I'm not going to be long posting this, for those reading regularly I'm afraid that I can't guarantee a regular week of posting as work is particularly heavy at the moment...but for now see my thoughts on Monday's program Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan.

The program (first in a series of four) focused on the iconic bridge built at Castleford to connect an island just off the main town centre, affectionately known as duck island, to the rest of the town. Spanning almost 5 years the work was fairly fast but bureaucracy and division manages to bog down the task for the first 4 of those years. Who was to blame, who saved the day?

Channel 4, along with the local council and other funding bodies, have stumped up cash and organisational power to get this "project" moving to revitalise the town that has been long suffering in economic and crime terms, and now we know (along with more to come) that they have a brand new beautiful bridge to be proud of on a newly cleaned up river.

If you'd have caught any of Panorama I'm sure you'd understand that Bill Bryson must be jumping up and down in glee at the thought, as well as supposedly how much this should bring down crime in the area.

But 4 years of stalling and arguments? What the hell was going on? The program itself was one of two stories...that of the local community and that of the council. Clearly the council wanted to keep local residents on board, damn right really given they are a representative body, but some of the earliest scenes in the show gave stark insight in to how much the council were prepared to fight the local champions of the project to get their own way.

It is of course harsh to leave it at that description, of a big bad council trying to forgo any kind of democracy but ultimately you do end up wondering just how much the community are behind any consensus reached and how much of it is two women's personal desires and preferences. Equally you have to wonder if it is to the council's credit or not that they would rather go with a more simple and cheaper design and ultimately more experienced designers.

By June 2007, when the big floods hit the country, it seems as though perhaps their views were vindicated. A barge, dislodged upstream, was found one morning on the weir. The original floating bridge design chosen by the community would have been, quite simply, smashed apart by this natural force. In hindsight the council could quite happily breath with some relief they hadn't funded a project over £1mil to build a bridge that would be somewhat in tatters by now.

But the only reason this bridge wasn't built was ultimately down to poor planning and overly-defensive and conservative practices by the local government. It was around a year before any structural surveying was done to the project to see if it was feasible, ultimately resulting in a redesign of the original floating bridge. It took about the same time for anyone to think about actually looking in the river to see if building a bridge in it was even possible.

If these had been handled a bit more efficiently, with less meandering over issues that were quite simply not issues outside of a June 2007 type scenario, the bridge would have been up and the council would have not been so fortunate. Quite simply, if June 2007 hadn't happened none of the bureaucracy would have stopped a bridge from being built that was potentially as unsafe as the design at the time.

This lead to the new, and twice the price, fixed bridge. A beautiful piece of work that fits in wonderfully with the landscape, but yet still was delayed by the local council. Question: What do you offer a guy who owns the land you need to make a public right of way when you're years late delivering on a project and the costs keep going up? Answer: £2k, it seems. Despite being enough land to build 5 houses on, reasonably assessed at £150k worth of land, the council wanted to buy it for pittance.

The seller was ultimately one of good heart, parting with the land for just £40k which in anyone's books is a bargain that was obviously reached for the good of the town, yet again when the council is willing to increase budgets and find millions in extra funding, why is £100k suddenly breaking the bank?

I asked who was to blame, and perhaps that is harsh as ultimately the bridge is built and everyone seems happy about the outcome. The reality is that without the council being it's conservative self, worrying and deliberating on every aspect the town could have landed itself with a disastrous piece of work. At the same time, however, it wouldn't have been the same without the community getting behind the project and pushing it through, nor reasonable individuals such as the final land owner practically giving the land away.

It's not pretty seeing the inner machinations of how these projects come to be, but maybe they're not so bad for the best outcome to be achieved...if only councils could be less tight fisted when it comes to our money they're spending!