Blog Posts

Holbeck Heritage Walks

5/29/2015

John Cummins (Groundwork and City Connect) will be hosting three walks in and around Holbeck over the next two weeks.

St Matthew’s Community Centre

The heritage walks are open to the public for all to enjoy.

The times and dates of the walks are as follows;

Saturday 23 May 2015 at 11 am

Explore the streets of historic back to back houses and find out how they could be improved as part of the overall regeneration of Holbeck.

Meet at 11.00am at St. Matthews Community Centre in Holbeck.

Sunday 31 May 2015 11.00am

‘Holbeck’s Industrial Heritage’

Walk through the cradle of Leeds’ industrial revolution; Old mills and factories where the wealth of Leeds was founded.

Meet at 11.00am St. Matthew’s Community Centre Holbeck

Monday 1 June 2015

Industrial and Transport Heritage areas, explore the old pathways through Holbeck’s historical industrial area via railway viaducts to the canal basin and new station south entrance. We will be having a short picnic on our return to Matthew Murray Monument so bring few nibbles with you and some sunny weather!

All of the above walks will take up to 1 and a half hours and is easy walking on flat ground but wear sensible footwear and clothing suitable for the weather on the day.

For more information please contact John Cummins on (0113) 238 0601 / jcummins@groundwork.org.uk

Tuesday night is movie night

4/11/2015

The Inner South Community Committee local councilors Angela Gabriel and Adam Ogilvie together with the Holbeck Neighbourhood Forum have organised a free film night for families at St. Matthew's Community Centre, St. Matthew's Street in Holbeck on Tuesday 14 April at 6pm. (Children under 16 years must be accompanied by an adult). The evening's film is going to be Frozen (2013) Refreshments will be available. First come first served.

Matthew Murray Railings get new lick of paint

3/16/2015

Lucy and Lauren Photo by Morteza Fahati

The Matthew Murray memorial railings in Holbeck were given a new lick of paint on (Saturday 14 2015). John Cummins from Groundwork led the team which included active residents: Lauren Butler, partner Conor Sheader and myself. This restorative project comes from the City Connect initiative Groundwork is involved in, which aims to get more people out and about in the community. Public street audits with Holbeck in Bloom helped to identify things that were hindrances to people walking to the city centre. These railings will help lift this part of the walkway.

The rain held off but the cold weather kept us on our toes as Lauren and I squeezed through the gap in the railings to paint from inside the monument. Our fetching onesies were surprisingly warm, but it didn't keep passers by from coming over and having a look what we were doing. One resident was interested and thought at first we were on community service. I think he was surprised when we said we doing it out of the sheer pleasure of improving the area. I didn't forget to plug the Holbeck Neighbourhood Plan forum on 25 April 2015 at St Matthew's Community Centre.

Painting the railings was fulfilling once they were done. But what was more enjoyable was being together for that short period of time doing something different. We had a laugh just chatting and sharing our stories within the area. Holbeck in Bloom, through City Connect project are planning to put up finger posts to show the route(s) to the city centre from Holbeck and the Matthew Murray Monument is a key place to that route.

I'm looking forward to walking past when the sun shines and glistens off the new paintwork on my way into town.

Landlord Forum for Holbeck

3/16/2015

St. Matthew's community centre hosted the first landlord forum (4 March 2015) in Holbeck. The hall was encouragingly filled with local landlords from the community to hear words from ward councilors and different services of Housing sector and West Yorkshire Police. Cllr Peter Gruen introduced forum as the first of its kind locally and the new Leeds Neighbourhood Approach, that will help improve standards of housing in the area.

Peter reported that Holbeck specifically would benefit from support of the forum due to the area having many private landlords and social housing. In regards to the current national housing shortage, Holbeck has already benefited from new homes being built recently through Keepmoat and Unity Homes.

Peter said 'The ambitions of the local council to build sustainable communities with houses that are equipped to reflect the life cycle and changes for one person. This means making sure the houses have enough space to adapt to aging needs and is environmentally efficient. With the help of the forum it will eventually hope to build more sustainable communities with a shared responsibility.'

John Statham: Head of Housing Partnerships, Environment & Housing, went on to address the members of the forum with implementing the Leeds Neighbourhood Approach (LNA). This will target areas that are already identified in need of improvement in Holbeck, in particular empty houses in the Recreations. (This scheme has already been successfully rolled out in Armley and East Leeds). The idea is that the representatives of LNA will contact the landlords with a time frame to improve the houses and bring them up to the regulated standards. This includes working with the landlords and offering support to improve their houses. If no work has been completed by the private landlords the Neighbourhood Team have the right to take over improvements themselves.

