Barker said the centre of Telford was currently a shopping centre with not much else and the plan hoped to provide a better range of services, including offices for employment and improved leisure facilities.
He said: “We are finishing off the work of the new town which has been started. The plan started in 2004 and we held consultations from 2004 to 2007. The final stage of the consultation is from now until mid-August.”
Mr Barker said there was no cultural and social heart to the town centre and it was difficult to get around on foot. He said the “townscape” was more like an out-of-town centre and there was a lack of housing and range of different services and even though the shopping facilities were good the council wanted to improve them.
Overall, the plan includes provision for 2,500 homes with 2,000 in the centre with a flexible approach to affordable housing, he said.
But residents complained about the plans during a question and answer session at today’s meeting. Ray Hill said he did not think tall buildings would work for the town centre. He said: “You’re trying to become a city before you are a town. If people wanted to live in a city they would move to Manchester or Birmingham.”
Another member of the public said he felt the town centre was over developed already which was causing problems in other areas.
By Catherine Roche
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26 Comments
New towns do not work , they all eventually end up with slums and high crime rates as they bring in people from other areas etc etc . The same mistake was made by houseing associations who rented homes to city and town folk in villages ,they stood and like a sore thumb and the people failed to INTERGRATE , Fact powers that be ignore people can not intergrate in to different cultures or ways of life.
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Well I’ve lived in Hollinswood all my life and I think its about time the centre got a revamp.
As for people moaning about saying “it will look like a city” these are the type of people that will never be happy with anything and just moan for the sake of moaning.
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Looks an amazing development to me. Seems as though Telford has its fair share of NIMBY residents just like in Shrewsbury – Shocking really considering the place was simply fields 30-40 years ago. How on earth can anyone claim to have an opinion when Telford is an ever developing place?
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What ridiculous comments. I don’t think they even deserve a response and they definately should not be listened to.
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Ray, If you wish to live in a non progress town can i suggest you move to Shrewsbury where you can spend the rest of your days moaning about flowers and people from telford
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I appreciate the views of those people who currently live in Telford who do not wish to live in a city but this is progress I’m afraid – however care must be taken that these plans do nto encroach too far and that people are given the coice to stay in the Telford area but not necessarily in a city centre if they so prefer. This must be accommodated for and it is possible.
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Telford needs a big wake up call and I believe this could be it. The developers need to ensure that with the housing comes cafes, bars and restaurants to accommodate. Where is there in Telford for a night out? – nowhere and certainly no real decent bars or restaurants to go to which are in one area. We need to ensure Telford people stay in Telford and spend there hard earned cash here and not elsewhere for a good night out.
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@Matt. Telford wasn’t all fields and hasn’t been for a couple of hundred years. 30 years ago it was a new town, Stirchley had just been completed and everything was new and shiny. Before that, it was a industrial wasteland of slag heaps with the odd mining village dotted around.
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They are saying to little to late. the dash for city status was announced at least 3 years ago, if they had a problem it should’ve been said then and campaigned on.
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Re. #9, John:
The public were never consulted about “city status”, but many people have objected to the idea, especially those who moved to Telford to get away from cities.
Telford & Wrekin also had to withdraw from the “West Midland City Region” bid when it was made clear that it couldn’t be considered to be part of the West Midlands conurbation.
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How does making a huge shopping-mall for a town the geographical size of Telford make economical sense. It will be primarily accessed by cars (with a slight nod to buses and blink to trains) and the town failed to build the Western primary in the 70s so everything is loaded into one section with gridlock being the outcome.
Spread the town centres vast sums of money to smaller towns and rename the area “Telford Towns”. Economially viable local supplier and less big sheds. A dream, they etll us about it to follow the law, not because we can influence it.
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“Spread the town centres vast sums of money to smaller towns and rename the area “Telford Towns”. Economially viable local supplier and less big sheds. A dream, they etll us about it to follow the law, not because we can influence it.”
…every word is true!
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Andrew tells us that “city and town folk failed to ‘intergrate’”.
Just how insular are you Andrew? With that kind of attitiude it’s no wonder that small towns and village all over the country are slowly dying…
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Telford centre is a soul less shopping mall that could hardly be made any worse. I welcome the developments. They should boost local employment and auger well for the future of the town. The high rise developments will be no higher than what already exists anyway.
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Andy,
I think that you will find that Stirchley was around before the Domesday book was written and in those days it was a small hamlet surrounded by trees.
