Arbury Park is widely considered to be a flagship housing development in the UK - well planned, well designed, great facilities etc etc - and if the original vision is delivered, I would whole-heartedly agree.

There has been a significant effort put in by parish, district and county councils to ensure that the right decisions were made with Arbury Park with respect to housing design and layout, designing for community living, mixing residential and commercial spaces, open spaces, public facilties, retail facilities, public transport, traffic, A14 noise, etc etc and the work is by no means finished!!

The end result of all this planning - a vision for Arbury Park that has capitvated enough people to occupy 350 of the homes built so far. The promise of Arbury Park is excellent...

So what has been the role of Gallagher Estates in all of this? Well as the master developer one presumes their main role is to make money for their shareholders, and that would certainly seem to be their focus. As it would seem that they sold the majority of the land to the house builders before the credit crunch, I imagine they are rubbing their hands with glee at their amazing foresight and the large numbers of notes that will no doubt roll in to their coffers as the house builders sell properties...

But in terms of the development process they are responsible for the main infrastructure (streets, pavements, streetlights, drainage, electrical services etc) and for delivering all the public facilities. Let's be clear that Gallagher are not responsible for the streets within the housing parcels (Persimmon, Laing, Wimpey etc) - these are the responsibility of the house builders, so if streetlights still aren't working on your street you need to check whether it's the house builder's responsibility or Gallagher's...

So the streetlights on Circus Drive belong to Gallagher and the residents there have been living in the pitch dark since the start of the year...so what have Gallagher achieved for these residents...well they've been working on the problem, but actually they've achieved nothing...

And Gallagher are responsible for the overal tidiness and safety of the development...well the media have variedly referred to Arbury Park as a wasteland, Beirut and recently "desolation row"...so Gallagher don't seem to have been successful in keeping the site looking tidy either.

But back to the public facilities...for the majority of the residents, these are Gallagher's most important responsibility, but anyone who's familiar with this web site will know that Gallagher have completely failed to meet almost every single one of their contractual delivery dates for the public facilities - see here for the list of trigger points and here for the occupation graphs.

So here's how well Gallagher have done:

I'm fed up with people blaming the credit crunch for the lack of delivery of these facilities - most of these should have been delivered before the phrase "credit crunch" had even been coined, and since they are public facilities to be contractualy delivered by Gallagher and for which they have already put aside money, there is absolutely no acceptable or justifiable reason for these kinds of delays - one or two or even three months I could accept, but for POS1, the bulk of which should have been delivered in May, they have not even finalised their plans. This is just (deliberate?) mis-management...

The media are reporting the situation at Arbury Park as being a result of the credit crunch...this is only partly true...I hope that the media attention is causing Gallagher (and other partners) to think more carefully about their (lack of) committment to Arbury Park...

And it's the residents that are suffering...by now we should have had a community centre and some sports facilities, plus two more play areas - there should have been social activity around the site in an evening, not everyone retreating to their homes...

This is just callous and uncaring by Gallagher, they have shown a complete lack of respect for residents and have put their profits way ahead of their responsibilities...of course, should we have expected anything less from a profit focussed land developer? Probably not, they have simply played the "building" game totally to their advantage and have taken every liberty they could. As the lead developer for the Northstowe development, one can only pity the future residents there.

So if Gallagher have really just been behaving like a money hungry developer would be expected to behave, perhaps I should direct some of my angst at the organisation responsible for keeping Gallagher in check...that would be South Cambridgeshire District Council as the Planning Authority...well I have been doing so, and simultaneously working with them to address some of the issues...I think I might be getting a bit of a reputation!!

SCDC have performed really poorly in many respects relating to Arbury Park, not least in simply letting all the contractual delivery dates simply pass by without comment, but at least with the establishment of the SCDC officer led Action Group, I can see some activity and commitment from SCDC to right the wrongs and mistakes.

Personally, I've seen very little commitment from Gallagher in this respect...

We are where we are...(no) thanks to Gallagher...

However, we are where we are...so, let's fight with all our energy to fulfil the beautiful vision for Arbury Park and develop the community that we all know is waiting to be released. The promise of a glorious development is still there, if Gallagher aren't motivated to fulfil their responsibilities in a morally and ethically acceptable fashion then we probably have little choice but to live with it, but let's be absolutely clear about why there are issues on Arbury Park...

1. There are delays in the completion of the private house building - cause is the credit crunch
2. There are delays in the completion of the retail and commercial areas - cause is the credit crunch
3. There are delays in the completion of the public facilities - cause is profiteering by Gallagher Estates

Oh I nearly forgot about the school...of course that's been an amazing success, what a great facility, delivered on time (just about!!), looks great (if you're okay with orange and lime!!), lovely facilities etc etc...oh, and (as far as I'm aware) nothing at all to do with SCDC or Gallagher...well doesn't that just paint a picture!!

I hope this is controversial...I'd hate to think I've vented all this angst and it's not upset anyone!! In particular, I'd love to see a formal public response from Gallagher...feel free to add all your comments, positive and negative, about this blog entry, about the points I'm making...residents, please feel free to add your comments about how much you already like living on Arbury Park...it's a great place that will only get better...let's use all this aggravation to establish a fantastic community spirit!!