Middlesbrough Town Centre - Gazette Article

Norman_Conquest

Norman_Conquest

Well-known member
This article on the assessment of Middlesbrough town centre, presented by Richard Horniman, Middlesbrough Council's Regeneration Director, is well worth a read. He echoes what many of us have been saying for years, that antisocial behaviour and the size of the town centre are major obstacles to regeneration.

www.gazettelive.co.uk

The varied barriers and hurdles to regeneration of town centre

‘If you were building Middlesbrough from scratch, you’d probably build the town centre at about a third to a quarter of the size that it is and it would be thriving’
www.gazettelive.co.uk www.gazettelive.co.uk
 
What a refreshingly honest and accurate assessment from the man who actually speaks to potential developers and investors in Boro. No sugarcoating just plain honesty. Some on here will no doubt tell us it is safe but we have it from the horses mouth that it isn't.
 
When we have a council that has green lighted the destruction of many of our valuable assets.. the town becomes less valuable.

When you have a council that green lights the amount of licences for fast foot take aways on the main road of the high street.. the quality of retail outlets goes down. This isn't rocket science. 'The Parmo Mile' is not attractive to anyone not under the influence of alcohol between the hours of 10pm and 2am on a Friday or Saturday night.

Money that should have been poured into the town for regeneration gets largely wasted and poured into vanity projects the effect of that regeneration is lessened.

The greater issue of anti social behaviour cannot be halted by criminalising homelessness or riding bikes or dim wited cycle lanes with intrusive bollards.. it has to be through job creation.. through outside investment. We have an industrial town built on chemical and steel works.. when those go away call centres and galleries are unable to take up the slack.

There has been no plan. Beside a planned decline.. besides the near constant renaming of the area.. from Teesside to Cleveland to Tees Valley to North Yorkshire.. assets left to ruin or razed.

We have went all in on creating a University town on the cheap. Any sign of history or culture destroyed any chance of innovation or community often suffocated.

It's not the size of the town or the anti social behaviour. It's because of the likes of Mallon and Preston.. the abandonment of Middlesbrough by New Labour and it being used as a political football by unscrupulous by subsequent Conservative politicians and governments.

The whole culture of Middlesbrough is one of compromise, cost cutting and terminal decline. Short term thinking a lack of planning and being honest about it parliamentarians, councillors and directors of regeneration that don't know their asre from their elbow.
 
Hicktonpen10 said:
What a refreshingly honest and accurate assessment from the man who actually speaks to potential developers and investors in Boro. No sugarcoating just plain honesty. Some on here will no doubt tell us it is safe but we have it from the horses mouth that it isn't.
Click to expand...
The horses mouth? More like a jockey riding a pig in a slurry pit and waving his cowboy hat like he's just won the kentucky derby!
 
Norman_Conquest said:
This article on the assessment of Middlesbrough town centre, presented by Richard Horniman, Middlesbrough Council's Regeneration Director, is well worth a read. He echoes what many of us have been saying for years, that antisocial behaviour and the size of the town centre are major obstacles to regeneration.

www.gazettelive.co.uk

The varied barriers and hurdles to regeneration of town centre

‘If you were building Middlesbrough from scratch, you’d probably build the town centre at about a third to a quarter of the size that it is and it would be thriving’
www.gazettelive.co.uk www.gazettelive.co.uk
Click to expand...
D*ck Horniman, a bit like a boy named Sue.
 
When I attend the coffee club, I park in the Cleveland Centre. Today, as I was returning to my car, I saw a drunk sprawled on the ground with a bottle in his hand and a dead pigeon nearby, with blood coming from its head. I looked for a warden, but no one was around.

Most people passing never gave him a second glance.
 
newyddion said:
When we have a council that has green lighted the destruction of many of our valuable assets.. the town becomes less valuable.

When you have a council that green lights the amount of licences for fast foot take aways on the main road of the high street.. the quality of retail outlets goes down. This isn't rocket science. 'The Parmo Mile' is not attractive to anyone not under the influence of alcohol between the hours of 10pm and 2am on a Friday or Saturday night.

Money that should have been poured into the town for regeneration gets largely wasted and poured into vanity projects the effect of that regeneration is lessened.

The greater issue of anti social behaviour cannot be halted by criminalising homelessness or riding bikes or dim wited cycle lanes with intrusive bollards.. it has to be through job creation.. through outside investment. We have an industrial town built on chemical and steel works.. when those go away call centres and galleries are unable to take up the slack.

