Simon Fairlie of The Land Is Ours -
www.tlio.org.uk - has very kindly assembled this factsheet with some more info about the site's history.
Chapter 7
The Potato Store, Flaxdrayton, South Petherton, Somerset, TA13 5LR
01460 249204 chapter7@tlio.org.uk
FACTSHEET ON MORLANDS
Fifteen protesters have occupied the "Red Brick" buildings at the Southern End of the Morlands site between Glastonbury and Street in Somerset. The occupied buildings are scheduled for demolition by the South West Regional Development Agency, commencing today, 5 January 2009.
BRIEF HISTORY: THE £20 MILLION TRAFFIC LIGHTS
Formerly the site of the Morlands leather works, this is the largest derelict industrial site in the South West and most of it has remained empty for over 20 years. It was privately owned until 2001, by a consortium who hoped to put a large retail development on the site, but this was resisted by Glastonbury Town and Mendip District Council who wanted to keep it for employment.
In 2001, The Land Is Ours and some local people planned an occupation of the site, but called it off at the last moment when the SW Regional Development Agency suddenly bought the site, claiming it was going to redevelop it "sustainably".
In the intervening 8 years, the RDA has done nothing to the site except demolish over half the buildings, even though most of these were assessed as beng sound by a surveyor's report (see below). It has also left a whole row of terraced houses derelict. It has also built a set of traffic lights, known locally as the £20million traffic lights.
DUPLICITY
All of these demolitions occurred at short notice after repeated assurances to concerned members of the public that the buildings would not be demolished.
A week before Christmas 2009, the RDA announced that they would be demolishing the Red Brick buildings on the 5 January, on the pretext that kids are getting in and might hurt themselves! But you don't demolish tens of thousands of square feet of well built workshops that would cost many millions of pounds to build again, just to save the wages of a night watchman.
This has been typical of the SW RDA's approach all along. We hear similar reports from other regions and in 2008 a Radio 4 documentary produced examples of this kind of behaviour from RDAs around the country.
REFUSAL TO CONSIDER LOCAL PROPOSALS
Prior to demolition, the RDA has refused to consider at least three major local proposals for sustainable redevelopment of the existing buildings. One of these was a joint venture between Bristol University Technology Hub and The Somerset Trust for Sustainable Devlopment (now ECOS), who built the award-winning Bow Yard ecohomes at Langport.
All representations from the organizations promoting these three projects were ignored by the RDA, who mostly simply refused to reply.
The RDA has also refused to consider any request from individuals and small businesses to rent any of the premises. Local groups have petitioned the RDA to rent out some of the buildings on a cheap and cheerful repair lease, at least on a short term basis. Next to Morlands there is a small employment site for small businesses, called Bridie's Yard, where there is always excess demand for the units.
ARCHITECTURE: NORTH LIGHT BUILDINGS
One of the buildings destroyed was the 1952 Hepworth Building, the first vaulted north light building ever erected in the UK. It was occupied up until 1995, but was demolished at very short notice on the grounds that it was "unsafe"; no time was given for objectors to examine the evidence. Many people in the town assume it was demolished because it got in the way of the RDA's traffic scheme.
Besides the Hepworth building, another even larger building known as the Bauhaus, also demolished, and the red brick building now under threat are all north light industrial buildings. These are carbon friendly because they require less daytime lighting, and they are oriented perfectly for taking solar panels.
CONTAMINATION
The RDA claims that the site is contaminated, yet a report carried out for the previous owners by EMV Enviroclean in 1994 stated that it would cost just £12,000 to clean up the site.
VIABILITY OF REFURBISHMENT
A report commissioned by Mendip Council and carried out in 2000 by Watts and partners estimated the costs of refurbishing eight, out of the 11 principal buildings at £2,875,000 in total - less than half the price reputed to have been paid by the RDA for the site, and a fraction of the £30 million estimated by the RDA as necessary for total redevelopment of the site.
THE RDA'S AIM
Local people believe that the RDA's aim is to demolish as much as possible on the site so that they can offer oven-ready Brownfield sites to their friends in the development industry. There are also well-founded rumours that Avalon Plastics, a Glastonbury factory, have been invited to relocate onto part of the site, thereby releasing their old site for the retail development that the town and district council's didn't want - which will result in a loss of employment land.
Many thanks to Simon!