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Too much too fast. Telford has not recovered from the first round, of forced acceptance when the masses moved in. Telford used to have distinct areas seperated by distance. Wellington from Oakengates or Lawley. Dawley from Horshay etc etc. When the lunatics have finished it will be possible to travel from PRH to Ironbridge with barely a gap in the housing. All these new developments destroy local areas and generate resentment, the millenium village being a perfect example, a closed community, within an established community, and still not learning the mistakes of the past, such as Woodside. The established areas of Telford do not want, or need an “established cultural and social heart”, as we were happy with our loose collection of villages that had plenty of heart and more local culture, than a collection of chain stores with a few wine bars scattered in, could ever hope to achieve.
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We must live in very different Telfords then. The one I see is at too low a density to function as real town. Like it or not your loose collection of villages has gone.
It is now or should become a town of towns with different areas serving different needs with their own identities under the umbrella of Telford. This town with a population approaching 200,000 and critical mass with the ability to support good central facilitites in the ‘town centre’and more local facilities for the old towns is what I would like to see. In between areas there should be a strong network of green space but this space should be useful either to wildlife or people, proper parks rather than overgrown areas where people do not like to walk, native species that have real value rather than just looking good. There should be a high quality public transport network, with a higher population comes increased feasibility for PT. Perhaps a mass transit system such as trams or a monorail linking the sprawling suburbs of Telford could be a possibility.
I disagree that new developments “destroy local areas” these new developments introduce new people to these areas providing new customers for local businesses and hopefully new facilities.
Woodside and the Millennium community could not be more different. One was about planning for the car, segregation and the belief that what was imposed from above was right. TMC was created with consultation, there probably could have been more but its about mixing, mixing uses, mixing peoples in a sustainable way. I feel you are wrong to criticise it off hand when it is not even finished yet.
In order to improve the town it needs to grow and to do that it needs a starting point, I would agree that the best place is the town centre, get people living / working and playing in there, make it look like a real town. When there is a demand to investe in Telford that investment can be spread around and shared hopefully for the benefit of all of us.
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Grey, you really live in cloud cuckoo land. You are obviously pining to go live in Birmingham, London or some other big city. This is Shropshire and people in Shropshire don’t want to live in Birmingham or we would have moved out years ago. If we want a night out in Birmingham, we go there but the majority of us prefer the smaller towns and villages like Ironbridge, Shifnal, Shrewsbury for a decent night out. The town Centre is dead at night because people don’t and won’t ever want to go there, it is and always will be soulless.
I know you have vested interests in Telford s growth but you can’t ship out all the shropshire people and move in city lovers…it just won’t happen.
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#13 Peter
The whole Country is dying!!!
unfortunatley Bliar is to head up Europe
Good old Mandie
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Brian2, I don’t know why you think I have a vested interest, I don’t I just agree that growth would be a good thing for Telford. I have no desire to live in Birmingham or London although both do have qualities which I would like to see in Telford such as the vibrancy and activity long after the shops close.
I’d like to know if you have asked all Shropshire folk and especially those that live around Telford what they want? If you haven’t then how can you make assumptions about what they want. I’m willing to bet that most of the younger generation feel differently to you both in the way they perceive Telford and their demand for a decent town centre.
The town centre is not dead because people don’t want to go there. Its dead because there are no facilities. Have you seen Wetherspoons on a Friday night? It heaves, the lack of development in the town centre is why it is dead. Thats why I support the councils action plan for central Telford and am very impressed by the scheme Transforming Telford are working on.
Perhaps you should move to the more rural areas of Shropshire for a bit of peace and quiet and let Telford develop the facilities that a normal town of its size would have.
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Grey , yes I’ve seen Weatherspoons on many nights of the week and if you believe that is a pub that is “heaving” , you really should try going to places like Cheltenham and Shrewsbury to see busy pubs and don’t forget people there have several to choose from not just the solitary one….open another and one will crash, it’s simple. Look at Cascades, the pub on the car park by sainsburys many years ago, the pub on the retail park that was open 20 years ago and not now….how is the Hub doing, how busy is the Severn Gorge pub?
Its not the lack of pubs or nightclubs, it’s the fact the people round here have better tastes than you seem to have.
In my job I speak to many, many people and none that I speak to seem to want your skyscaper skyline.
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I don’t recall saying I spent much time there but whatever and less of the personal insults please, how can you possibly comment on my taste, you don’t know a thing about me.
If I recall both Cascades and Athena were always pretty busy. Not nice places but they were busy.