There has been no plan. Beside a planned decline.. besides the near constant renaming of the area.. from Teesside to Cleveland to Tees Valley to North Yorkshire.. assets left to ruin or razed.

We have went all in on creating a University town on the cheap. Any sign of history or culture destroyed any chance of innovation or community often suffocated.

It's not the size of the town or the anti social behaviour. It's because of the likes of Mallon and Preston.. the abandonment of Middlesbrough by New Labour and it being used as a political football by unscrupulous by subsequent Conservative politicians and governments.

The whole culture of Middlesbrough is one of compromise, cost cutting and terminal decline. Short term thinking a lack of planning and being honest about it parliamentarians, councillors and directors of regeneration that don't know their asre from their elbow.
Click to expand...
Here lies a big part of the problem, the problem that many, usually those that don't know what they are talking about, but will talk about it anyway.

As much as maybe you have fell into the trap that many do, you'd be surprised reading the above comments that actually councils are not actually huge powerful law making organisations.

I suspect that shortermism is one of the biggest problems, electing new councils every 4 years is a problem for many things.

I'll start with your rant about licenses for fast food takeaways, sadly up to quite recently councils had no power to stop them, it was called market forces and councils weren't allowed to get involved, and then a few years ago councils were allowed to put in restrictions for fast-food takeaways- mainly because of the growing obesity problem, in councils "Local Plan" The previous mayor- who sadly as we all know was a populist, declined to produce a new "local plan" so Middlesbrough's is now 8 years out of date. The reason he didn't want to do a new Local Plan was he didn't want to upset local residents in Acklam and on the southern suburbs, Coulby, Marton, Nunthorpe and allocate land for houses, it's what populists are all about, so I guess we should blame the voters and not him. So at that time the local plan was shelved and takeaways were legally allowed to open mainly depending market forces pretend or otherwise.

We, like all towns and cities have huge substance abuse problems, but councils don't cause this, and indeed are powerless to stop it, but we do have to deal with the problems that they cause, same for anti social behavior and criminality, which of course is a police issue but the police are under pressure so the council have to try pick up the slack, even though were under more pressure than the actual police themselves.

In the last 20+ years, council's have been forced into being reactive, our budgets have been slashed and now even the bare minimum is done by us having to rob Peter to pay Paul and decimate our reserves- which we have to legally have.

Councils aren't god or even law makers, we only survive because we have to, we have a legal responsibility to do almost everything that we do and we don't have any control over our income or list of statutory duties or indeed what our residents thinking when some think everything that's going wrong in the world is either because of us and/or our responsibility to fix it.
 
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Back in the day after a night in the town one of the few takeaway opportunities was the Boro Fish Bar.

How times have changed 😕
 
TheLodger said:
Here lies a big part of the problem, the problem that many, usually those that don't know what they are talking about, but will talk about it anyway.

As much as maybe you have fell into the trap that many do, you'd be surprised reading the above comments thinking councils are not actually huge powerful law making organisations.

I suspect that shortermism is one of the biggest problems, electing new councils every 4 years is a problem for many things.

I'll start with your rant about licenses for fast food takeaways, sadly up to quite recently councils had no power to stop them, it was called market forces and councils weren't allowed to get involved, a few years ago councils were allowed to put in restrictions for fast-food takeaways, mainly because of the growing obesity problem in councils "Local Plan" The previous mayor- who sadly as we all know was a populist and declined to produce a new "local plan" Middlesbrough's is now 8 years out of date. The reason he didn't want to do a new Local Plan was he didn't want to upset local residents in Acklam and on the southern suburbs, Coulby, Marton, Nunthorpe and allocate land for houses. So the local plan was shelved and takeaways were legally allowed to open mainly depending market forces.

We, like all towns and cities have huge substance abuse problems, but councils don't cause this, and indeed are powerless to stop it, but we do have to deal with the problems that they cause, same for anti social behavior and criminality, which of course is a police issue but the police are under pressure so the council have to try pick up the slack, even though were under more pressure than the actual police themselves.

In the last 20 years + council's have been forced into being reactive, our budgets have been slashed and new even the bare minimum is done by us having to rob Peter to pay Paul and decimate our reserves- which we have to legally have.

