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Council ‘left with egg on face’ over Stringer St steps
Peter Devine2/ 1/2008
A LEADING councillor has questioned advice given to fellow councillors after a district judge ordered Stockport Council to reinstate the historic town centre Stringer Street steps.
Manchester district judge Alan Berg last week ordered that the steps, which are believed to date from the 1840s, and run between the entrance to Vernon Park and Newbridge Lane and New Zealand Road, should be repaired, and ordered the Council to pay costs of more than £34,000.
Peter Scott, a Tame Valley councillor and leader of Stockport’s Labour group said: "I am absolutely fed up with the planning department, and this decision has left us with egg on our face. The advice we originally received from council officers was that we had a good case over the steps, instead of telling us we didn’t have a leg to stand on. It would have helped save the council tax payers more than £34,000 in costs.
"This is not the first case where their advice has been found wanting, and I plan to call for an investigation into advice coming out of the planning department."
Last month Judge Berg reserved judgment following a three day hearing at Stockport Magistrates Court. In his judgement he said: "We know that over the years the steps have fallen into a state of disrepair and dereliction and because of that state - I might say because of the council’s failure to perform its statutory duty to maintain - have become impossible for pedestrian traffic.
"The objectors submit that the Council cannot have their cake and eat it in that it cannot take advantage of its own incompetency in not fulfilling its statutory duty and, had there been any public complaints they would have simply been rebuffed by the council saying: ‘It is not our obligation to maintain because it is not a public highway maintainable at public expense’.
"I find it lamentable that the Council did not know or were not bothered to find out by some simple straightforward research that such was the position."
In February 2005, district judge Lloyd ruled the steps were not a public highway and Stringer Street should be closed. An appeal against that decision at Minshull Street Crown Court earlier this year, quashed the closure decision and brought it back to Stockport at the end of last month.
The campaign to get the steps reopened was spearheaded by local groups including The Ramblers Association, Gloria Gaffney, the footpath and environment officer for Greater Manchester Pedestrians Association and Donald Lee of the Open Spaces Society.
Mr Lee said: "It’s been going on for years and years but people are still interested."
A local authority spokesman said the Council would not be appealing the decision: "Costs were awarded against the Council in the sum of £34,218.92. The Council will not be appealing the decision.
"The Stringer Street steps will be repaired at a cost yet to be determined. The court will determine the timescale for the repair of the steps in March 2008."
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2/01/2008 at 19:22
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Some heads are in dire need of being cracked against each other.
4/01/2008 at 21:31