COUNCILLORS at BCP Council have again clashed over regeneration plans for Bournemouth.

One senior councillor has called for a review of the council’s work with the Bournemouth Development Company – claiming the existing arrangement has been of little benefit to council taxpayers.

But deputy council leader Phil Broadhead claimed: “It’s not all about profit”, defending the “arms-length” agreement with BDC.

He said that had the council and its partners not been involved with some recent developments the area would be left with “nice looking blocks of empty second homes.”

Cllr Steve Bartlett, a former overview and scrutiny committee chairman, told place scrutiny committee members: “BDC has not been a success…it has not worked for the council and it has not worked for the residents of this town. It needs a further review before we move forward.”

He said that the Winter Gardens redevelopment currently showed a £5.6million loss while a similar sum had been paid into the council accounts since the inception of the Bournemouth Development Company.

He claimed the council would have done better on the open market with some of the developments BDC and the council had been involved with.

But Cllr Broadhead said it was more than just about profit. He said working with BDC and Future Places was also about shaping the area to benefit residents and to provide homes and workplaces, rather than just doing quick deals with developers.

“You need to be careful what you wish for,” he said.

He said that the loss shown on the Winter Gardens was good accounting practice and would be only ever become a true loss if the site was never developed – which he was confident it would be.

Concerns about proposals to redevelop a Bournemouth town centre site, Cotlands Road, with high end offices, came from Cllr Vikki Slade.

She said that if the deal did come off, with an un-named company, it could lead to the further conversion of other, older, office blocks into flats, a move which she said often turned out to be unsuitable both for residents and the wider area.

Cllr Broadhead said there had been talks taking place for some time with “a particular major employer who is very interested in the site” but without any firm agreement being reached so far.

He said the obvious other use for the site would be to build high-rise blocks of flats, already a trend in the area, but said the council wanted to re-invigorate the business district with what he described as “Class A” office stock.

The committee heard that it was believed that central Bournemouth had lost around a million square feet of office space in the past 25 years, at least a quarter of that being converted to other uses, including housing.

Other councillors said they were concerned about a number of town centre schemes still under discussion which were likely to lead to a further loss of public parking spaces, including a site above Hinton Road and at Eden Glen.