The Councillors were challenged with frank questions from landlords with regards to the current situation and how Holbeck has been overlooked generally in terms of tracking neglectful private landlords. Questions were raised over the bin yards which seemed to be an ongoing bugbear with regards to fly tipping. Cllr Angela Gabriel said she shared the concerns, but was hopeful that with a local landlord forum they could work together and get the support they need. Still it was very positive to see so many landlords attending not only with a vested interest but a shared passion for their community and the people living in it.

Raspal Sahota Housing Officer from Unity Homes said their presence within the community will continue for their tenants. He hopes to encourage a residential forum for the tenants to have a voice within their own neighbourhood.

The Holbeck Neighbourhood Forum will also play an important part in keeping links going with the new initiative.
Report and photographs by Lucy Potter

Empty Homes

Gipsil

Canopy

Latest news from the Forum - 24th January 2015

2/13/2015

St. Matthews Community Centre hosted the Holbeck Neighbourhood Forum on Saturday 24th January 2015. It was a lovely sunny day which brought out a few new faces and some regular members too. Thanks to Angela Gabriel and Adam Ogilvie we had a surprise to the agenda from the council Leeds Neighbourhood Approach. This is a hands on working group that helps support landlords and tenants with poor quality or empty houses in Leeds. Mark Ireland came to tell us more about the program and the success it's seen in Armley and other areas.
Dennis Kitchen - chair took us through the draft intentions which can be found under the meetings tab on this website.
These are taken from the Questionnaire which was carried out in the summer of 2014, (see the new's tab on this website).
Eve Tidswell (Friends of Holbeck Cemetery) and Board member announced we were successful for bringing in a planning consultant through a Bridging Grant from Locality. This will help us employ a specialist consultant to compile all the work we've done over the last two years into a brochure style document. This will be called the draft plan - then this goes out to everyone for a 6 week consultation (June and July this year)
We also had the news that the Matthew Murray site had been taken off the 'site allocation' list which is now 'unavailable' for housing. This was unfortunate news to the forum as Matthew Murray site has always been a potential space for mixed purpose such as sustainable housing, a recreational area and all location for improvements. The forum agreed to write a letter to the head of planning stating the ideas and intentions for the space in support of the plan. Dennis suggested visiting the Lilac housing in Bramley; low cost ecological housing for inspiration.
The community projects group will be organising more exciting events in the near future so keep watching this space!
Date and time of next meeting is Saturday 25th April 2015.

Brown Lane East News

2/13/2015

Keepmoat are well on track to complete the development by the 24 February 2015. ·
The 10 local operatives are still working for Keepmoat and 6 will continue working locally for them on completion of the Unity development .

· Delays have arisen as a result of issues with the service providers but these have now been resolved and gas and electric is now available to every property.

· After advertising the properties in the Leeds Homes Magazine, the properties have all now been let and the prospective new tenants met at an event on 10 January at the Holbeck Working Mens Club and where introduced to Cllrs Gabriel and Ogilvy, the Holbeck Neighbourhood forum and Jeremy Morton editor of South Leeds Life. The event went really well and was a great opportunity for all to meet and greet.
Link to the published article is here: http://www.southleedslife.com/new-unity-tenants-welcomed-holbeck/

Local school children invited to view new houses

2/13/2015

Year 3 Children from Ingram Road Primary School - photograph Lucy Potter

Social housing and construction company, Unity Homes and Keepmoat, have been building the new houses on Brown Lane East site. The space used to have back to back houses but were knocked down around four years ago. Since December 2013 work started on the ground to build 42 brand new properties to overlook Holbeck Moor.
Both Unity and Keepmoat have both been actively involved with the Holbeck Neighbourhood forum and with the local school. Back in June 2014 the children from Ingram Road Primary school were approached by Unity to come with a name for the new houses. Wayne Noteman Regeneration director from Unity said
'I thought it would be a fun task for the pupils to work on. Something that would involve them as part of the development and give them ownership within their community'.
The children researched their area and selected a number of different names. The names were then sent to Unity offices and the names were voted on. The winning name came from Oak Class (yr4/5) this was 'Harding Villas'.
At that point the foundations had only been laid but then in December 2014 the first show home was prepared and the school children were invited to see, along with other members of the community.
The link to the published article can be found here http://www.southleedslife.com/hands-harding-villas/

Save the Spotted Cow's Head

11/20/2014

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The Spotted Cow Inn was once a thriving local pub. It's history stems back to the early 19th Century. Along with other public houses this is listed in White's Commercial directory from 1837 and shares some fantastic history of taverns in the area. Up until recently (2005), the pub was popular with football supporters and welcome everyone. Unfortunately, around this time the pub now an empty shell was left derelict. In 2008 the building caught fire and was abandoned. Now housing only wild buddelia and cooping pigeons, the pub was a shadow of it's former life. However, the figurehead of the 'cow' survived the flames and has remained intact.

