An irate member of the public branded Manchester’s planning committee ‘a farce’ after disruptive protesters caused the meeting to be stopped.
Dozens of campaigners were at the Town Hall on Thursday (January 18) to oppose three schemes to build student accommodation blocks in Ardwick, Fallowfield, and Hulme. The first items to be discussed by the council were located in Ardwick, the home of — which sought to prevent the construction of a 29-storey tower.
During the opening application, which was heard in the main Council Chamber, members of the public gallery shouted ‘rubbish’ at claims from the developers, and also repeatedly called ‘time’ while they were speaking. It led committee chair, Coun Jon-Connor Lyons, to warn them.
“This is not a pantomime. It’s planning, it’s serious,” he said, before warning the gallery they would be removed if behaviour did not improve. Only moments later, another shout was heard while council planning officer Dave Roscoe was answering questions from councillors, prompting the suspension of the meeting so the public gallery could be cleared.
It led one woman to shout over to the chair once the ‘pause’ was announced. She said: “You lot take the biscuit. It’s a farce.”
Even then, members of the gallery largely refused to leave their seats, so after a short time, the meeting resumed in the council’s antechamber — a smaller room situated behind the bigger chamber. The public were allowed to watch proceedings via a projector in the main hall, with only councillors, officers, speakers, and media permitted access to the meeting.
After that point, the lengthy meeting progressed largely without incident — with members agreeing to the officers’ recommendations of approval for six of the seven items in the four-hour-22-minute summit.
However, one of those approvals included the controversial bid to build a 146-bedroom student accommodation block on the former Gamecock pub in Hulme. After an attempt to refuse the application for a fifth time was foiled, Coun Paul Andrews encouraged councillors to ‘rip the plaster off’ and to stop ‘dancing around the dog s***’.
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The application was then approved, nine votes to three in favour, with members of the public gallery shouting ‘shame on you’ after the result was announced. In doing so, it brought to an end one of the city’s longest-running planning sagas — which has seen the bid blocked four times in 18 months.
There was also audible anger when the were approved eight votes to five, and when 11 councillors out of 14 voted to approve plans to revamp the University’s Fallowfield halls of residence campus — which would see the demolition of the iconic Owens Park Tower.
As the meeting went on, applications were also approved to build a 25-storey tower in Cheetham Hill with 20 percent affordable housing — and a bid to demolish two houses in Crumpsall to make way for a synagogue. The only item not to be approved was a second student block in Ardwick, on Plymouth Grove, which was deferred so councillors could conduct a site visit to see how it would impact on light for local residents and businesses, in particular a nearby nursery.