Category: Uncategorized

Re-imagining the Harris Museum

Jon Finch has been given the big role of re-imagining the Harris as a tourist and cultural destination for the region. The Harris is a Grade 1 listed building containing a huge collection of items and has always been a, no, ‘the’ major feature of Preston. The task is to take it a step up.

What will this take? The Harris already is a more substantial cultural attraction than that of any similar sized town or city in the region. Only Manchester and Liverpool beat it and they have single subject galleries and museums bigger than the Harris which is a broader scoped attraction. Re-imagining might need to take in more buildings and more nearby attractions to make that step up. As well as looking at what is exhibited. This is an exciting project, we look forward to learning more.Harris

See the council website for full details: http://www.preston.gov.uk/news/2015/sep/jon-s-man-re-imagine-harris/

Fishergate Centre Improvement

The fairly new mall next to Preston Railway Station is to be given a facelift subject to Council approval.  The £25m development will include a Vue Cinema, new restaurant area and better links into the car park.

It’s an interesting plan to have a restaurant areas in what is a more relaxed spot than most and the cinema can present an alternative activity.

Since Curry’s, Hughes and the Discount Book Store closed the centre has seemed to be reduced as an attraction, this should help recover it.

http://www.fishergatedevelopment.co.uk/

Fishergate Centre Plan

Preston Bus Station Winning Design

Preston Bus Station’s winning design.  Not the one we’d have preferred as it looks a bit conventional and lacking impact.  Also it sits too close to the Bus Station.  A Grade 2 building is meant to be protected. One of the features of the bus station is its lines which are shortened by the addition.  Also the extension presents a plain wall to the front of the building which will be a cold and lonely place.

Preston Bus Station Winning Design

Preston Guild Wheel

We thought we’d do a bit of walking on the 21 miles long Preston Guild Wheel circular trail.    To date the only section we’ve walked is from Avenham Park to the Docks or vice versa. Although it’s not exactly tranquil it’s quite decent walking with good river bridge views.

The most obvious start is in Avenham Park and walk either to the Docks or to Brockholes Wildlife Trust Reserve.  Although getting back from Brockholes probably favours parking there and doing a section in either direction and doubling back.

Walking along the Lancaster Canal Millenium Link and north is another decent section.

There are stretches that not walker friendly:  the A6 at Broughton and D’Urton Lane, the section from the Crematorium to the M6 access road and Riversway. Also the route is intersected by main roads.  But otherwise there are some good stretches for fairly peaceful walking and well finished paths.

So now it’s seek out start and finish points with either a bus service or car park.

UCLan – how things change

In February UCLan unveiled ambitious plans to better integrate the university into Preston City Centre getting rid of the roundabout at Adelphi.  The plans have wide local political support and will start with the new Engineering Block next year.

Having been a part-time engineering student at the Harris College in the 1960’s and early 70’s it’s hard to comprehend the growth in full time student numbers.  The Harris used to offer City & Guilds, HNC and HND and the students I recall were mainly from the British Aircraft Corporation, British Gas, Norweb and Dorman Smith.  HNC students did one day and one night a week, HND students full time study with work placements.

Graphic Artists were in the building off Corporation Street and Fine Artists in the Avenham Institute Building.  At some stage we were based in Trinity School which seemed a bit like a prison camp.  In the 70’s you could still park your car in most places in the town centre and getting a spot in the college car park was possible if you arrived early enough.

House Price Ascent

House prices in Preston fell in 2014 according to the Halifax.  Recent forecasts though are saying that the North West is likely to increase in 2015 as the London property market treads ground and prospects for improved transport infrastructure in the north start to look better.

It is said that High Speed Rail to the Channel Tunnel has had a big effect increasing house prices in areas where stations are located.  The recent talk of High Speed Rail in the north, HS2 and HS3,  is having an effect although they will take some time to be built.  The electrification of lines in the North West between Manchester, Preston, Blackpool, Wigan,  Liverpool creates a more integrated system and improves potential for services.

House Price Decline

Unfortunate to see Preston named in the bottom 10 of a national list.  Today’s Times says Preston has the 8th largest decrease in house prices in 2014 with a reduction of 2% to an average of £151,071, according to the Halifax.

The Lancashire towns seem to feature in the list with Bury having the biggest decline, although the north west as a whole didn’t come out badly.

