St James' Park

[Fenham Mag]

4 minutes ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

By wildlife she means rats. I walked through that park last year for the first time in about 5 or 6 years and couldn't believe the state they've let it get in. Its main inhabitants these days are rats and druggies.

 

If nobody can be bothered to maintain it and look after it's upkeep, not to mention policing it to chase out the undesirables then what's the point in it being there?

 

Surely a land swap with SJP whereby SJP is turned into a lovely park in itself which people will actually use and walk though en route to SJP like at places like Bayer Leverkusen and Eintracht Frankfurt would be a winner. No doubt PIF would even take care or contribute towards its upkeep.

 

100% agree - to be honest, the council should give subsidies to the club for sorting out the park and regenerating the area.

[gjohnson]

Nothing new...complainers like to complain. 

If Leazes was bulldozed and rebuilt into a car park who would really miss it? 

 

Give it a publicity angle and the whingers are out in force (plus the ftm brigade)

[manorpark]

4 hours ago, Monters said:

No I agree in the main - they are all north of the city centre and I've never really classed the Town Moor as a park and exhibition park was mullered for the central motorway and T Dan Smith's alleged corruption.

 

 

Our three main City Centre Parks (as said NOT all laid out as Victorian-style parkland) are Leazes Park, Town Moor, and Exhibition Park. 

[Monters]

52 minutes ago, manorpark said:

 

Our three main City Centre Parks (as said NOT all laid out as Victorian-style parkland) are Leazes Park, Town Moor, and Exhibition Park. 

No problem... I was never arguing but somewhere cows graze is not exactly what most folks think of as a park nor suitable for a lot of typical park usage, green space yes but park not in my humble.

Certainly not worth worrying about

[FLUMPO235]

On 11/06/2025 at 21:34, Andy84 said:

28k signatures on a petition opposing any plans to build on Leazes.  In the Ronny gill

 

 

 

Doesn’t really matter. For the purposes of planning, petitions count as one response and it’s not a vote anyway.
 

Any genuine material consideration raised by one person or half a million is either a valid reason for mitigation or refusal in the planning balance or it isn’t. For such a high profile site, there is nothing the public are going to be able to raise that the club, its planning consultants, its experts or the council don’t already know about and will have discussed through the pre-app and dozens of high level meetings long before the application is submitted.

 

The nature of the application means it won’t be a delegated officer decision and will go to planning committee with a recommendation by the officers to approve or refuse. Members of planning committee will have to declare any conflict of interest, (ignoring most will be nufc fans I suppose) which would mean anyone who is a friend of leazes or anyone who’s active in an opposition group won’t be allowed to vote. 
 

if members of planning committee were swayed by public opinion or mass objection/petitions, may be swayed to vote to refuse. But if the officers recommend to approve and there is no obvious material reason to refuse, the council will just be taken to appeal by the club. The council would advise members not to do that as an independent inspector would make the decision and would be unlikely to refuse against the officer recommendation and with no material reasons. In that scenario the club would be awarded costs against the council that could run into mega costs. Potentially millions. 
 

The application will either be acceptable for obvious reasons or it won’t. Whatever any member of the public thinks is pretty irrelevant.