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Town council backing panel over tea rooms
belper tea rooms design.
BELPER Town Council says it is supporting a panel’s decision for a re-design of the Swiss Tea Rooms because its judges had “infinitesimally” more information than the public.
The panel favoured the design by McNeill Beechey O’Neil, and its recommendations will be considered by Amber Valley Borough Council, along with the results of a public poll, on Wednesday, September 28, to determine which of six shortlisted designs is picked for the new tea rooms in Belper’s River Gardens.
The town council voted to support the decision taken by the panel, which includes borough and town councillors Alan Cox and Martin Tomlinson, and the director of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site Partnership Mark Suggitt.
Cllr Cox, who is also Mayor of Belper, said: “When the public voted on the design they only had one design to look at. The panel had a lot more and they had presentations, and a question and answer session. They had infinitesimally more information. The panel spent all day looking at it and we feel that the panel views should be respected.”
The town council decision was not unanimous and was “split along party lines”.
The Friends of Belper River Gardens hailed a proposal from architects Lathams, which topped the public poll, as “more likely to be commercially successful” and “significantly cheaper to build” than other candidates’ proposals.
Chairman of the Friends Trevor Griffith said: “The panel called for extra research for the projects’ commercial viability and there is the issue of fees – these weren’t made available to the public. But there’s no obvious information that the panel would have known when they met on June 2 that would have swayed their decision.”
He added that at a recent meeting of the Friends Peter Carney, chief executive of borough council, gave no indication that judges were privy to any extra information.
A competition to find a new design for the tea rooms was whittled down to six candidates by the panel.
The Friends believe Lathams’ design will not have an adverse impact on the River Gardens and the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.
The building was commissioned by industrialist George Herbert Strutt in 1905 and closed in the early 1980s. For more information on the selection process go to www.ambervalley.gov.uk/leisure-and-culture/parks-and-gardens.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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Comments
There are 4 comments to this article
Page 1 of 1
LittleGem
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 08:32 PMIf anyone expects Amber Valley to do anything that the public might approve of they're living in a bizarre alternative universe. Amber Valley will do what Amber Valley wants, the voters don't matter at all.
Beaurepaire
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 04:14 PM'infinitesimally more'? An amount of information more than the public had that is so small that it can't be measured? That's hardly a deal-breaker then, is it?
Diogenes
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 03:39 PMDon't worry, threecubed. You'll soon come to realise the clowns running this site don't know their collective derrière from their elbow and couldn't organise the proverbial in a brewery, let alone a tea room.
threecubed
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 01:57 PMI think that this article is very misleading! The McNeill Beechey O'Neil (MBO) proposal is NOT the one shown at the top of this article. The one shown is infact the Latham's scheme which although gaining support of the Public Vote, Friends of Belper River Gardens and Belper Civic Society has been rejected by the council. Amber Valley Borough Council's preferred Architect is a 2 storey triangular building. Anyone wishing to see the MBO scheme should follow the link listed within the article.
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