OldNutter

Your councillor is spot-on. He is not allowed to get involved at all in any actual two-way discussion because that might leave him open to claims of being "pre-disposed" for or against the application. Having said that receiving emails putting your case is classed as lobbying, so a polite email as suggested would be fine. That was one of the things I was referring to by saying the system is solidly behind the developers in these cases. As a lay person, I find it grossly immoral that the developers can do what they want and talk to anyone, but we cannot discuss a proposal with our elected representative so that he/she knows the other side of the discussion from people he/she represents and who know the local effects of these plans. But the law is the law and nobody said it has to be fair. That said, Julie is not bound by that rule because she will not have a vote for or against it when it comes to committee.

A little bit of info for the future. When the two applications consultation closes, the two plans will almost certainly come back to the PCC to move on to the next step. There will be a meeting of the Planning and Environment Protection Committee. As outsiders, many of us will not be able to contribute to the discussions and we will have to rely on local supporters who live within the PCC wards. The details of who is on that committee are shown here: https://democracy.peterborough.gov.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=117 The councillors shown there are the ones you will need to "lobby" with your comments before that meeting. I dare say, based on previous performances, the fact that the plans are going to committee might well not be made very obvious, so you may have to keep your ears to the ground. Unfortunately, the only councillor (Julie Stevenson) to put their head above the parapet to talk to the papers so far is not on the committee, but she might be someone who can help from the sidelines. The whole thing will be a fight and the opponents will have all the rules at their fingertips, but being wrong is a distinct disadvantage for them so beating them is certainly possible.

I am struggling with my adding up here. I believe that there are very few people within a hundred mile radius of the EoS that do not know of it and most have probably visited it for one of the hugely varied events that used to be run there over the past 70+ years. The Peterborough Local Plan has a specific section devoted to it because the Showground is (was) synonymous with Peterborough. The speedway has been an important part in that wide knowledge. So... rather than concentrate on just the loss of speedway should the whole Showground be classed as a heritage asset and should the withdrawing of the bookings be regarded as wilful neglect of this whole important heritage site in direct contradiction of both the Local Plan and the NNPF? I fail to understand why the Showground Society would completely ignore the existence of the Speedway site in their strategic plans on the balance sheet - unless the advice given to them by the purveyors of the fictional Shangrlila dream of free money for ever from the OTT housing and having anything still operating on the site would be a risk to the dream (and the mortgage now on it) Perhaps we also need a Plan B before the fires start. Running the speedway would only mean using that corner we have been having to use this year since the old entrance and hard-standing via the Arena was fenced off. We could have the grass between the trees as parking (I seem to remember using that a few years ago). The track is pretty well bounded already and a fence along the south side of the access from Gate 3 for EoS assets to the track would bound that past the pits. The showground works area is there as well and could stay where it is to house the maintenance vehicles. We would not need majority of the showground, so cost should not be an issue and a sympathetic project plan leaving that area free would make it possible to get a few more years speedway there. After all, we know from experience elsewhere that we are talking about upwards of 10 years before the whole site would be concrete. Clearly there would be fairly swift building at the start so that the Phase One payment date can be met but once the progress is constrained by the rate at which they are sold governs progress, the rate of building will depend on the market, and that is not looking very rosy at the moment! Speedway could be seen as the good guys and it might even mean that doing it properly will not appeal to the Shangrila dreamers and mortgage holders as well and they will go somewhere else! If the M4 Shangrila gang want to try somewhere else all together, the Showground complete with the speedway could be re-energised and if someone with a bit of local history behind them wanted to build a reasonable few houses to satisfy the Local Plan, say 350 houses on the southerly area, the Arena and bits would act as a good sound screen if that was felt necessary. The site, including the Arena, would then house both inside and outside leisure that would include the second best supported open air leisure facility in Peterborough sports behind Posh. I am sure that would not be as divisive as this current soul-less out-of-town cut, paste and plonk plan currently on the table.

