New look at ‘gay quarter’ hours

Jan 16 2009 by Marc Waddington, Liverpool Echo

PLANS to pedestrianise city centre streets to create a “gay quarter” must go out for consultation again.

Councillors said the public should be canvassed after deciding to extend the hours Stanley Street and Cumberland Street would be closed to traffic.

The two roads are the hub of the city’s gay scene.

A council committee was expected to approve the closure of Stanley Street and Cumberland Street from 10pm-5am, Thursday to Monday, and Eberle Street completely.

But although the Eberle Street plan was unchanged, councillors moved to extend the restrictions on Cumberland Street from 6pm to 6am, Thursday to Monday.

They also decided to extend Stanley Street’s closure from 10pm to 6am, but resisted pressure from the Gay Business Association to close it from 6pm every day to create “cafe culture” rivalling Manchester’s Canal Street.

The council says the plan is about managing traffic, not expanding a “gay village”.

But Cllr Steve Radford, representing the GBA, said even if that was the case, accident records showed the restrictions would be ineffective.

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Anger as city bosses set to tear up good pavements and ignore dangerous ones

Dec 24 2008 by Marc Waddington, Liverpool Echo

CITY bosses want to tear up “perfectly good” pavements while leaving “dangerous” ones nearby untouched.

Slabs in Mill Bank and Maxwell Road, Tuebrook, will be replaced as part of Liverpool council’s annual repairs.

But councillors have campaigned for years for the resurfacing of a stretch of nearby West Derby Road, where at least three people have been injured by broken slabs.

But highways engineers are adamant their “priority rating” system states Mill Bank’s stone paving flags are the more pressing problem.

Tuebrook Councillor Steve Radford said: “There is no history of injury claims in Mill Bank or Maxwell Road, which is more than you can say for the area in front of the shops in West Derby Road.

“It is a real problem and people are saying ‘why aren’t you doing something about this danger we have complained about for 10 years?’

“But we have asked and asked and they are going ahead with it anyway. It is total arrogance.”

Earlier this month, the ECHO revealed city bosses dished out more than £9m in compensation to people who fell on the city’s broken pavements in the past three years, nearly one-third of what they have spent on repairs and maintenance.

Cllr Radford said he could not understand what criteria the council was using to assess the risk.

He called on residents to block the Mill Bank and Maxwell Road areas to stop the work taking place if necessary.

Cllr Radford added: “If it is about minimising public risk, why are they digging up an area where there have been no claims?

“The pavements they are going to tear up are perfectly good and complement the surrounding area.

“We have explained our needs, yet it seems their idea of consultation is ‘you tell us what you want and we will do something completely different’.”

A council spokesman said it decided where work needed to be done using a mixture of computer software and visual inspections.

He added: “There is an annual survey using national guidelines and from that we get a priority list.

“We do inspections and in this case Mill Bank and Maxwell Road came up as higher priority than the shops in West Derby Road.

“It will be surveyed again next year.”

marc.waddington@liverpoolecho.co.uk