On Monday at the City Council Cabinet meeting the Labour City Council agreed to put Rookery House, a grade 2 listed building up for sale.
Speaking at the meeting Cllr Robert Alden, who has been fighting to save Rookery House, Erdington, said "to understand where we are regarding Rookery House, you must first understand where we have come from. Rookery House has been under maintained by the Council for almost 40 years now. This is a prime example of what happens to our heritage when the Council chose to simply ignore regular maintenance".
In recent times Cllr's Robert Alden, Gareth Moore and Bob Beauchamp (all Erdington, Conservative) had some success in securing works to the House to prevent its further decline and make it possible for it to be repaired. In 2010 Robert and the team, secured £300,000 to do urgent repair work to fix broken roof and remove dry rot from inside the building. In 2012 Robert, Bob and Gareth also secured a further £100,000 to restore the famous Italian sunken Garden that is in the grounds of Rookery House.
Over the last 20 years local residents, with help from various local Councillors have been fighting to save this house for the people of Erdington for a number of reasons including:-
- This was Erdington’s Council House, this building and the depots and parks were left to the people of Erdington forever. Sadly the Council legal team feel the deed confirming this was not legally strong enough to prevent the Council selling the House and Depots.
- Rookery House is a listed building, and forms a vital focal point locally in Rookery Park.
- Too many of Erdington’s famous and beautiful mansions have already been demolished and lost. This House must not follow that path.
Cllr Robert Alden went onto say "the Council has got us to this situation because:-
- The building is deemed surplus because it would cost too much to repair, but the Council are responsible for it getting in this state.
- The Council have refused to recognise the deed saying the land must remain for the people of Erdington,
- The Council have refused to allow the depots to be sold separately and the Council keep hold of the house and pay for the repair from the capital receipt.
- The Council has since May not held a single meeting of the Cabinet Members steering panel of Rookery House
This leaves us where we are and so that is why we have been left with no option in Erdington but to work with the Council to at least ensure the house is saved and what is built on the depot sites is ok for the people of Erdington. It is frankly disgraceful that the Council have not been willing to keep hold of the house and use the money from the sale of the depot lands to do up the house. It was left to the people of Erdington and this Council is selling from under our feet without any protection for Erdington residents.
Cllr Bob Beauchamp commented "we had a number of concerns about this report, we stressed a number of conditions that should be placed on the sale to protect Erdington's heritage. We begrudgingly accepted that the Council has no intention in trying to do restore the House sadly. The conditions we requested were:-
- The outstanding petition on the future of Rookery House and its depots is adhered to and a covenant is placed on the land stating that the depots can only have private houses (not flats) built on them, because this is the predominate make up of the surrounding houses, the sites over look a premier City park and listed building so a significant level of income could be generated to restore Rookery House, the Council waves the right to social housing as only then will this raise the levels of funding needed to restore the House and because Erdington already has an above average level of social housing for the City and the Community has said more family homes for sale are needed instead.
- We felt the whole house should be used for community use and wanted that reflected in the report, the Council currently does not even have any minimum level of Community use listed, therefore we demanded a minimum guaranteed level of Community space to placed in the report, with a priority given for Educational and local History use, so that we can ensure that the History of Erdington, and the role Rookery House played in the abolition of slavery could be taught to children for generations to come.
- The only other use residents have stated to us they would accept was for a retirement village on the depot site with the House used for the communal facilities as these would then be available to all users of the Park and could allow space for shared teaching of Erdington’s history.
None of this is featured in the report; this is especially concerning regarding the possibility of placing a covenant on the land to only allow private housing for sale to be built as this is the matter of an outstanding petition to the City Council and yet is unmentioned in a report about Rookery House. Sadly none of this was accepted by the Council".
Robert added "in putting up Erdington's history for sale the Council have refused to have any conditions guaranteeing a minimum level of community space, or that the houses built would be family houses for sale as requested by the local community in a petition to the Council".
Pictures:-
Top - Cllrs Gareth Moore, Bob Beauchamp and Robert Alden by a boarded up Rookery House
Bottom - Cllrs Robert Alden and Bob Beauchamp by the Italian Sunken Garden, which was successfully rejuvenated last year following a grant they secured.