Been ferreting again. Companies House has a lot of useful information, all of which is in the public domain and can be identified,repeated and understood! The whole story has been described in the 2022 Annual Report of the Charity/company known as the "East of England Agricultural Society" including the family trees of the whole place and what money has been allocated (not to be spent until the end of Phase One of the actual development). Most relevant is that the report does not mention the Speedway anywhere in it, including the report on the B/S that was put to the council when describing the wonderland this change as going to invent. I think they made an off-the-cuff remark to the council that the only comments they have had about the speedway were complaining about the noise. OK so it is a bit noisy for around 15 minutes every other week for about 6 months of the year, but I suspect that could be a bit of an issue for anyone who only hears a golf ball being displaced a few yards at a time. Many years ago, the local farmers cooperative charity devised a company known as "East of England Showground Services Ltd" who actually managed the day-to-day Showground events and passed their profits to the charity for good charitable uses(Not owned by the farmers now, but two familiar names crop up yet again now).. The charity lists a whole load of events that were held at the showground in 2022, but again do not mention the speedway at all again. Bottom line is that anyone reading these various documents and going to any AEPG presentations would have no idea at all that the speedway even existed. AEPG is apparently the overall holding company now (a company with one director, one £1 share and £1 of assets). AEPG is listed by the Services company as the owner of that company and it looks as though the land owner is still the charity until that Phase One completion. Apparently that constitutes a viable operation! Like I said, all information that is in the Public Domain. When we had a similar planning situation round here, our long-time councillors were ousted and replaced with independents. These councillors took the residents side in the planning committee meeting that was meant to rubber stamp the plan and the developers had to go back and lick their wounds and either give up and try somewhere else for their future income, or appeal - we await the next instalment of this particular fight. The new councillors pointed out to us that it was perfectly legitimate that as well as making all the consultation comments, we should write to each member of the planning committee detailing our concerns just before the actual planning approval committee meeting - it is called lobbying.. Obviously non-Peterborough speedway supporters cannot do this, but there are plenty by the looks of the planning portal.

There is another document that becomes very relevant in this case called the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). This government document is the bible as far as far as planning is concerned. I forms the basis of all plans and lower-level plans like the Local Plan. There are a couple of useful references in the NPPF. For example - In paragraph 196 it says: Where there is evidence of deliberate neglect of, or damage to, a heritage asset, the deteriorated state of the heritage asset should not be taken into account in any decision. Perhaps the common factor of all the loss of all of the various events, and the effective forcing of the speedway to disappear could be classed as deliberate neglect in order to forward the case for the proposed plans? It is hardly likely to be a coincidence when viewed with the changes made to the directorships in the operating company now fixed tightly to AEPG. Closes the "Not viable" argument completely. Paragraph 99 of the NPPF also makes interesting reading for inculsion n any objections.

The case might be lousy and the whole fantasy built on borrowed money, but remember the whole team are probably very clever and they and their mates know that the whole system is biassed in favour of their sort. They will use all the tricks and dodgy maths to persuade the PCC that their plan will work. They will claim that all the difficulties will be ironed out in the later stages of the planning and then claim that the council let them get that far so should let them go further. Splitting the build in two is the first stage - makes each one smaller and easier to do the dodgy maths. During the build stages they will plead difficulties and get the costly fantasy bits cancelled while they carry on with the money-making concrete laying. Do not forget, these first people will not actually lay a single brick. They are just the ones who plan to make loads of money getting the plans for the big building firms to move in. We had a big build round here covering the past 8-10 years. The original plans had a 25% social housing build clause into them. About half way through the build, the consortium found that the affordable houses were not affordable enough and couldn't sell them so they submitted a new plan to reduce the non-affordable affordable house clause with a reduced quota by a half. That meant that because the total they had built matched the original plan number, they did not have to build any more non-affordable affordable houses. By the way, the builders only build houses that they are sure to sell, so with the market crashing at the moment, the rate of building will be painfully slow. If they really wanted to incorporate the speedway into the plan, they would probably not need to touch either track or grandstand for the next 10 years and we could carry on enjoying our sport in between the rounds of golf and body building if we can afford them - not.