Councils aren't god or even law makers, we survive because we have to, we have a legal responsibility to do almost everything that we do, we don't control our income or list of statutory duties or indeed our residents thinking that everything that's going wrong in the world is either because of us or our responsibility to fix.
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the problems that fall under the remit of the council are exactly that.. and not people speaking about them.
 
TheLodger said:
Incorrect, yes the problems are huge, but often the bigger problems are some people speaking about them, especially when they are totally wrong.
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Teesside Airport, all the housing stock, Cleveland Scientific Institute, licensing, listing.. not totally wrong.

market forces don’t dictate giving away assets, market forces don't dictate don’t turn down planning for future assets.

again not everything.. just everything that falls under the responsibility of the council.

a local plan being eight years out of date suggests that the original local plan wasn’t up to scratch.. long term shortermism?

same problems seem to crop up again and again.. lack of accountability, lack of ownership.. must be someone else’s fault.
 
TheLodger said:
Here lies a big part of the problem, the problem that many, usually those that don't know what they are talking about, but will talk about it anyway.

As much as maybe you have fell into the trap that many do, you'd be surprised reading the above comments that actually councils are not actually huge powerful law making organisations.

I suspect that shortermism is one of the biggest problems, electing new councils every 4 years is a problem for many things.

I'll start with your rant about licenses for fast food takeaways, sadly up to quite recently councils had no power to stop them, it was called market forces and councils weren't allowed to get involved, and then a few years ago councils were allowed to put in restrictions for fast-food takeaways- mainly because of the growing obesity problem, in councils "Local Plan" The previous mayor- who sadly as we all know was a populist, declined to produce a new "local plan" so Middlesbrough's is now 8 years out of date. The reason he didn't want to do a new Local Plan was he didn't want to upset local residents in Acklam and on the southern suburbs, Coulby, Marton, Nunthorpe and allocate land for houses, it's what populists are all about, so I guess we should blame the voters and not him. So at that time the local plan was shelved and takeaways were legally allowed to open mainly depending market forces pretend or otherwise.

We, like all towns and cities have huge substance abuse problems, but councils don't cause this, and indeed are powerless to stop it, but we do have to deal with the problems that they cause, same for anti social behavior and criminality, which of course is a police issue but the police are under pressure so the council have to try pick up the slack, even though were under more pressure than the actual police themselves.

In the last 20+ years, council's have been forced into being reactive, our budgets have been slashed and now even the bare minimum is done by us having to rob Peter to pay Paul and decimate our reserves- which we have to legally have.

Councils aren't god or even law makers, we only survive because we have to, we have a legal responsibility to do almost everything that we do and we don't have any control over our income or list of statutory duties or indeed what our residents thinking when some think everything that's going wrong in the world is either because of us and/or our responsibility to fix it.
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Really glad you took the time to articulate this response - unfortunately the post you were responding too is indeed misinformed about what councils can and cannot realistically do.
 
newyddion said:
Teesside Airport, all the housing stock, Cleveland Scientific Institute, licensing, listing.. not totally wrong.

market forces don’t dictate giving away assets, market forces don't dictate don’t turn down planning for future assets.

again not everything.. just everything that falls under the responsibility of the council.

a local plan being eight years out of date suggests that the original local plan wasn’t up to scratch.. long term shortermism?

same problems seem to crop up again and again.. lack of accountability, lack of ownership.. must be someone else’s fault.
Click to expand...
See, so much misinformation.

Teesside Airport, like it or not is not sustainable, that's sadly a fact. Indeed if money wasn't the issue that it is now then fine, lets subsidise an airport(like we did for 20 years) that services about 2% of the population in favour of buses or trains that can service 50+% of the population! It's choices, I get that some would rather have millions of our money spent on it, rather than them millions spent on a sustainable transport system that's fit for the majority of the people who are paying for it.

Cleveland Scientific institute- sadly this was in private ownership and the council had zero power to stop it's bulldozing, if you own a house or building, you are 100% entitled to knock it down and the council have very little powers to stop you.
No idea what your "Licensing, listing,. not totally wrong" statement is, Council's don't list buildings nor do they have the power to list them, we can request and provide evidence in that request, just like you, as an individual can. I remember the day it happened, Ray Mallon was raging, the council was instructed to request listing and the owner knocked it down at 7am before the listing could be considered.

The original local plan was updated ready to go in 2019, Preston pulled it.

As I said, some people sadly just don't have a clue, but are still happy to provide their opinions on hearsay and just what they read on fakebook.
 
