The Swan

Just read that work on the new part of the road that was the playing fields is to begin on the 29th of this month . There is no longer to be a petrol station on the site and plans for traffic flow on Harvey Road and Preston Road have still not been finalised . There will be 20 retail units on the site presumably plus a supermarket .It's about time work was started againbecause the area looks an eyesore

Bernie

I think I remember you saying you live quite close to the area. Who's plan do you think was best for the Swan. Tesco's or Jeremy Knight Adams's. I don't know too much about it but I do know Jeremy and his brother Mark and I know they wanted it to be more diverse and different businesses so there would have been natural competition to keep prices down. Tesco's didn't want that and they wanted complete control of the site with one big supermarket under the Tesco banner.

Phil

Hi Phil the first plans I saw to redevelop the site were Sainsburys and that has got to be 20 years ago , at that time there were neither Tescos or Sainsbury stores in the area but Tesco opened a store on Lyndon Road and Sainsburys took over the Safeway store in Acocks Green . I am not aware of any information about tennants for the retail units so its hard to draw any conclusions , local gossip had it that it was to be a Fort type centre with all the usual suspects. I am not a fan of these type of retail parks they just seem to be replicas of each other if you've been to one you've been to all of them . If there is a variety of shops that will be quite refreshing but I fear the Fort concept is tried and tested . To be honest Phil I would just like to see it tidy again Bakeman House will need another refurb at the pace they are progressing so far . I would have put money that SB knows more than I do about this project . Bernie

Good morning one and each.
Last I heard The sainsburys site at the Swan was to start in October of this year but it didn, They havn't even started on the new road system yet.
The old Swan centre had a multi story car park.
The new one will change.As you come off the San Island towards the Yew Tree the road will curve left into the park and then curve right to join a new islandat the Yew Tree.
This will leave space in front of the shops where the present road is.
That was the plan presented to the constituency committee.

SB

Did Jeremy Knight Adams Plan ever get submitted, I don't know all the ins and outs but I think a right carve up went on there.

Phil

I don't know about the Jeremy Knight Adams plans Phil but over the last couple of years there have been objections to various proposals by a commitee that has a covenant on some of the land either the Mail sports ground the park or the playing fields . Tesco have now dropped the petrol station from their plans so maybe this commitee did not want that built on their bit of land . I just thought that sounded like something Sb may be involved in , another spanner in the works .

I came past the site tonight and noticed a new excavation.

Posted by berniew

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I don't know about the Jeremy Knight Adams plans Phil but over the last couple of years there have been objections to various proposals by a commitee that has a covenant on some of the land either the Mail sports ground the park or the playing fields . Tesco have now dropped the petrol station from their plans so maybe this commitee did not want that built on their bit of land . I just thought that sounded like something Sb may be involved in , another spanner in the works .

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Phil I know nothing about the Jeremy Knight Adams plan. I may have seen it but I don't know which one it was. There has been an awful lot of time and money spent on this.
I'm surprised we havn't seen a plan to bring the Eiffel Tower there. SB

SB

The reason why it took so long was Jeremy fought it all the way, as a big piece of the land that is to be used belonged to him. But he was fighting against Tesco who were backed up by John Hemmings MP. What they did in the end was steal his land off him, Oh sorry compulsory purchased his land so the Council must have been on board as well. He didn't stand a chance another small businessman shafted.

Phil

There has definitly been a problem with a covenant on some of the land although it dosen't sound as though it was one of SBs commitees but he is right they have had time to rebuild most of Yardley

If you Google for it you will find a Birmingham Mail report on the knight Adams / Hemming situation.

Briefly, as I understand the article, it says...Adams was objecting to the councils Compulsory Purchase Order of his land and came up with an alternative scheme which he claimed was better for the local population.
Hemming wrote in his newsletter that Adams was holding the project to ransom and in the meantime causing suffering to the elderly population of Bakeman House who were living in a building site.
Hemming claimed in parliament that he received an email from Adam's solicitors telling him that if he withdrew this claim and did not make any such claim in the future, especially not to make it in parliament, then they would not sue him for libel. Hemming asked parliament to investigate the solictors action, as such action would be an attempt to gag a member of parliament in the house, which is a serious offence because goes against the right of an MP to speak freely in the house without legal constraints. The request was granted and if the solicitors were charged and found guilty they could be imprisoned.

So there was already a CPO on the land and I expect the council were always the main players in all this because part of the park and most of the main road have been donated to the project.
Volty

So in effect Hemmings uses parliamentary privileges to libel Jeremy and he can't be touched for it and on top of that he had his land taken off him when he didn't want to sell and after offering an alternative scheme. Which he would have been well capable of delivering, even without the Swan scheme what about the plans that he had for his own land. I suppose when you have a Council and an MP against you an individual's plans amount to nothing.

Phil

No Phil, that wasn't the point.

If Hemming had libelled Adams in his newsletter then the solicitors were entitled to ask him to withdraw his comment, apologise or otherwise make amends.
They could even have sued him as he made his comment in his newsletter and not in the House, but they would have to prove it was libellous.

What Hemming claims they did is to threaten him with legal action unless he kept quiet in the House. That would be a criminal offence and goes againt the parliamentary privilege principle of government, you can't have people trying to dictate what our elected representatives can and can't say in the House of Commons.

I personally don't care about any of the participants, I am just summarising what I read at the Birmingham Mail website.
VM

Whatever the legal ins and outs it doesn't detract from the point that you had everybody and his uncle against a small businessman and you had a MP heading up a smear campaign against that businessman even if it wasn't libellous the intent was to smear.

Phil

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/newsa...-name_page.html The latest ploy by Tesco to renage on £300000 of community funding promised when planning permision was granted Bernie