Questions for the council: What happened to the “eight principles”?

The 2019 City Plan Ladywood Report (Appendix 3 of the 2019 February BCC Report to Cabinet: pp 4 – 5) and councillors’ communications in October and December 2019 stated the eight agreed principles the Council had issued and within which development partners had work. These principles were:

1. To secure high quality, sustainable new homes as part of a well-designed neighbourhood
2. To provide a safe and attractive network of connected public open spaces and pedestrian routes
3. To create a new local centre with facilities and amenities to serve the local community
4. To enable the enhancement of the canal through improved access and greater levels of utility and interface with development
5. To create improved connections across the Middleway including boulevarding
6. To create a complementary mix of commercial and other uses to support a vibrant active neighbourhood
7. New, high quality social housing
8. Ensuring that the existing community is retained and involved in the development of the new neighbourhood

We note that only three of these principles – numbers 1, 2 and 6 – are mentioned in June 23 BCC Report to Cabinet as the “series of objectives which will be integral to meeting the ambition to transform this part of the city centre” (2023 Full Business Case. Appendix 2: A3).

The remaining five, and notably the creation of a “new local centre with facilities and amenities to serve the local community” (no.3), the provision of “new, high quality social housing”, (no.7) and the council commitment to ensure “that the existing community is retained and involved in the development of the new neighbourhood” (no.8), do not appear in any of the documents voted on by the council in June 2023.

Shall we then deduce that neither the developer, nor the council, nor even the community’s democratic representatives in the council are committed to serving the omitted principles?