AFTER all the loud protests against the proposed planning law changes last year it was hardly reported when the new law took effect on March 27.

There has been no stampede to build on our green spaces so far.

Although I feel sure that most locals realise that our local recovery has to be led by a resurgence of our property market, I remain utterly convinced that they would prefer a total upgrade of our rundown areas, including the town centre, instead of the wanton destruction of our cherished green spaces.

What the successful Hopkinsons developments has done for Birkby, the David Brown and St Luke’s sites can do for Crosland Moor.

On top of this, there is scope for the new Crosland Heights garden village on the 60 acre former Standard Fireworks site, now up for sale.

Ghulam Rasool, with his fabulous redevelopment of 44 Westgate, has illustrated that the future of our charismatic St Georges’s Quarter should be upmarket residential. Plans to revamp The George Hotel are already well underway.

Several large builders have told me that they would like to create an upmarket residential development on the six acre old Kirklees College site, featuring the listed old hospital, provided the owners will sell at a realistic price and the appropriate planning permission given.

Our property market, both residential and commercial, is being stifled because vendors are reluctant to accept that their property is not worth what it used to be, or what they feel it should be worth.

It is effectively worth the highest bid and the best way to achieve this quickly is through auction.

Properties are already achieving very realistic prices at our well attended local auctions, such that our estate agents are offering ‘no sale no fee.’

Not only is it now worth a try, but many vendors have been pleasantly surprised. One vendor, about to emigrate, was prepared to take less than £100,000 for his £119,000 priced Meltham home. Without a buyer, in last minute desperation, he achieved £108,000 at auction.

When the derelict shop at 1 Stile Common Road, Primrose Hill was auctioned with a guide price of £15,000, I didn’t stop laughing until the hammer dropped at £38,000.

For long abandoned properties blighting whole communities Calderdale Council is issuing Section 103 notices of compulsory auction under the 1925 property Act. They did the owner of 30 Langfield Street, Elland, a big favour, by securing for him £35,000 for a house which was dropping to bits.

If it works in Calderdale, it must surely work here.

The derelict side of St John’s Road is a suitable candidate for a Section 103 to form the St Johns Gateway linking Birkby with our St Georges Quarter.

It has cut price shopping at Aldi and Tesco on their doorstep – or for the class conscious, a short taxi ride to Sainsbury’s to buy the same things for more money.

Another suitable case would have been the cemetery lodge at Blacker Road, but unfortunately the owners are going to voluntary auction and so they will not need to issue themselves with a Section 103.

Should our green spaces be obliterated, while our town crumbles to dust, I feel quite sure that very many will be demanding a detailed explanation, under the Freedom of Information Act, from the Kirklees Council leader Clr Mehboob Khan.

Stephen Priest

Huddersfield

Well done David

ON behalf of everyone who was involved with the now closed Huddersfield Royal Infirmary Breast Clinic Appeal may I add our congratulations to your very appropriate remarks on David Armitage’s well deserved OBE award.

Throughout our existence David, always supported by his wife, Carol, never failed to help when we looked for help. I’m sure that the same is the case with many other local charities.

He has always been a busy man in a very competitive business environment but always found time to listen to our requests.

It wasn’t only the fact that he raised a small fortune for us, but David is a great motivator and we always came away from meetings with batteries re-charged.

Our best wishes go to David and Carol – long may they carry on supporting the very worthy charities that serve this town so well.

John Woodhead

Former chairman HRI Breast Clinic Appeal

Mortality rates

THE nursing union report (June 15) on a north-south divide didn’t mention the time period which the data referred to.

If Calderdale is currently (perhaps 2012-13) 117th in some premature mortality league, where was it in 2006?

Time isn’t the only factor to be clarified. Does Calderdale climb the table if smokers are excluded?

Trickier still – and likely to be a really unpopular theme – what does medical science tell us about life expectancy across cultures?

Is it predictable with great accuracy for all 40-year-old males born in upper-class Brighton or 10-year-old females brought up in some depressing Dundee suburb?

TC

Huddersfield

Harold’s schooldays

ONCE again Colin Vause displays his ignorance by describing Harold Wilson as an ex Royds Hall secondary modern lad.

Certainly the former Prime Minister did attend Royds Hall, but in those days it was a boys’ Grammar School. He later went on to study at Oxford where he obtained an excellent degree.

Only a couple of weeks ago Mr Vause took exception to mental hospitals being called asylums, seemingly finding this term offensive.

If he took the trouble to look up the meaning of the word in the dictionary he would see that, far from being disparaging, the word asylum means “a sanctuary or retreat, a place of refuge for vulnerable groups of people such as the insane; the protection afforded by such places” which, if I recall, was fairly clear in the article he read.

Gettit Wright

Marsh

Cameron in his pyjamas

HEADLINE news – the Prime Minister sometimes works in his jim-jams.

Wow, that piece of reported news has changed my life – I think not.

Who gives a monkey about his jim-jam habits as he’s got more serious jobs to be doing like trying to bridge the gap between the rich and poor and stopping the legalised mugging of ordinary shop floor workers by bosses who don’t seem to want to give pay risers anymore

I don’t want to know about the Prime Minister’s jim-jams – just give me the news that matters.

mike warren-madden

Honley