RIVERLIGHTS PROJECT FLAWED
By Peter Steer

The Riverlights project is not only about the redevelopment of the bus station and the construction of multi-storey buildings, but also the re-alignment of St Alkmund's Way, Station Approach, Traffic Street and the Morledge. The gyratory system around the Cock Pitt multi-storey car park island will disappear, and these roads will then form a complex series of intersections, controlled by traffic lights and inevitably resulting in slower-moving traffic. Outline planning permission for this amended road layout was given in 2001. The revised Riverlights project, recently submitted for outline planning permission, has doubled the retail/leisure floor area of the 2001 scheme.

The proposed hotel has been replaced with flats and an office block that could house around 700 people. The ambitious proposal for a 3,000 seat cinema has been abandoned. The 2003 traffic assessment submitted with this application concludes that these changes will not generate any increase in traffic! This assessment also omits the possible effects of the Westfield development (2,000 car parking spaces added to the existing Eagle Centre) and the consequences of Connecting Derby. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought a bus station was where buses dropped off passengers, picked up new passengers and set off again.

The 2003 traffic assessment for Riverlights says: "It is assumed that there will be no further (traffic) growth after 2003, due to the congested nature of the adjacent highway as agreed with officers of Derby City Council". On this basis and with the year-on-year traffic growth from 2003 to the completion of Riverlights in 2005, plus the errors and omissions set out above, the adjacent highway is going to be jammed solid with traffic, day-in and day-out. So how do you get a bus into the bus station and how do you get it out? How do you get to work on time or reach Pride Park before half-time?

Until the various traffic schemes proposed for Derby are considered as a whole and viable solutions found for the traffic problems of the city, the Cock Pitt gyratory system must be left as it is (warts and all) for it is the lynchpin in the city's traffic flows.

Pat Woolley, of Maple Avenue, Littleover, has complained to the Local Government Ombudsman about the way Derby City Council has given its backing to the £83m scheme. She claims that the council has not fully considered the objections that were made and that there have been some "procedural irregularities". The proposals, by Nottingham-based developer Metro Holst, would transform the banks of the River Derwent, where bars, restaurants, offices and apartments would be built. The plans also include building a bus station to replace Derby's current 1930s bus station in the Morledge, which has been fiercely defended by campaigners, including Mrs Woolley, who is a member of the Bus Station Action Group. Derby City Council backed the Riverlights scheme in October 2003.

The planning application has now been referred to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott because it is a departure from the Local Plan, the blueprint for development in the city. Mrs Woolley has made a number of complaints to the ombudsman about this issue. She claims that injustice has been caused because the development would create an unsafe route under Holmes Bridge between the railway station and the bus station, and that it would increase pollution from volumes of traffic as well as fumes from the underground car park. She has sent the ombudsman a copy of a letter she has written to a range of people, including Mr Prescott, Derby South MP Margaret Beckett, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

She says that the council did not consult people on whether or not the Riverside Gardens open space was surplus to their needs and that, as an objector, she was not notified of the date and time of a planning meeting about the scheme on October 23. "The council has disregarded what we've said and there are far too many issues that haven't been resolved," said Mrs Woolley. Richard Smalley, chairman of the council's planning committee, said, "Mrs Woolley has every right to question the decision of the council through this avenue. We don't deny that this is a very important development for the city and I believe that we have given it proper consideration."

In 1996, Derby City Council signed a deal with Nottingham-based developer Metro Holst. In October, 1997, the council granted outline planning permission for scheme that involved demolishing and rebuilding the bus station. This sparked mass protest, a 15,000-name petition to save the Art Deco bus station and an action group was formed. The plans were revised several times, and in November, 2000, Metro Holst submitted outline proposals for a 10-screen cinema, hotel, nightclub, health centre, restaurants and bars. The hotel and cinema elements were dropped in 2001.

In June 2003, fresh plans, which included 150 flats and an office block, were submitted. They were approved on October 23. As this plan departs from land use allocated in the Local Plan, the city's development blueprint, it has been called in by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. His office will decide on whether the council can approve the outline plan, or whether it should be determined by a Government inspector.