Plans pose threat to quarter’s future

DEAR Editor, I read with some dismay the article about the gentrification of the Jewellery Quarter ( Post, July 28).

As regeneration director for the area for ten years, our team fought tooth and nail to ensure the Conservation Management Plan wasn’t breached.

We also secured the funding for a new jewellery apprenticeship scheme and supported a workspace scheme for young designer makers.

The current Conservation Management Plan for the area generally prohibits residential development, apart from live work, in certain areas and worked very well despite the moans of developers and those looking to make a fast buck on property acquisition.

In fact, a study was undertaken which interestingly showed the level of dereliction in the Jewellery Quarter was actually more in those areas where the planning framework allowed residential development.

In the years I worked in the Quarter, the population increased ten fold and became more vibrant with a better street scene, bars and restaurants and facilities like local metro supermarkets, independent coffee shops and a Health Centre opening to give the area the Urban Village feel that we always intended.

However, thanks to the protection of the Conservation Management Plan, this was not done at the expense of the jewellery trade.

The issue is quite simple in that the current protection afforded by the Conservation Management Plan needs to be retained, albeit with some slight tweaking rather than be torn up.

There is a neighbourhood plan being developed and my fear, which I have expressed at meetings, is that this will undermine the Conservation Management Plan by opening the door right across the Quarter to residential development, heating up land prices and driving out the many jobbing jewellers and small firms who underpin both the handful