WHAT FUTURE FOR CREMORNE ESTATE?

We were appalled to read recently on the Hornet’s Nest blog about plans to demolish Cremorne Estate at World’s End. According to the Hornet;

“The ‘common and the poor’ are no longer welcome in the Rotten Borough and in decades to come it will be just a ghetto for ultra rich foreigners to hide their ill gotten gains, looted from their own impoverished countries.”

http://fromthehornetsnest.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/wrecking-ballsfirst-sutton-buildings.html

Regular readers of our own blog will know that we have spared no effort over many months to draw attention to the threat facing working class communities both locally and across the whole of London. In doing so we have not been alarmist. The threat is real, current and substantial.

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/rbkc-and-savills-the-truth-they-dont-want-us-to-see
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/selling-the-family-silver-rbkc-savills-and-the-carve-up-of-our-communities
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/organising-resistance-northwest-london-radical-housing-network
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/flies-to-wanton-boys-the-rbkc-decant-policy
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/pants-on-fire-no-3-joint-award-cllr-fieling-mellen-and-the-rbkc-decant-policy

We all know that the Council and TMO have overseen the “managed decline” of the housing stock at Lancaster West over the last forty years via a near total lack of investment which has reduced our estate to a veritable slum. We are now increasingly concerned that they are planning to “socially cleanse” this and other local communities.

Many will remember the Latimer Masterplan, commissioned by RBKC in 2009, which recommended a scorched earth strategy for the regeneration of all the Council estates in the Notting Dale area. Local residents should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the shelving of that report. The Masterplan was not shelved because of any conscientious misgivings about the devastating impact its implementation would have had on the affected communities. It was shelved purely and simply because of the collapse of the international banking and financial sectors at that time, which made it impossible to finance large scale regeneration in the short term. Make no mistake, the Masterplan, or a revised version of it, will be revisited sometime soon.

More recently we have seen RBKC, aided and abetted by Central Government, put in place the legislation to facilitate their plans, not least the notorious new regeneration decant policy, and they are without doubt now working on a strategy to accomplish their aims. Meanwhile we are left to await with bated breath the dreaded “regeneration” that we have long feared, with  local communities uprooted and families moved, perhaps to the outskirts of London, perhaps to areas far beyond.

It may be that some of you are desperate enough by now to think that being rehoused might not be such a bad thing. You may be hoping for a fresh start in a spacious and modern new property. Don’t be fooled into thinking this way. We would suggest instead that you read Emma Dent Coad’s blog (emmadentcoad.blogspot.com) and particularly her scathing criticisms, compiled over many months, of the Wornington Green development, just up the road from us, and the disaster that has befallen the residents of the Wornington Green Estate.

The Grenfell Action Group has recently joined the Radical Housing Network and we are keen to foster relations, and make contact with, other housing activists in West London. Please join us in our efforts. This is no time for complacency and/or defeatism, and if we are not prepared to work together to defend our homes and our communities then we will surely lose them. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

STOP PRESS:

http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/local-news/exclusive-crossrail-2-station-could-7333441

http://savethecremorne.blogspot.co.uk/

The Air Our Sporting Youth Must Breathe

The gross overdevelopment of the Lancaster Green area via the imposition of KALC has seen a crucial part of our much loved residential amenity disappear and our five-a-side football pitches moved to a new location under the Westway flyover and its associated sliproads.

Over the past few years our community has been abused and marginalised by both Labour and Tory Councillors and RBKC Officers, not least because of the Grenfell Action Group’s continuing efforts to highlight the dangers to health of leaving so many of our young people and children with no alternative but to play football and other sports directly beneath this major source of air pollution.

The Grenfell Action Group has previously blogged on this subject and we have appealed to the Council to undertake an air quality survey to measure levels of pollution at the Westway Sports Centre. We are particularly disappointed by the lack of commitment from Judith Blakeman and her poodles in the RBKC Labour Group who have done so very little to help expose this great injustice being perpetrated against their own constituents, most particularly those too young to speak for themselves in the corridors of power.

With the summer months now upon us, and the pollution levels in Central London set to rise with the temperature, the Grenfell Action Group has renewed its appeal to RBKC Council to honour the commitment that was made at the KALC Major Planning Committee to conduct an air quality survey at the Westway Sports Centre.

We have written to Councillor Coates, who lobbied hard on this issue as a member of the Committee, and asked him why the Westway air quality survey that was promised to our community, has not been carried out. We have provided copies (below) of the resulting thread of emails that clearly shows senior Council officers dragging their heels and pretty much refusing to act on this important issue.

