Property speculators are blighting Wolverhampton's historic buildings, says council leader

Wolverhampton’s historic buildings are being blighted by property speculators who acquire properties hoping to sell them for an easy profit, says the leader of the city council.

But a senior planning official said the council was ‘powerless’ to make property owners bring their buildings back into use.

The former Beatties building in Victoria Street and the old eye infirmary in Chapel Ash were cited as two examples of buildings which had been left to deteriorate, with little sign of progress on plans to redevelop them.

Councillor Stephen Simkins, leader of the authority, said he shared the frustration of fellow councillors at seeing important buildings fall into a state of decay, but said the authority’s powers were limited.

Councillor Simkins was responding to questions during a meeting of the council’s economy and growth scrutiny panel.

Councillor Simkins said historic buildings were an emotive subject, that were dear to the hearts of many people in the city.

“The problem we’ve got is that it’s speculators who buy and then sit on it hoping to flip it to maximise their profits,” he said.

“This is a classic case of Beatties, where they’ve acquired it, sat on it.”

Councillor Simkins said the council could lobby government to change the law so that if developers failed to begin their schemes in a given time frame once permission has been granted, then ownership of the properties would be handed to the council.

But he said this would create different problems, with councils finding themselves responsible for buildings they never planned to own.

Councillor Wendy Thompson said a number of historic buildings in the city had been lying empty for long periods of time, deteriorating with every passing year.

“We know that the Beatties building there is nothing left, basically at all, except the facade at the front and possibly the side, and it gives distress to residents,” she said.

“Not only that, it puts off other business owners as well, because it’s not helpful to their businesses in the same street, it gives that street an air of dereliction, which cannot be helpful if you want to see a thriving city centre.”

She said there were also buildings in Bilston and Tettenhall which had fallen into similar states of disrepair, and that the former eye infirmary was also an eyesore on a main road into the city.

Councillor Sally Garner said she, too, was concerned about the future of the eye infirmary.

“Chapel Ash is dismal, unfortunately, and the eye infirmary just brings it down that one notch, two notches, three notches further.”

She asked if the council had looked at making use of using new powers introduced by the Government where local authorities can auction off long-term vacant properties.

Head of planning Stephen Alexander said he shared the councillors concerns.

“We work with owners to bring forward schemes, unfortunately we have no guarantee that they will bring them forward,” he said.

“We can work with them, but if a private owner will not bring forward the reuse of a building, we are powerless to do anything, ultimately, other than seek to help them as much as possible, and where they neglect buildings and they fall into disrepair, we can and will serve tidy-up notices.

“We will ensure that buildings are tidied up, as we have on Beatties, and where they fail to do enough again, like they have with Beatties, we will consider prosecution to ensure the buildings are tidied up.”

Mark Bassett, director of city development, said the council was looking into the possibility of using rental auctions, but said they also carried a degree of risk and were untested at the moment.

“We’re keeping a watching brief on it, and would use it as a tool if we can,” he said.

“What we don’t want to do, given that we’re blessed with so many fine buildings, and how we use our powers is really important, is to make things worse than they already are. We recognise that’s a new power, and we’re tracking it, and if there’s an occasion in which we can use them, we’ll be using that tool.”

Councillor Harbinder Singh said it appeared that many investors had bought historic buildings not realising the restrictions that were placed on them, and suggested that the council could offer them support and advice on how to proceed with their schemes and access funding.