The derelict building that could scupper £4m Blackburn road

7:30am Tuesday 22nd July 2008

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By Tom Moseley »

A DILAPIDATED building that has been empty for at least 25 years could scupper a crucial new multi-million pound road in Blackburn.

Heritage bosses have objected to the demolition of the Georgian 18th century house, in King Street, a move that will trigger a public inquiry into the £4milion Freckleton Street link road.

The inquiry will cost the council thousands of pounds in legal fees and if unsuccessful would mean an alternative route has to be found.

Even if the council wins the inquiry, the complicated legal dispute looks certain to delay the new road - the vital final section of Blackburn’s new orbital route - by up to 18 months.

The road, which will connect the new £12million Wainwright Bridge with junction of Montague Street and King Street, was originally expected to be completed by next year.

A planning application has been lodged, but objections from English Heritage and the Georgian Group led to it being pulled from a recent planning committee meeting because it would have faced refusal by councillors.

In a stinging rebuke to the council’s plans, Cathy Tuck, a historic environment adviser for English Heritage, said the entire link road scheme was “fundamentally flawed”.

She said the council’s ‘historic building assessment’ had ‘ignored’ entire floors of the grade two-listed building, and claimed bosses had “inflated” the cost of repairing it.

Writing in a letter to the council, she said: “The intrusion into an urban area by a highway of this scale is an out-dated solution to Blackburn’s transportation problems”.

Richard Prest, of Blackburn Civic Society, said he supported the points raised by English Heritage.

He said: “It’s basically telling the council to go back and reconsider things. They just haven’t done their homework properly.”

The council’s director of regeneration and environment Adam Scott said he hoped to avoid “excessive delays” to the scheme.

But public inquiries held up the Darwen Academy on Redearth Road and left the council with a legal bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Labour leader Kate Hollern said: “A public inquiry will be very expensive if you look at the delays on the academy. They have rushed into things without thinking.”

But she added: “The important thing is it’s not a tourist attraction. If it was a beautiful building I would be fighting tooth and nail to keep it, but things have to be moved on.”

The house, a former home for the police superintendent of Blackburn, was built around 1780 and was listed in 1987.

It was built by a local carpenter, John Edleston the Elder, a well-known figure in the town. It is now owned by the council - and Ms Tuck blamed the council for its “severely dilapidated state”, saying bosses had “neglected their responsibility to the very finite resource of Blackburn’s historic environment”.

The final section of the road is seen as an essential part of Blackburn with Darwen council’s regeneration plans for the town.

Other routes were considered and rejected before the final path was unveiled in November.

Mr Scott insisted demolition of the house was the only option.

He said: “As this is a listed building we are required to go through due processes but we hope that this will not result in any excessive delays.

“We recognise that where possible, it is really important to do what we can to protect our heritage.

“However, in this case our assessments have shown that we have no alternative.”

The proposed route also runs through St. Peter’s Church graveyard meaning at least 1,000 bodies will have to be dug up and re-interred.

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