Cllr Coates has informed us that he intends to bring this subject up at a full Council meeting if he doesn’t get acceptable answers to his queries, and we will hold him to that promise if the Council fails to follow through on its promise to measure the pollution levels at Westway Sports Centre. We would again remind our readers, and all Councillors or council officers involved in this affair, that unacceptably high air pollution levels at this location have the potential to seriously impact the health of our community, and particularly that of the many school children who have no alternative but to use this facility.  The Council’s own website contains information about lead poisoning, and other common forms of air pollution, that clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy of the same Council effectively forcing children to play football and other sports just meters away from the slip road of this heavily polluted motorway.

http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/environmentandtransport/airquality/effectsonhealth.aspx

When Councillor Professor Coates argued successfully for air quality testing at the Westway Sports Centre, and secured the Major Planning Committee’s agreement to this, we fully expected that the effect of the Committee’s decision would be to make air quality testing at Westway a ‘Planning Obligation’, without which the KALC project should not proceed. Clearly the Director of Planning (Mr Bore) took a different view of this. This leaves us wondering who, in the Royal Borough, decides what is, and what is not, a ‘Planning Obligation’? Is it the Major Planning Committee, which supposedly adjudicates planning applications, and grants or witholds planning permission on the evidence presented to it, or is it the Director of Planning who appears to have his own agenda, and the power to pursue it with impunity?

Shame on the RBKC Councillors who have sat on their hands while our children are forced to breathe high levels of vehicle exhaust fumes while playing sport, and shame on the RBKC Officers who refuse to do the right thing and measure, as promised, the pollution levels in the vicinity of the Westway sports pitches.

The Grenfell Action Group will not cease until we have exposed this ill-treatment of our community and we will bring great shame and embarrassment on RBKC Council when we do. Be warned!

 

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Thursday 22 May 2014

Dear Cllr Coates,

Please could you explain to me why no report has yet been conducted into pollution levels at the Westway despite one being requested by your good self (and a number of Opposition Councillors) and this being agreed by the KALC Planning Committee?

Thank you for your help with this matter.
Grenfell Action Group

Thursday 22 May 2014

Dear Mr Bore

I would be grateful if you could kindly advise me about progress with this matter and copy your reply to Grenfell Action Group

Best wishes
Anthony Coates
BSc, FRCP, MD, FRCPath, Professor of Medical Microbiology, Institute of Infection and Immunity, St George’s, University of London

Friday 30 May 2014

Dear Cllr Coates

I’ve now looked into this.

The Major Planning and Development Committee on 26 September resolved to request that the Bi-Borough Director for Cleaner, Greener and Cultural Services should arrange for a review of the air quality at the Westway MUGAs and prepare a report for the Chairman.

In response to your question I contacted the Director for Cleaner, Greener and Cultural Services and also the Director of Housing, who was managing the KALC project, to find out the position.

No specific measurement on the site of the MUGSs was carried out as part of the review; rather, reliance was placed on data from the monitoring station at Walmer House and a computer generated model from Kings College London. I attach an email from the Director of Housing to the Chairman of the Major Planning and Development Committee and a letter from the Director of Environmental Health to Sir Malcolm Rifkind who was himself acting on a letter from Mr Daffarn. These are self-explanatory.

Regards
Jonathan Bore | Executive Director | Planning and Borough Development

Friday 30 May 2014

Dear Mr Bore

I am surprised that no proper air quality survey has been performed. In principle, if the Major planning asks for such a survey, it should be done. If for some reason it was not done, what is that reason please. I think that you should know that if I do not get a proper answer to this, I will have to bring it up in Council

Best wishes
Sir Anthony Coates,
BSc, FRCP, MD, FRCPath, Professor of Medical Microbiology, Institute of Infection and Immunity, St George’s, University of London

Monday 2 Jun 2014

Dear Cllr Coates

The request was made by the Committee to the Bi-Borough Director for Cleaner, Greener and Cultural Services and it does not fall to my department to undertake or enforce this request; it was not included in any s106 or condition. You need to take the matter up with Ms Harris and Mr Austin; I have copied this email to them.

Regards
Jonathan Bore | Executive Director | Planning and Borough Development

Monday 2 Jun 2014

Dear Mr Bore

Thank you for your comments.
I look forward to hearing from Ms Harris and Mr Austin

Best wishes
Cllr Coates

Friday 13 Jun 2014

Dear Cllr Coates,

Please could you advise the Grenfell Action Group of the response to your request for a proper air quality survey from Ms Harris or Mr Austin?

