Heritage bid under spotlight

A management plan is being drawn up to support Saltaire's bid to be declared a World Heritage Site with members of the public invited to have their say.

Some 4,500 leaflets explaining the World Heritage bid and asking for people's views on what issues they believe a management plan should address have been distributed to residents and businesses.

And a series of at least six workshops - organised by Bradford Council and the Sheffield Hallam University consultancy team it has appointed to prepare the bid - will be run next month so people can discuss the issues.

The management plan will look at how Saltaire should be managed and developed in the future, covering everything from traffic, parking and visitor management to environmental, heritage and regeneration issues.

The World Heritage bid document and management plan are set to be submitted to Culture Secretary Chris Smith by Easter.

If they are approved by Government, the bid - which is also supported by Shipley MP Chris Leslie and the multi-agency Saltaire Project Team - will be submitted for consideration to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) by July 2000.

A UNESCO inspection team would then visit Saltaire, probably next winter, with a final decision on whether the model mill village should be put on the same cultural footing as the Egyptian Pyramids expected in December 2001.

Steve Bateman, the Council's Heritage Manager, said whether or not the World Heritage bid was ultimately successful Saltaire would still benefit from having a "blueprint'' explaining how the village should be managed and developed in the next century.

He said: "The World Heritage bid has provided us with the vehicle to produce a management plan for Saltaire - it's a massive opportunity and I think the benefits of having one will be very significant.''

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.