It’s never easy to know how realistic these indices are.  There are several and they’re often based on what that particular organisation did.  Even if it was based on the total number of houses sold in a year, such as the Land Registry data,  it could be effected if most sales happened to be in a certain sector perhaps because of a special grant at that value.

Now if Preston was top it would of course be a true reflection.

Preston’s new University Engineering Centre

University of Central Lancashire, UCLan, recently announced a new Engineering Innovation Centre to be opened in 2018.   The new building will be located near the Adelphi close to the heart of the UCLan Campus. It will contain equipment to enable technology demonstration and specialist work with an objective of producing engineers trained with a broad scope of relevant technical and personal skills and the ability to use teamwork and project management. The centre will also liaise with local schools to promote engineering and provide the skills that will be needed in the future.

UCLan already provides courses in aerospace and motor sport, robotics, electrical and mechanical engineering.  This new centre will enable specialist and project based work and support local industry also new courses in oil and gas safety and aerospace engineering.

This sounds an interesting scheme, we frequently hear that companies like Rolls Royce Aero Engines have to recruit qualified engineers from Germany.  There is a skills gap in the UK caused largely by the decline in engineering base since 1950, and its lack of modern image.   Yet working on unmanned aircraft and cars, creating apps and devices we don’t yet know about is surely an exciting prospect for anyone with a willingness to seek the future.  It’s vital to the UK to keep abreast with technology if we’re to create jobs needing specialist skills with good salaries, and pay our way in the world.

UCLan Engineering Innovation Centre planned for 2018
UCLan Engineering Innovation Centre planned for 2018

Preston City Region

Preston is home to Lancashire County Council and perhaps that is why Preston has never rocked the boat and become a Unitary Council such as Blackburn & Darwen and Blackpool.  Talk of devolution to the north of England opens the doors to many options and perhaps is one reason why it’s unlikely to happen.

Lancashire already has the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership and a City Deal to focus investment covering Preston and it’s surrounding area.   Recently Manchester has been given bigger powers and control of budgets in return for having an elected Mayor.  Could this be done for Preston and in effect would this be more like splitting Lancashire into west, east and perhaps north.  With Preston being the centre of the western part.

The metropolitan boroughs such as Wigan and Bolton are effectively single tier government.  With Wigan having 75 councillors by combining what was formerly 14 separate councils.   Greater Manchester is managed by a Combined Authority of a representative councillor from each borough.

Whether dividing Lancashire into Preston, Lancaster and Burnley regions would provide advantage isn’t clear.  It would reduce elections if Lancashire was run like Greater Manchester.  There are personal attachments to the name Lancashire so sentiment might play a part as much as logic.

The rural areas of such a region would be Conservative while Preston itself would be Labour.  Who would hold the balance? This creates another difficulty as the strongly Conservative rural areas would not want to effectively give up their autonomy if it could be outvoted in a bigger council and vice versa.  Wigan and its merged constituents is almost entirely Labour so there is no political obstacle.

It could also be said that local accountability is better based upon Lancashire and the smaller local councils that we have now.

Preston Bus Station £1 buy out and £20m investment

Lancashire County Council bought Grade II listed Preston Bus Station for £1 and this week have announced plans for its redevelopment.  These include:

  • Reducing the number of bus bays from 80 to 40.
  • Using only the east side for buses.
  • Making the car parking spaces bigger.
  • Using the west side for a Youth Zone including outdoor pitches and areas for music, art and craft.

The total cost could be £23m including:

  • Repairs are expected to cost £6.4m and conversion to a smaller station £7.4m.
  • The Youth Zone, £6m.
  • Improvements to the apron £2m and highway improvement £1.5m including improvements to linking the bus and railway stations.

These are interesting plans although pushing the bus station behind a sports complex makes it remote and quite a trail from the life of the centre. Although being next to the bus station should also be a bonus for the youth complex.   The plans for the Guild Hall should also make use of the bus station and it might be hoped that the Guild Hall Arcade will be modified to provide a comfortable space for moving between the bus station and the Town Centre.  Also the underground passageways to the bus station are no longer necessary.

Preston Guild Hall £1 Buy Out

The Guild Hall has been bought by local businessman Simon Rigby and a large trust fund set up to support arts and culture in Preston.  There are plans to invest over £1m in the Guild Hall to improve the entrance and its facilities including a new restaurant, with the objective of making it one of  Lancashire’s main entertainment complexes.  It will become part of the Villa Group which is primarily known for The Villa in Wrea Green.