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TheLodger said:
See, so much misinformation.

Teesside Airport, like it or not is not sustainable, that's sadly a fact. Indeed if money wasn't the issue that it is now then fine, lets subsidise an airport(like we did for 20 years) that services about 2% of the population in favour of buses or trains that can service 50+% of the population! It's choices, I get that some would rather have millions of our money spent on it, rather than them millions spent on a sustainable transport system that's fit for the majority of the people who are paying for it.

Cleveland Scientific institute- sadly this was in private ownership and the council had zero power to stop it's bulldozing, if you own a house or building, you are 100% entitled to knock it down and the council have very little powers to stop you.
No idea what your "Licensing, listing,. not totally wrong" statement is, Council's don't list buildings nor do they have the power to list them, we can request and provide evidence in that request, just like you, as an individual can. I remember the day it happened, Ray Mallon was raging, the council was instructed to request listing and the owner knocked it down at 7am before the listing could be considered.

The original local plan was updated ready to go in 2019, Preston pulled it.

As I said, some people sadly just don't have a clue, but are still happy to provide their opinions on hearsay and just what they read on fakebook.
Click to expand...
did the council not deny the change of use application for CSI?

then it was sold.. then it was demolished.

how much was the airport sold for again?
 
TheLodger said:
See, so much misinformation.

Teesside Airport, like it or not is not sustainable, that's sadly a fact. Indeed if money wasn't the issue that it is now then fine, lets subsidise an airport(like we did for 20 years) that services about 2% of the population in favour of buses or trains that can service 50+% of the population! It's choices, I get that some would rather have millions of our money spent on it, rather than them millions spent on a sustainable transport system that's fit for the majority of the people who are paying for it.

Cleveland Scientific institute- sadly this was in private ownership and the council had zero power to stop it's bulldozing, if you own a house or building, you are 100% entitled to knock it down and the council have very little powers to stop you.
No idea what your "Licensing, listing,. not totally wrong" statement is, Council's don't list buildings nor do they have the power to list them, we can request and provide evidence in that request, just like you, as an individual can. I remember the day it happened, Ray Mallon was raging, the council was instructed to request listing and the owner knocked it down at 7am before the listing could be considered.

The original local plan was updated ready to go in 2019, Preston pulled it.

As I said, some people sadly just don't have a clue, but are still happy to provide their opinions on hearsay and just what they read on fakebook.
Click to expand...
I love all your sentences and paragraphs giving your opinion on the airport, however, I would like YOU to tell me YOUR thoughts on the airport and YOUR vision on the airport in the future, if any!!
 
Norman_Conquest said:
When I attend the coffee club, I park in the Cleveland Centre. Today, as I was returning to my car, I saw a drunk sprawled on the ground with a bottle in his hand and a dead pigeon nearby, with blood coming from its head. I looked for a warden, but no one was around.

Most people passing never gave him a second glance.
Click to expand...
Did you take advantage of the availability of the 'South Bank' chicken though?
 
You can tell a lot about an organisation by it’s values.. you can tell pretty quickly if these have been created as a box ticking exercise, it can be clear as day when it has been something they have seen other organisations have.. yet do not understand what they are for, how they are identified and developed or how they might be implemented.

No clearer example have I seen than the values Middlesbrough council claim to represent them and run throughout every operation and process.

Passionate
Integrity
Creative
Collaborative
Focussed

FIVE! straight away that is a red flag.. more values are more better right? lol

two are redundant straight away another two are way off the mark and simply do not apply and are not actionable.

‘Integrity’ is always a red flag in a series of FIVE core values. Stinks of Bull. Acting ethically and transparently.. building trust? ‘Accountability’ is quantifiable and actionable.. vet much needed in MBC

‘Creative’ papering over the cracks or should I say painting over the cracks. while it does not apply to any of the council’s problem solving because it isn’t.. it can apply to superficial rebranding exercises.. where change is seen visually but not systemically.

‘Innovation’ would be much more appropriate and something that can genuinely be seen in Middlesbrough’s history. It can be attached to problem solving meaning multiple solutions can be looked at even if they maybe considered unconventional. Again much needed. Creativity with continuous improvement.

‘Collaborative‘ - somewhat redundant and ironic given that MBC was born out of Cleveland County Council.. if this was genuine it could lead to massive time and cost savings.. but it isn’t.
 
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