Phil Hill: Somerset Council's 'Firepool farce' is raging on

Somerset Council has finally admitted it is out of its depth with regards the old cattle market site in Taunton.

The Firepool farce has flummoxed well-intentioned councillors and officers for the best part of two decades - by my calculation 6,830 days come August’s end.

Three successive councils have shockingly thrown cash like there is no tomorrow at the 17-acre site, money-hungry consultants, glossy documents and efforts to attract developers.

A big whack of money flowed into a flood alleviation scheme, while grass planting to show the town in a good light during the Cricket World Cup helped leak more pounds from the shrinking local authority’s coffers.

Bulldozers were called in to knock down the old buildings that had long echoed to mooing cows and the shouts of the auctioneers, unintelligible to all bar the farmers.

At the start of each year since January 8, 2008, we’ve been told, ‘This is the year - expect bricks on the ground come New Year’s Eve’.

We have been promised a cinema, leisure venues, offices, shops, public spaces, homes.

Yet, all we’ve seen on the fringes of the vast plot is an office block that is currently vacant and a digital innovation centre, while a swanky boulevard links Taunton Station to the town centre via the cricket ground.

Phil Hill (Image: NQ staff)

And, of course, the glossy promotional billboards.

The rest of the site has become a wilderness, a testament to inaction and incompetence.

Finally admitting they are helpless to get things moving, councillors have now announced plans to appoint a ‘developer partner’.

That will apparently reduce the financial risk to County Hall, ‘test the market’ and result in the regeneration of Firepool.

Hopefully the pals, whoever they turn out to be, will remain friends longer than the last partner, St Modwen, which was given short shrift eight years ago due to lack of progress.

The new appointment will not happen overnight, then there will be a period in which both sides work on tweaking the existing masterplan, a public consultation takes place and a planning application is submitted to the council itself.

The constant delays to a site in which all council taxpayers have a stake have been frustrating and embarrassing for everyone.

We can but hope there will be some significant benefit of the new partnership by the time the 20th anniversary of the market’s closure comes around in 16 months’ time.

Don’t hold your breath though.