That's a nice functional station building and they managed to save some of the original canopy around the bufferstops. Don't know if that would be possible at Ayr though if it's supported by the building. IANAL, but one problem may be that even if the council and NR demolish or otherwise make safe such a building and chase the owner for costs, there's a risk the owner may then counter-sue over the legality of such a decision and for destroying their investment/property. I suspect it might drag on for years with unknown liabilities on both sides. Shows the utter boneheaded stupidity of disposing of the freehold of buildings so close to and operationally entangled with the working railway. That's Tories for you.
Exactly. The legal position is probably very delicate and the potential liabilities huge on both sides. Even if a completely new stations site was chosen, the fate of the old buildings would still have to be decided to make the railway safe. I suspect the only real winners in any of this will be the lawyers.
We're facing the same sort of thing with large Victorian hotels in Torbay. There is money about in hospitality from far eastern investors but they invariably want to demolish completely and rebuild. Our previous Tory local authority had an automatic rubber stamp approach to any planning application involving such demolition, regardless of public opinion (or indeed planning law in some cases!), which must have at least had some bearing on their loss of control in the recent local elections to a lib dem/independent coalition after some particularly contentious proposals. I think people have to take a pragmatic middle way approach. Not every Victorian building can be saved, but the best examples NEED to be, to avoid everywhere starting to look the same and to ensure a healthy eclectic and evolving mix is maintained.
I think the main problem is that your initial statement needs to be in the past rather than present tense.
But, interestingly, the same year the Tories returned to power after the immediate post-war Labour government. I still stand by my comment about the foolishness of selling the freehold, or even very long leases with ongoing responsibility for the fabric, of significant buildings so close to the railway, whoever was in charge when the decision was made. I accept there are many cases where urban buildings encroach that have never been railway property, but in the case of Ayr, where station and other railway facilities were even retained within what was once a wholly railway owned building, I think mistakes were made in the terms if the current rail authority cannot take any realistic concrete action because of the absentee owner/leaseholder.
That would be in no way "sympathetic" to the building. There would be no point in doing this whatsoever. It would cost more than demolishing it altogether.
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