Preston Council previously ran the Guild Hall and was providing a £1m a year subsidy forcing them to consider closing the venue in 2015, 42 years after it was opened in 1973.  The Guild Hall stands next to the Bus Station which is also subject of a £1 buy out and plans to spend £20m are being revealed by Lancashire County Council.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Simon Rigby bought out an electricity metering business in 1996 for £1.  The company, Spice plc, bought out several other companies and was itself bought out by Private Equity investors in 2010 for £251m, of which Simon had a share.

Well done to Simon and good luck with the Guild Hall.

Management Redundancies at BAE and Lancashire County Council

In the last few weeks BAE SYSTEMS announced between 150 and 450 management job losses at their Warton plant.  Lancashire County Council announced 150 management job losses.

BAE said they hope to re-deploy some people to other parts of the business and both organisations will be looking for volunteers.

Both organisations have reduced headcount in the last few years.  It’s often difficult to establish how many people have left an organisation as out-sourcing may reduce the numbers directly employed.  Sometimes the jobs remain but the staff change employer .  Also many organisations have natural wastage and people under threat are allowed to take other roles.

It can be a traumatic time,  although a redundancy package at the right stage of life can be a very good thing for some.  Some job shuffling to allow this to happen is the decent way to go about it.

Transport Investment around Preston

On top of the Northern Hub which will deliver electrified rail for the rail links from Preston to Manchester via Bolton and via Wigan and to Blackpool we have fresh discussion on a ‘northern powerhouse’.

The Northern Powerhouse is the name given to a scheme that is intended to help revitalise the north of England and to rebalance the level of investment between the north and south.   It will link 5 major cities of the north with ‘high speed’ rail, meaning over 125mph not the full standard over 200mph track but still possibly designated ‘HS3’.  This will be on top of the high speed rail system HS2.

Unfortunately neither HS2 or ‘HS3’ reach Preston.  Although Preston will get benefits from HS2 such as 30 minutes off the current London timing of just over 2hrs.

Also locally there is the Preston and Lancashire City Deal which will add some £400m to the local economy for rail, road and housing.  This will provide local improvements to complement the bigger national improvements. The test is whether Preston can or should become a part of the Northern Powerhouse and what it offers for Preston and Preston offers it.

Towns like Blackburn and Blackpool will also want to know how they can benefit rather than being satellite towns.  Preston has the benefit of being on the M6 and the West Coast Main Line although further south the town of Wigan is closer to the edge of the planned systems investment.  Preston has a skills benefit being an existing major administration  and education centre and having a long term advanced technology industry in aerospace and vehicles.

It does appear that all major regional investments lead to Manchester.  This has some benefits to Preston but we need to get extensions to these routes to take in the hub of Lancashire, which is Preston.

Improvements in Preston

Preston Bus Station and the Guild Hall have been sold for £1 each.  Preston’s prize buildings of the late 60’s, early 70’s will live on.  Many buildings go through a phase of being fashionably attractive, then reminiscent of an unfortunate fashion, then become diamonds exhibiting all the style of an era.  These sales will enable these buildings to perhaps reach that third age and become immortal and classic.  Like the Harris and Miller buildings.

The new paving on Fishergate is an improvement as well as the changes to traffic movement.  This is will be extended when Preston gets its share of the £234m the government has allocated to Lancashire.

The sale of the Guild Hall to a local businessman for £1 is said to imminently start £1m of improvements.  Not before time.  The Guild Hall isn’t the most attractive of buildings on the outside but inside it’s quite open and airy, in need of a lick of paint and cleaning.   Let’s hope the Tourist Information Office remains, it’s quite a decent place, worth a look.

David Moyes sacked from Manchester United – all the best to a great manager

David Moyes ex-PNE player and manager could be said to be Made in Preston.  His record as manager at Deepdale with Chairman Bryan Gray was their best for several decades. The period was one of transformation into play-off specialists, but never quite making the very top, and updating the ground.  Some are now saying with hindsight that his record at Everton was similar in that they never quite made it.  Although they were consistently on the fringe with little money to be spent in a time when money makes everything.

It was unfortunate that he was asked to put on the boots of Goliath at Manchester United and that the team had a lot of players who were past their best.  It was unfortunate that the Chief Executive stood down at the same time as Moyes arrived and new Chief Executive appears to be mainly a businessman rather than a soccer club supremo.  It could be that his style wasn’t the attacking, free flowing one needed or maybe he felt a bit intimidated and that time would bring it on.

