New Bradford Top of Town pictures revealed

Friday, 15 October 2021 10:03

Bradford Council has released some exciting new designs illustrating how the city’s ‘Top of Town’ conservation area could be transformed into a thriving, attractive, healthy and green heritage site.

The new designs take into consideration feedback gathered in a public consultation run in earlier this year and have been created to carefully complement the area’s highly regarded heritage architecture.

The pictures show how leafy avenues of trees, pockets of greenery and new natural rustic paving could dramatically improve the area whilst preserving the site’s valuable heritage architecture.

The proposed enhancements are designed to could help tackle climate change, improve air quality and reduce flooding.

One option illustrates how the area’s statue of Richard Oastler could remain on Northgate and Nutter Place, but within a new pocket park. Another option explores how the statue could be relocated to Rawson Square.

The listed statue was first unveiled in the old Forster Square on Whit Saturday 1869 and was relocated from Forster Square to Rawson Square in the early twentieth century and again to its present location in 1968.

The new designs show how terraced landscaping and timber seating could be used to create sociable spaces for people to enjoy.

A network of ‘rain gardens’ could be established as part of a sustainable drainage system designed to help reduce local flooding risks.

Rain gardens are areas of sustainable planting designed to temporarily hold, filter and soak away any rainwater that runs off buildings and paved areas.

Rainwater is diverted from running straight into sewers, helping to preventing overloading the drainage system during torrential storms.

Planting semi-mature trees will improve the landscape and create new habitats and increase biodiversity.

Urban biodiversity could be enhanced with wildlife corridors and connections between the green spaces allowing animals to travel across the city.

To reflect feedback from a number of local businesses, some on-street parking and loading bays have been kept on North Parade.

However, the amount of pavement area will be significantly increased to create a more visitor friendly environment and rising bollards on North Parade could allow the space to be closed off for street events such as the annual North Parade Street Festival.

Layouts will be co-ordinated with city centre CCTV coverage to maximise safety throughout the area.

If successful, the approach could be rolled out to the wider City Village area in the future.

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, Portfolio Holder for Regeneration, Planning and Transport, said: “Our community engagement programme conducted earlier this year confirmed overwhelming support for creating new public spaces and greening existing ones.

“We have listened to local feedback by introducing street trees and rain gardens into the designs. Better public spaces have been added to Northgate and Rawson Square.

“This high quality public realm will make the area more attractive and sustainable whilst helping boost footfall.

“We are always interested to hear what people think about our plans. You can view the full set of drawings on our website which includes contact details and ways of providing feedback.”

Funding for the project was secured for the improvements from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, as part of the Bradford City Centre Townscape Heritage Scheme and through the European Regional Development Fund, as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Programme.

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