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[Mighty Hatfield]

St Mods want us to believe that they are in it for the long haul, then let them tell us what they will do in the short term.

they said its down to the council. doesnt fill you with much hope does it.

On the subject of Woolies, wasnt i right in hearing that when its finally dead, all the other superbrands will be taking over their units? because that piece of information doesnt really tie into the "no-one can afford to take on units in hatfield town centre" does it?

[mythoughts]

You can do a lot with 3 million pounds

 
Hang on a minute ...has anyone checked/asked whether or not ANY of this £3m will be earmarked for the Hatfield development at all? Remember, only £15m of the £25m bid for was going to be....that would mean only £1.8m if granted on a proportional basis.

[shapps]

Since there's been a lot of discussion about whether the government could have done more, bearing in mind what they're doing for other areas, I thought I'd post up the full table.

It's too big for a direct post, so I've created this link instead.
http://www.shapps.com/images/GrowthFundAllocations.doc

Click on the link and open it up in MS Word, it's really staggering!

What's very noticeable is that Welwyn Hatfield appears right down the bottom of the list in terms of government funding with many areas receiving what we might have hoped to get, bearing in mind our growth point status and the very extreme needs of Hatfield Town Centre.

It does inevitably lead to the conclusion that once again we've been forgotten in Welwyn Hatfield, just as we were when this government decided that contrary to what it had said before Labour lost this Parliamentary seat, funding would be brought forward for a super-hospital in Hatfield.

Grant.

[AL10]

Nicely avoided any of the legitimate points there Grant!

[shapps]

Nicely avoided any of the legitimate points there Grant!

Looks like the figures speak for themselves and Hatfield has once again been dumped on by the same government who promised us a super-hospital, then axed the proposal after they lost the highly marginal seat at the last election.

Oh, and now they're shutting down Gracemead House too.  About to post about it.

[Broadside]

This may be academic, but my calculator reveals that the fund of £605million divided by the 163 local authorities seeking a slice equals £3.7m
each - which seems close the WelHat grant.
However, another calculation seems to reveal that the total grant received by an authority divided by the housing numbers required of them to build,
varies (on average) between £392 grant per house to £795 in some cases.
 
What's to be made of these statistics then ??

[Mighty Hatfield]

Nicely avoided any of the legitimate points there Grant!

Looks like the figures speak for themselves and Hatfield has once again been dumped on by the same government who promised us a super-hospital, then axed the proposal after they lost the highly marginal seat at the last election.

Oh, and now they're shutting down Gracemead House too.  About to post about it.

are you really that blind to the obvious failures of the council on this issue Grant?

[shapps]

>> are you really that blind to the obvious failures of the council on this issue Grant?

No, because no organisation or individual is perfect, but the problem with your approach is that you're so keen to blame the council for absolutely everything that you're totally disregarding the actual reason that this development hasn't taken place -- namely the economic crisis.

Parking your perfectly legitimate questions about who knew what and when for a moment, even you must appreciate that none of this would have actually changed the situation we're now in as a town.  In fact the only factor is the economic backdrop which led to too few units being let in time before the downturn hit.

It appears to me that neither the developer, nor the local council has the financial resources to push the project forward in the current climate. You're right to say that back in the early summer everyone involved believed that this point wouldn't be reached, but then the banks started to collapse, the government was forced to step in and the downturn turned into a full scale recession.

As an upshot of all of that, the ONLY body capable of pulling us out of this nightmare and getting something moving quicker than the additional five years that the developer would like to be given, would be the government itself. And with this point in mind I organised for Sir Bob Kerslake, the new Chief Exec of the Homes and Communities Agency to visit Hatfield to see the problems for himself.

Hence when the decision came last week not to put sufficient central resources into Hatfield I think everyone was disappointed. The HCA had only been running a week and half at the time and it was too soon for them to have sufficient influence over the decision, but I think even this fledgling new agency was disappointed by the level of our growth point funding.

