Council branching out in right direction

The thing about consultation is that it can often result in a better outcome. Of course, you have to assume that those consulting do actually take notice of people’s views and act on them accordingly. And that appears to be the case with the city council’s plan to upgrade St George’s Street which is looking decidedly run down with hazardous paving.

Because when the authority first proposed a scheme in 2016, it involved removing most of the trees, which didn’t go down well with environmentalists and ended up being shelved. But given what we increasingly know about the benefit of trees, especially in urban environments, it was the right decision.

So now we have a new plan which looks so much better and includes an ‘avenue of trees’ which should look splendid. As a casualty of war time bombing, St George’s Street is not the most architecturally engaging location in our historic city and suffers from rather ugly post war buildings.

And the council is quite frank in its assessment that the new trees will help soften the impact of some of that less pleasing architecture.

But officials also want it to be a place for people to enjoy, socialise and appreciate public art and performance. However, it looks like a casualty of the upgrade will be the removal of the market stalls.

That may be seen as a mixed blessing by some but the council is clearly looking after its own interests too as the owner of Whitefriars, whose managers say the market is a blight on the centre.