Star date: 26th July 2011 

TOP STREETS DEMOLITIONS CONTINUE WITH NO FUTURE

Houses in the Top Streets of Higher Broughton are currently being demolished with no clear plans for the future of the site. While Salford Council has consistently maintained that the "project" will "go ahead as planned", the Council's own Development Plan shows absolutely nothing for the Top Streets during the next twenty years.

This fits the picture in Charlestown and Langworthy where residents have been kicked out of their houses for no reason at all.

Full story here…

The bulldozers continue to erase the Top Streets of Higher Broughton, house by house, with the latest casualty being the beautiful old Dairy on Leicester Road.

Salford City Council has always maintained that there is a plan for the Top Streets, that it's only a matter of time before developers move in and start building new houses.

Only last month, after a public funding application for the area was turned down, Salford Council Leader, John Merry, told the Salford Star (click here), that "We are confident we will be able to find an alternative source of funding to ensure this project is able to go ahead as planned…"

Yet, according to Salford Council's own Development Plan document (see here) for the future of housing over the next twenty years, there is no clear project, no outline planning plans, nothing.

Within the Development Plan, or Core Strategy, plans for housing in every area of Salford are detailed down to individual streets. And while the accompanying Core Strategy Housing Supply (see here) lists 62 demolitions in the Top Streets, it offers nothing in the way of why those houses are actually being demolished.

Almost five years ago, Top Streets resident Guy Griffiths, who has been questioning the plans and motives of Salford Council in the area since it first announced the `regeneration', predicted that his neighbours' houses were being bulldozed only to be replaced with crofts and knee rails. It looks like his prediction is coming true.

Meanwhile, in Seedley South, where there was a massive campaign to save houses around Nansen Street, Norway Street and Kara Street, only four houses are planned to replace the 52 houses that were eventually demolished.

In Charlestown, 184 houses in seven streets next to the River Irwell  (Thursfield Street, Reading Street, Chinley Street, Wainman Street, Suffolk Street, Levens Street and part of Littleton Road) have been cleared and almost demolished (see here and see here).

Miller Homes stated last year that "Work is ongoing to agree proposals for detailed planning applications and site remediation work that we anticipate will be achieved and concluded during 2011, at which point house building is able to commence."

Despite having outline planning permission there are no plans that we can see for any houses being built here for the next twenty years.

Three sites. Three communities broken up and displaced. Hundreds of homes demolished. No clear plans to build any new houses.

Now, the Top Streets demolitions might be tested in court to see if they are legal (see here)

For further Salford Star stories on the Top Streets click here and follow the links