As calls for a public inquiry over Coppergate II continue to grow, City of York Council's executive member for planning and transport DAVID Merrett defends his authority's conditional approval of the scheme

In 1967, Lord Esher's report on conservation in York looked at the setting of Clifford's Tower, York Castle and the Eye of York and concluded the area "lacks all the stature and sense of care that one expects from such a historic and architecturally impressive site".

Clifford's Tower, Lord Esher's report suggested, stands "forlornly trapped between the traffic of Tower Street and the parked cars and vacant sites flanking the Foss". In an attempt to address this, he proposed the enclosure of the Clifford's Tower space, suggesting that buildings of some scale were required on the existing car park to help arrive at the right urban design and conservation solution.

A Planning Brief for the Castle-Piccadilly site was prepared by the old York City Council in 1991. It identified the importance of this environmentally-degraded area as a major opportunity to strengthen shopping facilities within the city centre and to transform and unify an important part of the city centre.

The brief identified the preferred uses as involving a major element of retailing with scope for residential, offices, leisure and restaurants as well. None of the major parties involved at that stage considered the creation of a public park was appropriate.

An architectural competition was held in 1992. Public consultation was carried out on a selection of the proposals and as a result Terry Farrell and Company were appointed to work up a detailed scheme.

Part of the planning rationale for development of the site was the view that it was vital to the continuing economic well-being of the city centre, as it offered an opportunity to provide larger shopping units which were not available elsewhere in the city centre.

Since then, Monk's Cross and Naburn have been developed. The council's opinion polls have tracked residents' response to that, and of major concern to us has been the drop in residents' opinions of the quality of the city centre shopping facilities in comparison to some of the out-of-town facilities.

Therefore the council considered that the underlying need to improve the competitiveness of the city centre remained. However, to be sure that the city could still sensibly accommodate the recent application, the council obtained specialist advice from independent retailing experts to assess whether this was the case, which they have confirmed.

All opinion polls which have been based on statistically reliable methods (and specifically avoid the opportunity for multiple voting as in some of the telephone polls) have given majority support to the development from the public at large. So too did returns from those who took the trouble to see the public exhibition.

The alternative of creating a public park on the Castle car park site would be a missed opportunity and result in the deeply unattractive side elevation of the Women's Prison and the back of the existing Coppergate continuing to be exposed in a way which would hardly be a positive setting for the area.

Most planning committee members were of the opinion that the proposal for a park was poor in landscaping terms and ill thought-out, aside from conflicting with Esher's vision.

All councillors strongly believe that development on this site must be of the right quality and design and any old shopping centre or set of buildings will not do. That is precisely the reason why the Terry Farrell application was refused two years ago. A lot of discussion has gone on in the meantime and the current application has met a significant number of the previously expressed concerns. Clearly it hasn't met all of the aspirations of conservation bodies or interested individual requirements, many of which have now changed or are mutually exclusive.

Councillors were mindful of some of the remaining design objections at the planning committee meeting on November 29. We were not completely satisfied with certain aspects of the application - specifically the exact appearance of the buildings facing Clifford's Tower and the multi-storey car park in Piccadilly, plus the landscaping aspects, to name the most significant ones.

All but two members however felt that these could be resolved satisfactorily and recommended conditional approval. The conditions require some further design work and councillors asked that this involve the public and specialist advisers before a final decision on these parts of the scheme is taken.

The city council is determined to get the final details right and clearly the reference, under the planning rules, of the application as a whole to the Government office allows a further independent view of its appropriateness.

Updated: 10:48 Wednesday, January 10, 2001