While you are waiting, on tenterhooks, for the second-to-last ever Manchester Climate Monthly to hit your inboxes, please be amused by this, from a report on Corporate Propery to be discussed this Thursday at the Finance Scrutiny Committee.
Community use of land
2.14 As a number of development schemes have stalled in recent years the Council receives requests from community groups to utilise these stalled sites (referred to as ‘meanwhile land’) for community use. In the last 12 months, Corporate Property have agreed schemes on three pieces of land two for community gardens at Phoenix Gardens / Ellesmere Street and the former Stagecoach site in Moss Side and the third a site in Miles Platting, which is to be used to grow flax.
How many requests were received?
How much publicity has the Council undertaken to encourage groups to use the land? (via its oh-so-effective Ward Co-ordination, for example)
How easy is it for people to find out about this possibility?
All good questions, and MCFly will be there on Thursday 5th September at 10am at the Town Hall to ask. If you’ve other questions, come along, or let us know them.
Of course, there’s supposed to be a Meanwhile Land strategy. But that got downgraded into a section in the Green and Blue Infrastructure Strategy. That was supposed to be released last year. Then this July. Then this September. It might conceivably see the light of day by the end of the year. But don’t go holding your breath.
Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com
manchester climate monthly 
You will most definitely find that a whole host of wild plants, and the assorted bees, hoverflies, wasps, butterflies, moths, birds, mammals etc., which go with them have staked a claim on this land already. They probably have more right to this land than communities and certainly more right to it than poxy developers! If you think I’m being unreasonable, just remember that our whole society ultimately depends on a healthy biosphere – we can’t exist without it!
The Save Ancoats Dispensary Group have managed to have the demolition order remove from the building. But we are not getting any support from the council, especially with regards to our HLF (Heritage Lottery Fund) bid. The council comes across as being spiteful, because certain Councillors wanted the building demolished. This is despite there still being no plans for that area of Ancoats. What Dave Bishop says is right, but in this particular case, the Dispensary is surrounded by a sterile car-park.
I do wonder about the three schemes mention in the council are truly community-led?
Yes, Patrick, I’ve been exploring some of Manchester’s brown field sites recently and now that our stupid economic system means that they’re currently (but temporarily?) unattractive to the poxy, voracious developers they have a tendency to get turned into car parks. That’s what we really need, isn’t it? More cars, more tarmac, more concrete!