'Caring city's' sad legacy
CYRIL Olsen's comments in Viewpoint column (June 25) made interesting reading.
The now defunct North Sheffield Action Group was formed in 2000 in a bid to prevent the demolition of sound council properties. In the process, we stumbled across the SRB5 regeneration board and an initial attempt to prevent our attendance only served to arouse our curiosity. As a result, we became involved in a frenzy of both housing and regeneration meetings. However, we soon learned that we were naive in the extreme in believing that their buzz words 'community involvement' meant exactly that. Many meetings appeared purely token with councillors, council officers and those with vested interests applying skill and determination to expertly steer things to an obviously foregone conclusion.
This sham democracy is a smokescreen, an insult and no substitution for the real thing and today we reap the whirlwind of policies dogmatically pursued. The SRB5 board has failed to fully deliver and much money has been lost to communities as major projects, propped up by further investment to prevent their collapse, ultimately failed while others proved unsustainable. Housing policy has surely created more problems than it has resolved. While hundreds of sound houses have been demolished to appease developers, many with structural problems remain to create problems for the future and Sheffield has a waiting list of desperate people chasing too few houses. What a sad legacy this so-called caring city leaves for tomorrow's people.
Mrs Mary C Steele, Deerlands Avenue, Sheffield S5.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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