Updated 9 October 2021
The planning application is now available to view on the Leeds Planning portal here. Comments in support or opposing the application can be submitted up until Friday 22 October 2021.
Aspiring Communities (AC), the Muslim led charity that owns the Ice Pak site on Barkly Road in Beeston, has announced that it is scaling back its plans for the site.
The charity won a long running planning battle for their controversial plans to develop a community centre on the former factory site. Planning permission was eventually granted by a Planning Inspector in June 2017 following a public enquiry, as we reported at the time.
The project they have permission for involves 3,000 m² of development including an underground car park. AC has now announced that they will not use the large white building at the rear of the site, but instead demolish it to make room for surface car parking. They will instead refurbish the existing buildings to the front of the site.
In a leaftlet issued to local residents, AC said they had reconsidered their plans “as a result of the Covid pandemic and constructive feedback over the years.” They went on:
“We are now planning to significantly reduce the size and scale of the proposed development … We will still be able to fulfil the original community needs with minimal disruption and inconvenience to the local community.”
South Leeds Life understands that AC’s new planning application has been submitted to Leeds City Council, but it has not yet appeared on the Council’s planning portal.
I read with interest as a local resident to this new plan of Aspiring Communities to reduce the size of the building on Barkly Road. I don’t think you have to be Einstein to realise that the reduction is due to the vast amount of money it would take to build, as the AC hierarchy stated some years ago that it would cost around 7 million pounds to convert, all through charity donations. As the years have gone by, building material costs have gone through the roof, causing much delay. Apparently, (I overheard), donations totalled a million after 3 or 4 years so it would have taken forever to build the original plan. I also read in the leaflet handed out by AC, that the demolition of the ‘white building’, was to start the third week in September but there has been no sighting of any workmen on the site as of 8th October. If this area is to be a large car park, will it be concrete or asphalt? If asphalt is to be laid, I hope measures have been taken into account the smell of tarmac, and also the wind as it blows from the West across the local homes of Wooler Drive/ Wooler Avenue/ Firth Road, Firth Grove / Firth Mount and beyond.
I hope AC have taken this into account, as have the local Councillors and indeed Leeds City Council and the chap in Bristol who originally passed the plans. WE SHALL SEE!!!