A FORMER rebel councillor has criticised the city council’s plan for Silver Hill saying that it is “fundamentally flawed”.

Kim Gottlieb's legal action in 2016 scuppered the first redevelopment and he fears the council is on an “even worse trajectory”.

He raised his concerns at a meeting of the full city council as councillors voted through a business case for the scheme, also known as Central Winchester Regeneration.

He said to councillors: “When I initiated a Judicial Review in 2014 in respect of Silver Hill, it was after I had spent three years trying to persuade the council that its strategy was flawed and that the scheme would harm the city. I had some robust conversations with councillors Beckett, Woods and Humby but, under pressure from officers and advisors it seemed that the train had left the station, and no-one was prepared to put the brakes on. The rest is history. The council was lambasted in the High Court for behaving unlawfully, and the Claer Lloyd-Jones enquiry found that the chief cause for the council getting into a mess was the way in which the project was managed and the way in which councillors were advised.”

The contract with developer Henderson was terminated, and Mr Gottlieb added: “Since then, I am told, most of those councillors have had a change of heart about the Henderson scheme, and that even some of my fiercest detractors acknowledge that what would have been a disaster for the city was averted.”

He asked now council leader Lucille Thompson whether she believed stopping the Henderson was good thing or would she have preferred for the plan to go ahead.

She said that the motion she proposed to terminate the contract “had widespread, cross-party support and was carried, but more importantly now our focus is on bringing forward a scheme that is right the city and the district”.

Mr Gottlieb said: “Many of us here tonight sat in this chamber and were told that the proposals for Silver Hill all made sense, that they had been fully considered and everything about them was absolutely marvellous. I’m as certain as I was back then that the current proposals put the project on an even worse trajectory than it was in 2014.

“The tragedy is that the last three and half years since the SPD (supplementary planning document) was adopted has been wasted and the council has ended up with a different strategy that it is fundamentally flawed. It won’t lead to a successful outcome financially or in any other way. Crucially it is also the case that there are far more effective ways available and for example the Kings Walk block could be put on the market tomorrow morning.”

Mr Gottlieb offered for him and other local property professionals to meet with the council to explain why the current strategy won’t work, but Cllr Thompson said there had been many opportunities to discuss the case and “this is the right time to move ahead”.

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Kimberley Barber