THE management of the London Road Industrial Estate redevelopment has been “extremely poor” and the Conservative politicians who were in charge of it made “a number of major errors”.

That is according to the Liberal Democrat councillors on West Berkshire Council, who say these errors have resulted in a “significant cost to local taxpayers” and their approach to redeveloping the site “would have been different from the start”.

Councillor Ross Mackinnon, executive member for economic development, said he was “dismayed” by the criticism.

“Their idea of cross-party collaboration is to hardly turn up to the project board that they’ve got a seat on and issue critical press releases like this from the sideline,” the Tory councillor added.

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Businesses which currently occupy the 25 acre site in Newbury could be uprooted by the controversial redevelopment project and the Liberal Democrats say the Conservative-run council should be working with those businesses in a “less adversarial” manner.

They are also calling for those businesses to be allowed to return to the site after the redevelopment and say the council should provide “an adequate replacement” for the Faraday Road football ground that is due to be demolished and “focus on delivering a zero-carbon development”.

They published these comments in a scathing statement titled ‘Our Response to the Draft Master Plan’.

It comes after the Court of Appeal ruled the council had breached EU law by failing to follow the correct procurement process when it appointed St Modwen Plc as the developer, during a hearing in 2018.

The council spent over £945,000 on the botched project and legal fees, but the redevelopment is back on track after the council hired consultants from Avison Young to prepare a draft development brief.

According to the brief, the site can be transformed into a “vibrant, successful and diverse neighbourhood” with hundreds of homes, state-of-the-art offices and industrial space.

Cllr Mackinnon said: “It’s very unfortunate that we went all the way to the Court of Appeal and lost and yes, that cost money.

“But nobody made bad decisions. We followed the legal advice that we were given and you wouldn’t expect the council not to do that.”

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He added: “It’s not a master plan, it’s a development brief. The Liberal Democrats have completely misunderstood the document.

“They are asking for things that will probably happen anyway – it’s classic Lib Demmery. It’s almost admirable, given how brazen it is.

“We are at the development brief stage, we’re not even at the master plan stage and they are demanding things like car club spaces and active travel routes.

“Those things are never going to be mentioned in a development brief.”