For even more of an idea where this is going, have a look in the Companies House web site and see how many directors AEPG have got! They came into being on 20 Aug 2020 so their background hardly qualifies as "history". The other interesting look while there is the company that has run the showground since 6 Oct 1970. This company was comprised over the years mainly by farmers who presumably came from the early days of the Society. That all changed on 23 Aug 2021 when the directors all left and two new non-farmers took over. One of those has the same name as the AEPG director plus another whose name we will probably come to know as this fantasy rolls on.(best you find those names by looking rather than me name them here). Final fun thing to do for a giggle is to look at the AEPG corporate website at:https://www.aepguk.com/ I can only describe that website as the perfect replica of the scam sites that we are warned about in all security videos. Must have cost a small fortune - a very, very small fortune.

There is an odd line in that article where the director of AEPG is quoted saying he is working closely with the Speedway. He seems to be claiming that the fans are disappointed that the Speedway is moving out of Peterborough. Question: Is the speedway "moving" out of the town or has it been effectively evicted by his fantasy vision of the concrete covered showground site. The answer to that one may have a distinct bearing on his view on the assessment of the Panther's viability. Or is something happening elsewhere that we do not know about next year?

Spot on - should form the basis of the action to force the issue I am a newby posting here so I will keep a bit down for a while about the issues on this thread. I went to my first speedway event when I was four at Perry Barr, Birmingham 76 years ago. Since then, I have spent time following the Brummies (love that big red B ) and then when we moved to Coventry it was the Bees.Then I left the RAF I ended up here in darkest Bedfordshire, so Peterborough became my nearest team. I've chimed in here because I ended up getting mixed up in a planning fight with a bunch of very determined developers who have come back with more and more complicated B-S to try and bamboozle the locals into giving up and I have learnt a few tips and tricks on the way. The Crimp99 post is real solid advice. Objections do not have to be super complicated, but they do have to very pointed at the words in the planning system. We must accept that the planning system is a huge operation that is biassed massively in favour of big money. Every stage in any fight with them has been pre-planned so that the peasants can't win. Having said that we managed to get a big development stopped here for now last week with a great deal of help from our new wave "post-Boris" councillors down here. Because the system is so biassed, do not expect much help from the council planning officers - they are part of the system (not the case with the councillors - they have to face the peasants for their jobs every few years)). Probably the best advice I can give for now having scanned the Local Plan and the planning application documents on the council web site is to shout loud everywhere you can. The developers weakest card is when they have to pop their heads up into view . This will mainly be first when they have to publish their detailed plans because if you spend time reading through getting to know the key documents you will know what the battlefield looks like from their perspective - try to find the planning officer's comments in amongst all the files. Put official objections in at every turn at every date possible, such as the short 30-day one that is currently open. Heed the advice from that post from Crump99 and keep it direct and pointed at official policies. The emotional stuff might help a bit with the councillors, but the planners and developers will just sit back and laugh at those comments. In fact they will probably trade on them a bit to show how poor the opposition is. The next stage when the opposition surface will be a key meeting of the "Development Planning Meeting" (or something with a similar name). The planners have to explain why they have ignored all of the public comments and the councillors on that committee have a chance to vote to reject the application. Rejecting it would be a huge step for people-power so it has to be on the basis of proving the Planning Officials wrong. The developers will stack the application with loads of bogus stuff provided by the people they pay from the planning industry that have pseudo-mathematical models that always prove that the development will do nothing to make things any worse and the world will be all roses if they get their way - they will also miss out inconvenient things that do not help. The main thing we did round here was to get as many people to email the councillors on that planning committee directly with a quick summary of why it should be rejected and turn up at the public gallery to make it clear there is lots of support to keep Panthers racing in Peterborough. See if you can get Look East off their Norwich chairs to go to the meeting for example Finally, the application is pretending to be pushing leisure facilities at the site. We must accept that speedway will not pay all the money needed for the sport, so any re-built stadium must have facilities that can be used on most of the time when there is no speedway going on there. Things like sports and meeting facilities need to be built into the stadium infrastructure. The Nation Speedway Stadium was built primarily to replace that great stadium across the road at Hyde and I gather there are gymnasium facilities in it to pay some of the bills. Maybe we can get some help from other tracks as well as Belle Vue that have gone through this system, such as Coventry (looks like eventually succeeding against a dodgy developer and helpful council). I am sure Bomber has some contacts there. That should be enough for a first post, and I will keep a somewhat distant eye on how things progress as one of you local posters get their teeth into the fight and if I notice anything useful, I may chime back in.