Birmingham Library backers attack delay over listing decision
Jan 28 2009 by Paul Dale, Birmingham Post
Campaigners fighting to save Birmingham’s Central Library from demolition have criticised a 16-month government delay in deciding whether the 1970s structure should be listed as a building of special architectural interest.
Friends of the Central Library secretary Alan Clawley said he could not understand why the Department for Culture, Media and Sport had been considering Birmingham City Council’s requested for a ruling about the building’s future since September 2007.
Council regeneration director Clive Dutton asked the DCMS for a certificate of immunity from listing, which would create a five-year breathing space to knock down the library to make way for a £1 billion redevelopment of Paradise Circus.
The council launched its own campaign, urging businesses and the public to write to the DCMS backing demolition of the library which is said to be unsuitable for modern use and would cost £100 million to bring up to standard. Mr Dutton said the building was a “blot” and should be destroyed,
Conservation watchdog English Heritage told the DCMS in June last year that it considered the library a fine example of brutalist architecture which “fully merits” a Grade 11 listing – a recommendation which, if upheld, would make it difficult for the council to obtain permission for demolition.
Culture Minister Barbara Follett will decide whether to list the library but civil servants have yet to brief her and there is no date for an announcement.
A DCMS spokeswoman said: “Although we received the application in September 2007, we forwarded it to English Heritage for advice.
“That process usually takes four months but they asked for longer and we finally received advice in late June 2008. After that we undertook a public consultation exercise to which we had a large number of responses. We are now in the process of preparing the case for submission to ministers.”
It is the second time in six years that English Heritage has called for the Central Library to be listed. A recommendation in 2002 was ignored by the DCMS.
Mr Clawley said: “We are puzzled because the government has told us the case will be decided on the architectural merit of the building rather than any other extraneous factors. We took that to mean they would take the advice of English Heritage, which is to list the library. It would be a strange situation if, having asked the experts, they then refused to take their advice.”
Designed by Birmingham architect John Madin, the Central Library was opened by Labour prime minister Harold Wilson in 1974.
In a formal submission to the DCMS, English Heritage described the building as having a “purity of design and simplicity of plan” which captures the best of the brutalist genre.
However, CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, believes the library should not be listed.
