A Meeting With Bradford

For a number of months the Wesley Place Project Group tried to get a meeting with Bradford Asset Management to find out what was happening to Wesley Place and the library buildings.

As representatives of the Wesley Place Project Group, Ward Councillor Adrian Naylor and myself (Peter Ford) finally managed to get a meeting with Bradford Asset Management on Thursday 7 April 2016. The meeting took place in Bradford in the old city library building, the objective was to find out what the situation was with Wesley Place and the old Silsden Library building.

The following was emailed to the group on 8 April 2016, after the meeting. For the record, I have decided to make the following email  public.

Hi All,

Adrian and myself attended a meeting at the old central library building in Bradford yesterday to discuss Wesley Place and the Old Library building. I regret to have to inform you the sale by auction of these properties will go ahead in June.

We met Steph Moore and Shelagh O’Neill from Asset Management, Sheila informed us this was just a courtesy meeting as we had requested a meeting but the decision had been taken to sell off the buildings.

Councillors Mallinson and Rickard, and some unknown Labour representative, had been consulted apparently and had no objections to the disposal of the buildings (Adrian was not invited to this meeting).

Adrian went through the timeline of our efforts to secure the buildings for the community but it was clear our timeline of events and Bradford’s varied considerably. During the past year there have been changes to the personnel in Asset Management and something seems to have been lost in the transition, I think they had been expecting something from us as we had been expecting a meeting to discuss the project, well that was their excuse.

They saw our project as a threat to Silsden Town Hall.

Looking around the refurbished, prime location, “Old Central Library” building it was obvious a great deal of money has been spent on the building before the council moved in, and looking out of the window over Bradford, and the mirror pool there were lots of other council buildings. There were also lots of empty office blocks and empty shops. I think Bradford is desperate for money and they had no intention of selling Wesley Place and The Library to us, and for the last year they have been using delaying tactics.

For the auction the plot has been divided into two. The plots have been withdrawn from the April auction date because the legal packs were not ready, probably because when asked yesterday they still didn’t have a guide price and I suspect the way the plots have been divided there would not have been any access to one of the plots. Even if we had a guide price (and the money) the fact the properties will be auctioned separately to the highest bidder means we could not guarantee to secure both properties, and we would need both for the project to be successful. The properties will be auctioned in June.

I think the time has now come to move on and for those that are interested put our efforts into replacing the park pavilion to make a facility “fit for purpose”.

Best wishes,

Peter