At a publicity group meeting earlier in the year local resident Steve Peacock suggested the idea of saving the cow's head, as it held a lot of memories for a lot of people. We knew at the time there were plans to have the building demolished, but we didn't know when.

The idea surfaced so many times in various meetings. Discussions were around who to contact, where it would be stored and where it was going to be placed in the future. It was clear that saving the head of the spotted cow represented a big part of peoples lives, memories and especially the history of the community.

An article was written for the local news blog South Leeds Life by Lucy Potter (Secretary on the HNP Board). This included local residents stories linked to the pub and even managed to contact the last land lady of the pub, Maureen Spencer. The story was then followed up by the Yorkshire Evening Post (November 20 2014). They were keen to help the community promote the campaign and put Holbeck on the map.

As we are looking forward to the continuous regeneration of the locality, the head symbolises the community's heritage but is also a part of a hopeful future.

The question still remains, 'where will the head be placed now?'

Please contact us on the email below and get in touch with us about your ideas. We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any memories? tweet us! @TalkingHolbeck

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Holbeck Neighbourhood Plan Forum 27th September 2014

11/20/2014

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The Holbeck Neighbourhood Forum was held last Saturday (27 September 2014) in St Matthew's Community Centre in Holbeck. Community members, businesses, residents and volunteers were served with hot soup and a roll. The chair of the forum, Dennis Kitchen welcomed us all to the forum and gave us an update of developments so far.

The forum through the assistance of Planning Aid UK has been going for two years. This has enabled the Holbeck Neighbourhood plan to move forward to becoming a constituted board in March 2014. The board now comprises of 12 members which have been active in the next stage consultation and engagement with the public. The plan also consists of three sub groups Content Group, Publicity Group and Projects Group.

Between these groups the plan has managed to identify areas of improvement and developed an overall vision for Holbeck. These have been broken down into areas; Environment and Green Spaces, Community Facilities, Heritage, Businesses, Traffic and Housing. It has been important to seek the views of the community to provide a sound evidence base, to take it through to the next formal stages.

A questionnaire was produced and used to consult the public over the summer. We started this at the Holbeck Gala in July. We then visited a variety of following community venues which reflected the diversity of Holbeck; The Holbeck Working Men's Club, Messy Play parent and toddler group at St. Matthews, Ciaran Bingham's Foundation 'Holbeck Feast' at Ingram Gardens community centre, Holbeck Elderly Aid HEA'rt cafe at St. Matthews and Ingram Road Primary School. Some of you may have seen us outside the Spotted Cow in the Slung Low's Airstream at the end of August. Even though the questionnaire is long we got a really good response and quality feedback.

Once the questionnaire results have been evaluated it then becomes the 'draft plan' and then goes through a more formal process, which includes internal examiners report and finally a referendum due in 2016. The plan then becomes a legal policy.

John Cummins from Groundwork presented the CityConnect walk project managed by Living Streets. Their aim is to encourage more people to get out walking in their neighbourhood. This includes helping to improve accessbility routes into town and the refurbishment of Matthew Murray monument. Their project incorporates the green corridor which runs through Armley and New Wortley linking in nicely with Holbeck. They are conducting a Community Streets Audit around safety issues concerning barriers people face when choosing to walk.

Holbeck in Bloom also have funding from CityConnect to provide finger signage offering different walkways into the city from Holbeck. Their aim is to make these routes more attractive and generally improve the walking experience. This includes support from Keepmoat who have agreed to help clear areas identified for improvement. The collaborative work undertaken by these local groups and businesses will make tangible difference to how Holbeck will look for residents and the wider public for years to come.

Wayne Noteman from Unity Housing spoke through the formal process of applying for the houses currently being built on Brown Lane East by Keepmoat.

Karen Taylor, a representative from Armstrong Priestley was also there. Karen had kindly accommodated the business section of the plan a couple of days previously (Thursday 25 September 2014) at the offices in Holbeck. This had been a successful turn out with Dennis introducing the plan to businesses new to the plan. He reminded them of the importance of their involvement in helping to create the overall vision of the plan.

There is still lots happening in the groups, and we are always looking for members of Holbeck to be involved. Look out for the Holbeck neighbourhood plan newsletter coming out soon, it will list all the activities going on over the winter months including the fireworks and Christmas light switch on! Check out the website for more information on the stages and lots more; holbeckneighbourhoodplan.org.uk

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Business Breakfast at Armstrong Priestley

11/20/2014

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On Thursday 25 September 2014 Dennis (The Chair of the Holbeck Neighbourhood Plan) hosted a meeting with the businesses in the area. This was the first official invite to meet business representatives and discuss the plan. Karen Taylor general manager of local fire sprinkler company, Armstrong Priestley, welcomed everyone to their offices in Holbeck.
This had a good turn out with Dennis introducing the plan to those who were new to it. He reminded everyone of the importance of their involvement in helping to create the overall vision of the plan.

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