You suggest that I look at Shrewsbury and Cheltenham, well what is it about the town centres of those places that make them attractive for nighlife? Could it be that they are fully developed? They have streets and buildings capable of hosting these establishments. There are usually easy and obvious ways to get from one place to another.
You then go on to illustrate my point about Telfords failings by speaking of the limited individual offerings. The pub on the car park by Sainsbury, the pub on the retail park, the Severn Gorge and the Hub what is the problem with all these places? They are innaccessible, how many wide roads, dark footpaths or vast windswept surface car parks do you have to cross to get from one to the other? How safe do you feel walking in these places after dark?
There needs to be a finer grain of development with active frontages on proper streets that are overlooked by buildings to make routes safe or a particular area where nightlife is clustered together to avoid the need to traverse huge distances.
So, you speak to people? Big deal I speak to people as well and I am yet to find anyone who thinks central Telford does not need vast improvement.
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Maybe you do speak to people, people who are outsiders and moved here from large cities.
Maybe you should try talking to the long term locals who have been here all their lives, don’t want to move away and don’t want to see a skyscraper skyline like the monstrosity above. You can have a lively “town centre” without all the high rise slums that Birmingham boasts so proudly, as you drive past it and makes you want to keep on going past.
As for personal insults about your taste, I was just saying that local folk have better taste than to want to flock to lots of soul less “chain pubs” like Weatherspoons when there are so many varied old style restuarants and pubs in the area. No matter how many of them you want built, they won’t be any more popular, no matter how many skyscrapers you surround them with.
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Maybe I also speak to people who have also lived here their whole life. You don’t have to be old to enough to remember the pre new town days to be considered a local in my book.
I would hardly call the image above skyscraping and besides, the plans have moved on from that very early massing image take a look at this link to see the most recent ideas http://www.transformingtelford.co.uk/projects/town-centre/the-project
The majority of the buildings indicated are no taller than four storeys and the bigger ones are no taller than the existing Plaza building. Hardly skyscraping.
Yeah Birmingham has unattractive tower blocks but it also has many areas of low rise “slums”. It isn’t the style of building but their maintenance and the people who live within them. It should also be noted that Birmingham has a couple of high rise towers especially in the city centre that are very attractive and popular such as the Beetham building.
For the record, a skyscraper stands 150 metres tall, the only structure in Birmingham that breaches that is the BT Tower which isn’t really a building so technically Birmingham has no skyscrapers either.
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” What ridiculous comments. I don’t think they even deserve a response and they definately should not be listened to.
The one I see is at too low a density to function as real town. Like it or not your loose collection of villages has gone.
In between areas there should be a strong network of green space but this space should be useful either to wildlife or people, proper parks rather than overgrown areas where people do not like to walk, native species that have real value rather than just looking good.
Perhaps you should move to the more rural areas of Shropshire for a bit of peace and quiet and let Telford develop the facilities that a normal town of its size would have. ”
Grey,
Your above comments are typical of the developers that we have come to expect in this area, from the early days od Telford Development Corporation, to the latter days where the local road engineers are trying to ruin the road network system to encourage the public transport system ( that doesn’t really work) and discourage people moving between their “villages” as you prefer to call them.
There are thousands of people born and bred in this area that remember the area before the sixties.
We had lovely artists impression pictures of how wonderful it would be then and look how it turned out in reality.
You may think that the “local dinasours” don’t count but they are still in the majority and the other thing is, they will still be living here when the younger generation move out, to find better lives elsewhere.
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I don’t see what is so bad about trying to make this area the best it can be and maybe it does involve promotng public transport and redeveloping the town centre. But like I said I don’t see what is wrong. I certanly agree with the aims if not the methods used to achieve them. Oh and that villages phrase was a direct quote of one of your own.
I don’t dispute that there are thousands of people who remember but there are also thousands who don’t and I’m sure even in those thousands that do many of them would like to see the area improved in some way.
I did not use the term local dinosaurs and no where did I say that their opinions don’t matter but surely it is better to have a considered opinion. Rather than assuming skyscrapers are being proposed take a look at the actual plans and comment on them, try to influence tham and that way w might just get something popular and high quality. Don’t automatically oppose something just because it is different.
Besides it was the older generations that have left Telford in the state that its in now. Leaving the younger ones with a dysfunctional town that they will have to try and fix becaue they’ll be left with it.
Actually Brian2, beyond our above friendly debate I would really like to know how you would like to see Telford devlop?
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