So whilst it's perfectly possible and legitimate to complain about the council, as you so often do, the reality is that it's hard to see what different steps could have been taken that would have defied this dramatic economic downturn. By contrast, the government is in a position to do something and has just allocated hundreds of millions of pounds throughout the country to growth point area. My point is that with a little more foresight, we could have been an early success story for the new government body charged with the responsibility to get just this type of redevelopment going.

[Broadside]

The burning issues that perplex me,and remain largely unanswered, are that
the Council has allowed the sale of town centre property/land to a
 developer without properly locking them into a contract to complete the
redevelopment - whatever the economic circumstances !!
Even Mike Hobday appears to be embracing a diplomatic tone with regards
to the 'Contract' which now appears to have expired. How convenient !!!
 
Details of said contract and evidence of marketing by St.Modwens please.
 
 
 
 

[MikeHobday]

As an upshot of all of that, the ONLY body capable of pulling us out of this nightmare and getting something moving quicker than the additional five years that the developer would like to be given, would be the government itself.

This is really remarkably naive. The Council was very clear at the recent public meeting I organised that even a £25 million grant from the Government would not have kick started the redevelopment - which will cost much, much more than that.

The redevelopment needs one thing and one thing only - the end to the recession. At that point, there is no reason to think it cannot go ahead - unless of course the Council is persuaded by Grant Shapps's reference to a "fatal blow." (or was that just party political point scoring?)

[mickeyl]

It would be foolish to think that when the UK comes out of the recession whenever that is and it is likely to be a lot longer than the short recession the government is conveniently forecasting, the commercial building economics will be entirely different from those which existed before the recession got underway.
 
It does not take a Nobel Economics prizewinner to predict that the financial conditions in the general recovery phase will be entirely different from those that existed when the regeneration scheme was first promoted.
 
Again it must be fairly certain that a smaller town centre scheme will be of the order of the day.
 
You just have to ask yourself, if you had £30 million to invest, would you put into a new no-holds-barred Hatfield town centre shopping precinct or would you want to invest more cautiously

[Broadside]

Mickeyl,
Yes, there are all sorts of financial permutations relating to the current
financial issues.
However, for the long suffering Hatfield community this should, largely, be
irrelevent because the WHCouncil should have locked-in St.Modwens to a
water-tight contract to rebuild the town centre.
As matters stand, the Council appear to have sold off swathes of our town centre to St.Modwens (at a knock-down price?) who now appear to be able to walk away from this alleged 'Contract' BUT STILL OWN MUCH OF OUR TOWN CENTRE.
Don't you think this is awful?
Don't you think that something is 'wrong'?
 

[Tikabila]

Broadside, for once I must agree with some of your points, we here in Hatfield have been let down badly but as things stand, what wold the outcome have been if St Mods had started rebuilding work, and then gone bust? as lots of developers have, then we would have been left with a permanent building site for the unforeseeable future.

I Also have to agree that Mickey makes some good points, we cannot allow ourselves to be blinkered as fas as the economic slowdown is concerned, because I fear Great Britian PLC is in far worse shape than our board of directors would like us to believe.

What is now called for, as I have already said in previous posts, for pressure to be put on St. Mods to let on short lease terms properties they have acquired in the Town Centre at peppercorn rents, because I am sure that everyday those premises remain empty it must be costing them money.

In Conclusion, would a scaled down centre be such a bad thing? 

[Broadside]

A scaled down version?
Perhaps we should economise by just building the shops first and then,
when the economy picks up,  the 300 flats can be built on top of them.
 
You mustn't worry too much about St.Modwens going bust, Mythoughts has produced plenty of evidence of their financial well-being AND they are
still actively buying up land and developing.
 
The real worry remains, that the Council have sold chunks of our town centre to a developer who can now walk away from the project without
any contractual obligations.
 
Partners indeed !
 
 

[Broadside]

Oh yes, and another thing: back in May weren't the Council and politicians
using the word 'Agreement' as opposed to 'Contract'.
 
We're getting there slowly but the truth will eventually be revealed !