John Lewis

[northernboy 13]

The last customer served in store was on 4th January 2021 before the country went into lockdown. Staff were informed of the proposed permanent closure on 24th March. After consultation the decision was finalised at the end of June.

[Bilge 34]

And it turns out life goes on. You can buy stuff elsewhere.

[northernboy 13]

Apparently, the building has now been given Grade 2 listed status...

 

https://twitter.com/BBCSheffield/status/1557607405936152576?s=20&t=NDLcSMkoy-OwpP9fJ8KGfg

[HeHasRisen 3,380]

Oh dear. Which idiot listed it?

[northernboy 13]

The reasoning from Historic England can be downloaded from here https://services.historicengland.org.uk/webfiles/GetFiles.aspx?av=423EDE77-068B-4962-B66D-AD0FDC88D5BB&cn=0F318425-421A-4030-8D72-A7794617D1CF

 

[HeHasRisen 3,380]

Beyond bonkers. How long did the old Co-Op building stand empty before it became the Kommune foodhall thing?

 

Who actually applied for the listing?

[AndrewC 306]

I can appreciate some aspects of the building - architecturally - for example, I don't think it looks bad from Barker's Pool, nice proportions, clean lines etc. Might not be to everyone's taste but it's ok. But I can't support this. It's going to be too constrictive for private developers to bother with now. Conservationist bodies have left SCC and Sheffield with an unworkable lump of concrete. The car park at the very least is out-of-date and oppressive on the streetscape - it needs to be gone.

 

Most achievable plans put forward by bidders for the site involved at least partial demolition and that's now either not going to happen, or the processes to make that happen with a listed building are twice as hard (you can still apply to demolish parts of listed buildings, but you need a very good case and a lot of patience).

 

Only yesterday we had a news article telling us about how we had a wonderful range of proposals from bidders, and today I'm hearing at least a couple of bidders have now withdrawn as their proposals are now no longer achievable. Unfortunately, as per usual, this is shining a favourable light on doing business in Sheffield*.

 

*(in fairness, SCC are not the ones who have listed this and in fact tried to block it)

[prince al 167]

What a mess! A large National retail employer moves out and we can’t even knock the dilapidated building down.

[Mr Bloke 1,445]

Hmmm...

I would have thought SCC would have been secretly delighted at the news.

It gives them the perfect opportunity to do very little...

... and then to blame someone else for their inactivity, as per usual!

[Ghozer 112]

19 minutes ago, AndrewC said:

 

*(in fairness, SCC are not the ones who have listed this and in fact tried to block it)

There should be a yearly pot, X amount towards renovating and improving listed buildings...

"Historic England" as it is, should take said pot into account when deciding which buildings to give "listed" status, if they cant afford to improve/renovate said building(s) they don't get status... Would make them think a bit more and harder on their decisions of which to list and which not...

[Man in Crete 103]

Is it not the case that a local authorities planning dept are the ones who give consent?

goodness where’s one of those know it all planners to educate when you need them? Ok one should along in 5 4 3 2 1…..

[AndrewC 306]

1 hour ago, Man in Crete said:

Is it not the case that a local authorities planning dept are the ones who give consent?

(First thing I should say - I'm not a professional planner so I await Planner1 coming along to contradict my every word shortly 😁)

 

If you mean, do the council have to give final approval to the listing, then no; I  don't think so. It's all in the hands of Historic England to list buildings.  They make a judgement based on certain criteria as to whether to add it to the National Heritage List for England, and once that is done, said building is protected by different planning laws. I don't think the council have any power of veto. It sounds like (from Cllr Iqbal's quote) that they did apply to block the listing, but that attempt failed.

 

Local planning authorities do thereafter have some powers; you can still apply to do things to listed buildings just as with a non-listed building - even demolish parts of them - but those stricter laws surrounding them mean it takes longer and you have to have a really good case to do so. Since HE would then have more say in vetoing certain plans, there is also more chance of appeals etc. being escalated to higher law courts etc. etc.

 

Basically, it all becomes more difficult, time consuming, and expensive to do what you want to do. Now ask yourself if any private developer has the time and the money to bother with that and you can see why this is probably a bad thing in the context of such a big building like John Lewis, in a city like Sheffield where development returns can be meagre.

 

 

If the council have anything about them*, I would be knocking on the governments door asking them to pay for things like asbestos removal and other things. If Historic England want it listed, maybe they should offset some of the financial implications that SCC and the local community are now going to suffer because of that.

 

*Narrator: "They didn't"