LIBRARY LISTING MOVE “AN ABUSE OF PROCESS”

29-11-2007

Campaigners fighting to preserve Birmingham’s Central Library have accused the City Council of an abuse of process in its efforts to secure an “immunity from listing” certificate for the building.

The Council has written to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in an effort to pre-empt moves by the likes of the 20th Century Society to have the Library protected from demolition.

To justify their request, the local authority quotes a planning application it has made to create a new outdoor performance area on the site of a disused ornamental pool in the library complex.

Alan Clawley, spokesman for the Friends of the Central Library, says that the immunity process was never designed to cater for relatively minor proposals like this, and that Council is guilty of an “abuse of process”.

“If a developer like Gary Taylor had come up with a major scheme to completely redesign the area, and put in a planning application, then it would be fair enough to ask for immunity from listing.

“That’s what the system is designed for. But to hang it on something like this hints at a certain desperation, and seems to us like an abuse of process”.

Clawley has written to the DCMS to register his protest, although the Friends Of The Central Library have no formal right to be heard.