It must be sickening for someone who has strived so hard to be in this situation.  Let’s hope he’s not too downhearted as there can be no doubt he’s a great manager who will be back.

Preston Draft Master Plan – 5,000 new homes

 

Preston Draft Master Plan - 5,000 new homes
Preston Draft Master Plan – 5,000 new homes

The Preston Draft Master Plan will be published for consultation on 20th January 2014.

It is said to contain plans for 5,000 homes in north west Preston along the south side of the M55 motorway.  These will be in the form of a ‘garden city’ which might be influenced by new regulations being promoted.

The new Regulations are expected to require that developments must have ponds and streams to absorb heavy rain so it isn’t all dumped immediately into the drains causing them to overflow and flood.  It’s proposed that maintenance of the ponds and streams will be paid by an annual levy on the residents in the new developments.

This area is good countryside blighted by the M55 which provides the excuse for not feeling too strongly about it.  Although it’s well away from employment areas so will be in need of roads with commuters expected to pile onto the M55 or into Preston Centre.  From that point of view 5,000 houses, perhaps 13,000 people, sounds excessive.

It’s downwind of the nuclear processing plant as well.

Whether the next step might be to build north of the M55 will cause concern about impacting the pleasingly rural feel of Woodplumpton.  Also surely it isn’t a plan to reduce the solid Conservative majority for that parliamentary seat by changing its character.

Preston Council and Central Lancashire City websites contain the documentation leading up to the decisions and probably will contain the draft Master Plan later this month.  There is a lot of reading there, could do with a simple summary.

Lancashire City Deal let’s see the action

An impressive Business Insight supplement in The Times newspaper, Tuesday 10th December, covering Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire’s big City Deal and Leyland Trucks.

The articles give a very rosy, unquestioning picture but it is said infrastructure and education are key investments to enable prosperity, and that is what is happening.

This City Deal is worth £434m and has a target over 10 years to generate 20,000 new jobs, £1bn in gross added value, 17,420 new homes, £2.3bn in leveraged commercial value, some school and health facilities.  On the face of it this is growth although it isn’t clear if it makes up for any shrinkage anywhere.

It’s complemented by Enterprise Zones, Superfast Lancashire broadband project, Boost Business Lancashire and a host of local initiatives.

£334m will be for infrastructure and include four major road schemes such as the Warton link to the M55 and 4,000 homes, Broughton By-pass and 1,400 homes, Penwortham By-pass, South Ribble distributor road and 2,700 homes.  An additional £100m from the Lancashire Pension Fund will be invested in housing and development.

The article says Leyland Trucks are seeking to position Leyland at the forefront of building up a major automotive supply chain in Lancashire.  In this it is supported by the MD, Ron Augustyn, being a member of the government’s Automotive Council.  No doubt many of the parts are imported so adding to the local supply chain should bring benefits to the plant, let’s hope it succeeds in that.  Some 40% of output from the assembly plant at  Leyland Trucks is exported.

The article also covers Boost Business Lancashire which is £7.2m from the European Regional Development Fund with the aim to grow the local economy by £20m and create 1,200 new jobs.  235 businesses have signed up to it this year.

City Deals put the onus onto the locality to give its best shot, it could be said that in this it beats the scrapped Regional Development Agencies in being more local.  The City Deal covers the roads, houses and some schooling and health.  The electrification of most of the railway in the region has already been announced.  Let’s start to see some action.

Heritage lost for a pittance – CCK1

Disappointing that Preston Council is selling an element of its inheritance for a pittance. The old registration suffix numbers CK and RN are part of the symbols of Preston.  For a few pounds the council is going to sell car registration CCK1. Does Civic Pride exist in the council chamber. It seems not.

Preston symbolic registration number CCK1 to be sold for a pittance.
Preston symbolic registration number CCK1 to be sold for a pittance.

More Preston Bus Station Positive News

More positive thinking about the bus station.  It is expected that Lancashire County Council will buy the station from Preston City Council at a give away price. LCC have funds for a new bus station that they are expected to divert to refurbishment along with funding available to listed buildings from the Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage.

No plans have been announced for the refurbishment.  Although the listing gives clues on what can be done.  The listing includes the ramps so they’re unlikely to change without debate.  The outer shell and interior fittings are listed but their form is still good.   Whereas the internal ramps need widening and the lifts, stairs and toilets must surely be improved.

What can be done about the subway and the ramp to the Guild Hall and access across the bus area to give them a hint of the 21st Century?