The big projects under threat if residents vote for change in council
KEY PROPOSALS - INCLUDING £250M BLUEPRINT - COULD BE SCRAPPED IF THE BALANCE OF POWER SHIFTS TODAY
A CHANGE of administration at Kirklees Council after the local elections could put a question mark over some flagship road and regeneration projects.
With the council in no overall control, a Labour Cabinet has green-lit a wide-ranging programme of often contentious or unpopular projects.
But those plans - including the mammoth £250m Huddersfield Blueprint, the £75m Cooper Bridge congestion buster and the £13m
A629 Halifax to Huddersfield Corridor Improvement Scheme – which will see more than 100 mature trees felled to wide a section of highway in Edgerton – may be reviewed, paused or even scrapped if the balance of power shifts when the results are announced today.
Kirklees Council is currently made up of Labour (33 seats), Conservative (19 seats), Liberal Democrat (nine seats), Green (three seats), Holme Valley Independents (three seats) and other Independents (two seats).
Of the 69 seats up for election this year, Labour hold 11, Conservative six, Lib Dem four, Holme Valley Independents one and Green one. There are 100 candidates standing.
The Conservatives need to hold their six seats - Birstall & Birkenshaw, Colne Valley, Holme Valley South, Kirkburton, Liversedge & Gomersal, and Mirfield – and win two more to be in a position to force a re-think.
Tories, along with the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, have previously called for a post-pandemic review of the Huddersfield Blueprint to re-evaluate the quar
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Light Commercials, HGV, Bus & Coach, Horse Box. ter of a billion pound revamp of the town centre, including a £210m “cultural heart”.
The 10-year blueprint was launched in a blaze of publicity in June 2019. Since then some elements of the scheme have changed even as the council has been buying up key sites, bulldozing a town centre car park and moving traders out of Queensgate Market.
Concept designs unveiled in March revealed a new library, events space and multi-storey car park, and a town park. Queensgate Market is earmarked to become a food court and the Central Library will become a new museum for
Kirklees with an extension providing space for a new art gallery.
Conservatives said a review was needed due to rising construction costs in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the lack of a published business case for the cultural quarter.
Further cash has been allocated to the £200m Dewsbury Blueprint, which involves a rebuilt market in the town centre, costing £15m, as well as the restoration of the Victorian Arcade and a town park on Longcauseway.
The Cooper Bridge scheme – which has pinballed from a massive plan involving a flyover to an ill-conceived proposal that involved cutting down