Christie Hospital will find out today if they can build a new multi-storey car park in Withington. The Planning and Highways Committee of Manchester City Council meets at 2pm today (Thurs 19th January) at the Town Hall to decide on the controversial application. Members of the public are welcome to attend. Here’s directions…

The Christie wants to build a new research facility. Given its international reputation, and its mission – tackling cancer – this is a stunningly uncontroversial application. The problem rests with a multi-storey carpark application that is bundled with it. Local residents say that this car park would be too tall, that it is unnecessarily large and that there are viable alternatives (see letters to the Manchester Evening News on Monday 16th January).

Questions we don’t have answers to yet
On Tuesday afternoon MCFly contacted the Christie’s press department, explained we were running a pre-decision as well as a post-decision story, and that we’d really like answers to the following questions as soon as possible. When we get the answers, we will let you know.

1) Who will be the users of the new car-parking space?  What proportion staff, what proportion patients/families/carers.
2) What new measures have been implemented in the last 3 years to more encourage staff to travel to work on public transport or by bicycle and how successful have these been? (i.e. is the multi-storey car park a last resort, all other reasonable avenues being exhausted?)
3) Have projections been made about the Metrolink, which will pass relatively close to the Christie, been factored in to the Green Travel Plan?
4) Has the alternative design for a car park by George Mills (mentioned in letter by Daniel Gillard in the MEN) been considered?
a) If not, why has it not been considered.
b) If it has been considered, for what reasons has it been decided to proceed with the original design.
UPDATE: See addendum for more information.
5) What will the Christie do if the planning application is rejected?

What will happen next?
A site visit takes place this morning, before the Committee meeting this afternoon. The committee is not, MCFLy is told, able to say “you can have the research centre, but not the whopping big car park” – it’s a ‘take it or leave it’ bundle, with only minor changes being allowed.
If the application is turned down, Christie can appeal. If it is approved, the opponents’ options are somewhat limited. Judicial Reviews do not come cheap!

Watch this space.

Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com

Re: Question 4 – after sending the questions, we found this on a December 12 Manchester Evening News article.

“A spokeswoman for the Christie said hospital representatives had met Mr Mills three times, but that at the third meeting ‘it was acknowledged that his proposals did not meet the requirements of the brief’.

She added: “The capacity for the car park has been calculated to re-provide the existing car parking and provide extra car parking required for future needs. We are taking a two-pronged approach: provision of a realistic level of car parking allied with initiatives to reduce demand.”