Saturday morning in Hebden Bridge, and the shops and cafés are buzzing. Everybody is talking about what Calderdale Council wants to do to this former mill town in the heart of the Yorkshire Pennines. The plan is to erect an ultra-modern new development in the middle of the Victorian shops and converted mills. At a proposed cost of £12.4 million, the Garden Street scheme could be the biggest building project in Hebden Bridge for 50 years.
The scheme grew out of a desire to upgrade a run-down, council-owned car park for extra parking spaces, yet it has turned into a proposal for eight offices and six shops with 32 apartments and 16 houses arranged in five blocks rising up to seven storeys - plus 136 public and private parking spaces to replace the current 55.
“It's the size of it I am concerned with,” says Jules Fitzsimmons, 45, who lives in Hebden Bridge and has run a pottery shop next to the site for 18 years. “Yes, we need more parking, but why does it have to be here?”
Hebden Bridge is West Yorkshire's answer to Stoke Newington in London. Artists, writers and performers colonised it when the woollen mills closed in the 1970s, drawn to its rural peace and handsome stone buildings. Nowadays, its 12,000 population includes commuters to Leeds, Bradford and Manchester. Hebden Bridge is proud of its independent retailers, has lots of arty events, a sprawling park and a river, all of which help to keep the town's average property price (£215,102, according to the Land Registry) almost double that of Calderdale as a whole (£118,603).
The Garden Street Action Group's stall received 212 signed letters of objection that Saturday. Anthony Rae, one of the protesters, says that more than 1,000 people have signed a petition. Objectors complain about the scale of the scheme, and say that there is no need for further private flats in the town, that the scheme has no provision for affordable housing and that neighbouring properties will lose light, privacy and views. Then there is the private swimming pool: Hebden Bridge has demanded a public pool for years.
“There's a feeling that the community has been tricked,” says Rae, 55, who has lived in Hebden Bridge for 24 years. “The town was told that the purpose of the development was to provide for some increase in public parking - and has found to its horror that it had been transformed into something completely different.”
The council has since asked the developer of the scheme to submit more detailed plans; the original proposals were submitted by a company formed by the local architects, Studio BAAD. “The design is inspired by local buildings and styles in terms of materials, shapes and sizes,” says Philip Bintliff, an architect at the company. “Height, scale and the choice of weathered stone materials are important to ensure that the buildings fit in, rather than jar as some recent buildings in the town do. Our ambition is to insert these new buildings to appear to the casual viewer as though they have always been there but, on closer inspection, are clearly of their time.”
Calderdale Council explains that the urge to develop the site arose from the Upper Calder Valley Rural Renaissance programme. Funded by Yorkshire Forward, it set out to develop a new vision for the valley over the next 25 years.
Calderdale Council and Bintliff are not the only ones facing resistance. In Hale Barns, Cheshire, locals are defending their 1960s concrete shopping precinct against the arrival of a Waitrose store. Leading the objectors is the Rev Rob Hinton, the vicar of All Saints church, who represents the Hale Barns Residents' Response group. “The size and scale of the proposed new development is out of keeping with the area,” he says. “It's not a case of ‘not in my backyard': it's more a case of ‘my backyard isn't big enough'. It's squeezing a quart into a pint pot.”
And in West Derby, a genteel Wirral seaside resort, there is a campaign against a new hotel proposed by the owners of the fashionable Hope Street Hotel in Liverpool. It's on the site of - again - a car park.
“Change brings protest,” Bintliff says. “Some want to see the version of Hebden Bridge which inspired them to live here remain untouched. But they are not the only ones who love the town. We do too. And - if it is to continue to be attractive to newcomers - change is a necessity.”
Jules Fitzsimmons disagrees. She fears that the proposed scheme would force her business to become an internet-only operation. That would be the ultimate irony. Although the people of Hebden Bridge may never agree about this scheme, the most damaging outcome would be that traders and shoppers could be driven away from one of Yorkshire's most thriving town centres. If regeneration is the ultimate aim, that can't be good.
Fact File
The average property price in West Yorkshire is £141,045; the UK average is £185,616 (Land Registry).
The average price of a detached house in Hebden Bridge is £352,446, compared with the national average of £340,575.
Between 2002 and 2007, the average house price in the town rose by 130per cent, from an average of £89,995.
We can't always stand in the way of new development in Hebden Bridge. The problem we have at the moment is that the majority of buildings being built in the town are terribly designed but get approval because they 'fit in' simply because they are clad in hideous yellow stone. Now we have the chance to have some truly great architecture in our town and it has met fierce opposition. Why can't we accept some of the new instead of always fighting it?
Matt Dawson, Hebden Bridge,
Jim, if the majority is silent how do you know they welcome the development?
Steven Dole, Hebden Bridge,
The Garden Street scheme is an innovative and attractive solution to a problem site and is welcomed by the silent majority of the town.
Jim Band, Hebden Bridge,
I'm fortunate enough to live in Hebden Bridge, so this story piqued my interest but I also hail from Merseyside and can assure you that West Derby is very definitely not situated on the Wirral peninsula - I think you must mean West Kirby.
Sloppy journalism and poor fact-checking...
Jilly S, Hebden Bridge,