I CANNOT remain silent any longer and will take whatever consequences for speaking out.

I refer to three major town centre proposals about which I and many councillors have had little detail but all of which have a profound impact on the town centre.

For too long councillors who sit on the Planning Committee have been constrained from speaking on planning matters before the report comes to committee. This is because under the previous Labour Government John Prescott ruled out comments as being premature and to do so then barred us from speaking and voting. Conservatives opposed this directive and Eric Pickles has since said we are no longer debarred. Despite this a colleague was recently taken to task for speaking out about wind farms because he was alleged to have had a pre-conceived view. As the matter has not yet been tested in the courts it remains a grey area but here goes.

The plans for the Town Hall are in my view totally unacceptable. Not only will the intended openings on to Victoria Square destroy the wonderful façade of the building there is a real, practical issue. How can a café operate when events like Remembrance Sunday, Armed Forces Day, Genocide Day and other solemn acts take place? All are at times when the businesses would be open. As one of only two councillors recorded as attending the recent consultation open day I raised this with an external planning consultant engaged by the council who glibly replied that “Opening times could be controlled by a planning condition”. We all know how such conditions are enforced and usually then overturned at a later date by the Council. And the fountains? Will they need to be re-located again at a future date after so much cost?

On the matter of Newport Street which the Council describes as, creating a boulevard. Again this may have been considered by the Labour run cabal known as the Cabinet or Executive, but most councillors know little other that what we have seen in the press. A suggestion for a glass canopy was made by a leading businessman – after all it does rain in Bolton from time to time - but this seems not to have been progressed. Suggestions of painting shops with multi coloured stripes will make it look like toytown. In addition it will merely draw attention to appalling condition of the upper floors of shops which were due to be demolished for the second phase of the Arndale Centre in the late 1960s. And what about the trees so wantonly chopped down or the Charity Canopy demolished in the dead of night? My dictionary describes a boulevard as being ‘a wide usually tree-lined road’. It does go on to say a boulevard is ‘often built on the ruins..’ so perhaps it is not too inappropriate as a description after all!

As for suggestions to build a student village on Cheadle Square, which Councillor Morris seems to want, this would be to destroy one of only two green spaces in the town centre, the other being Bolton Parish Church at the other side of the town. There are other sites where such a development could take place to enhance the town not destroy it.

Where has civic pride gone? Who supports these plans which seem designed only to destroy what little of our heritage remains?

There may be those who do not share my views. Others may think I should have remained silent until later. I disagree with both and feel I have a moral duty to speak out now.

Councillor John Walsh OBE

Astley Bridge Ward

Bolton MBC