Our community is fed up of having our children being poisoned by petrol fumes as a result of being forced to play football meters away from a major polluted motorway and we want the Council to honour their commitment to take accurate air quality survey of the impacted area.

As we have stated before, the Grenfell Action Group, will not rest until this matter is properly addressed by those with the power to do so in Hornton St.

Kind regards,
Genfell Action Group

Aldridge Foundation To Pay London Living Wage

Back in late 2013 the Grenfell Action Group contacted the Aldridge Foundation and requested that all catering and cleaning employees’ at the Kensington Aldridge Academy (KAA) be respected and be paid the London Living Wage:

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/will-the-multi-millionaire-aldridge-foundation-pay-the-london-living-wage/

Our hopes that this request might be honoured by the Aldridge Foundation seemed to take a nosedive a few weeks ago when we spotted that the Academy was trying to recruit staff on the cheap:

Volunteering | Volunteer Centre Chelsea and Kensington

It was, therefore, a very welcome surprise when David Benson, the Headmaster of KAA contacted a member of the Grenfell Action Group last week and informed us that he had negotiated for all staff at KAA to be paid the London Living Wage.

Mr Benson stated that to ensure this would happen cleaning and catering staff would be employed directly by the Academy and that this work would not be contracted out to companies paying minimum wage/zero hours contracts etc.

The Grenfell Action Group salutes Mr Benson and his success in bringing the London Living Wage to all KAA employees. While we are aware that Mr Benson helped ensure that staff at his previous teaching post received the London Living Wage we are delighted that the Aldridge Foundation have actually listened to the wishes of our local community.

After years of abuse and oppression from Councillors (Labour and Conservative) and Officers of the RBKC Council regarding the imposition of KAA it is refreshing that the Aldridge Foundation have shown a willingness to listen to and work towards the well-being of the Lancaster West community.
With KAA and Lancaster West residents now forced to live cheek by jowl let’s hope that the Aldridge Academy will continue to respect the existing Lancaster West community.

Grenfell Tower Emergency Residents Meeting

All residents of Grenfell Tower (Tenants, Leaseholders, renters, etc) are invited to attend an Emergency Residents Meeting to be held in the Caretakers Office at the base of Grenfell Tower at 6.30 pm on Wednesday 18th June. This meeting will be run by the residents of Grenfell Tower for the residents of Grenfell Tower.

RBKC Councillors (Labour and Conservative), Officers and representatives of the TMO will not be invited.

We wish to meet together to discuss the Council and the TMO’s shameful handling of the supposed Grenfell Tower improvement works that were originally meant to commence at the same time as the KALC project.

We wish to discuss a vote of “no confidence” in Claire Williams and the TMO and their ability to manage the Grenfell Tower improvement works properly.

We wish to discuss the TMO’S refusal to allow the residents of Grenfell Tower to form a Residents Group to help us through the improvement works and we demand that the views of the residents of Grenfell Tower be taken seriously by the TMO and not be simply ignored.

We retain the right to discuss various ways of making the TMO understand that residents of Grenfell Tower are fed up of being ignored and abused by our Landlord (eg rent strike, direct action, etc).

We urge all residents of Grenfell Tower to attend the meeting on Wednesday 18th June at 6.30 pm to show the TMO that their tactics of “divide and rule” will not defeat us.

RBKC and Savills – The truth they don’t want us to see!

On 26th May 2014 the Grenfell Action Group published an article that highlighted the fact that the Estate Agent to the nobs, Savills, appear to have been given responsibility by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to help shape the Council’s future social housing policy:

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/selling-the-family-silver-rbkc-savills-and-the-carve-up-of-our-communities/

This is the same Savills who were commissioned by RBKC to draft two reports entitled “Options Appraisal for Investment in the Council’s Housing Stock” and “Asset Performance Evaluation Report” and the same Savills who were seen selling their wares earlier this year at the notorious MIPIM in Cannes, France.

We know that this revelation attracted a lot of attention and ruffled some feathers as we had record visitors to the blog around the time of publication and we believe that the relationship between RBKC, Savills and MIPIM will now be investigated further by other media outlets, including, “Rotten Boroughs” in Private Eye.

We have decided to publish a short thread of emails that we believe clearly show RBKC Council attempts to delay the release of these reports and treat their obligations to conduct their own “Internal Review” within twenty days, as required under Freedom of Information legislation, with the same contempt as they do the residents of Lancaster West Estate. This is by no means the first time officers of the Royal Borough have dragged their feet in this way. They do so routinely and with impunity, and the fact that this “laissez-fair” attitude to the Freedom of Information Act appears to have resulted from the inaction of LeVerne Parker, the Rotten Borough’s Chief Solicitor and Monitoring Officer, is particularly galling and tells us all we need to know about this Council’s culture of disrespect towards any authority except their own!

While we have always found Mr Robin Yu, from the Council’s Information Governance Team, to be both courteous and professional, we have to wonder if RBKC and their Chief Solicitor and Monitoring Officer even understand that their role as a Local Authority is to uphold the Law and not use legislation, guidance or recommendations as a way of frustrating legitimate requests for information.

Once we receive a full response from Mr Yu to our email dated Monday 19th May we will share this with our readers, but please don’t hold your breath in the meantime. We believe that RBKC will do everything in its’ power to stop us revealing the truth about the future of the Rotten Borough’s social housing policy and the links between RBKC, Savills and MIPIM.

From: Robin.Yu@rbkc.gov.uk
To: ***************
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act request (Ref: 2013-1081) Response and Query on KALC
Date: Mon, 19 May 2014

Dear *******,

We’re meeting tomorrow to discuss and hopefully finalise this request. If all goes well then I hope to be able to respond to you by the end of the week.

 Yours sincerely

 Robin Yu

Information Protection Assistant, Information Governance Team, Information Systems Division, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

From: ***********

Sent: 19 May 2014
To: Yu, Robin: CP-ISD
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act request (Ref: 2013-1081) Response and Query on KALC

Dear Mr Yu,

Please can you advise me whether there has been any progress with regards my legitimate requests detailed in my email sent to you on 6th April?

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Regards,

***********

From: Robin.Yu@rbkc.gov.uk

To: ***********

Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act request (Ref: 2013-1081) Response and Query on KALC
Date: Mon, 12 May 2014

Dear *******,

I apologise as we have not been able to complete our review within the timeframe previously stated. We will endeavour to complete this as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Your sincerely

Robin Yu

From: Yu, Robin: CP-ISD
Sent: 15 April 2014
To: *********’
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act request (Ref: 2013-1081) Response and Query on KALC

 Dear *********,

I apologise for the late acknowledgement of your request for internal review, which has forwarded to the Chief Solicitor and Monitoring Officer to conduct.

There is no statutory deadline for internal reviews but we aim to respond within 20 working days as recommended by the Information Commissioner’s Office, therefore I aim to respond by 7^th May.

 Yours faithfully

 Robin Yu

 

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

There is only one major topic of conversation among residents of Grenfell Tower at the moment and that is what on earth has happened to the improvement works that our landlord the Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council promised would finally commence on our beleaguered tower block in Spring 2014.

The general consensus in the local community seems to be that the RBKC Council/TMO will not be delivering on their commitments to improve any of the housing stock on Lancaster West Estate any time soon. Residents understand very well that the TMO are not in the business of investing our rent back into maintaining our properties but prefer to spend our money on employee bonuses, hiring layer upon layer of redundant staff and dreaming up daft schemes like trying to fob their tenants off with third rate insurance:

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/tmo-pour-salt-on-a-festering-wound/

Residents have not had any communication from the TMO since a couple of days after the Grenfell Action Group last blogged about the Grenfell Tower fiasco in March 2014. Prior to that we hadn’t heard from the TMO/Council since Christmas. What makes their management of this shambles so upsetting is the complete lack of information provided to residents of Grenfell Tower who have simply no idea what is supposed to be going on with regard to the future of their homes.

We think that Peter Maddison and his colleague, Claire Williams, at the TMO need to explain to our community how they have already managed to spend around 1 million pounds of the 9.5 million budget for the Grenfell Tower improvement works and yet designed to keep the residents of Grenfell Tower so totally uninformed about what is actually going on. Residents want to know about how this money has been spent and why the project is so delayed?

How difficult can it be for the TMO to get it together to post regular updates to residents and treat us with a modicum of respect.? Instead, they choose to treat the Grenfell community with contempt while the budget for the whole Grenfell Tower improvement works is rapidly being drained away. The Grenfell Action Group recently wrote to the TMO under Freedom of Information legislation to find out exactly how much money the TMO has spent on the project so far (without any visible signs of progress) and we will blog again on the subject as soon as we get a response from either Maddison or Williams.

In the meantime, we believe that the conduct of the TMO, their total failure to communicate adequately with the Grenfell Tower community and their refusal to allow residents to form any sort of collective representation bodes very badly for the future.

When push comes to shove, and with levels of trust so low, we have to wonder how many residents will actually engage with the TMO and agree to let their contractors anywhere near the inside of their homes?