Blakeman Scores Some Points

This blog has not always been kind to local Councillor Judith Blakeman, Leader of the Labour Opposition Group in Hornton Street, but we applaud the recent objections that she has made in response to the thuggish behaviour of the Planning Dept at Kensington and Chelsea Council.

Her recent council motion, severely critical of the RBKC planning committees, won wide support and was easily carried. The story  appears in a recent article on the very excellent “Hornet’s Nest” website and is well worth a read:

http://fromthehornetsnest.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/council-motion-calls-for-councillor.html

Well done to Councillor Blakeman for pointing all this out, but unfortunately too late for residents in her own Notting Barns Ward, whose views on the Kensington Academy (KALC) have been treated with contempt and disdain by those with power in the Planning Dept at the Council.

The Planning Dept’s treatment of our community has caused great upset and will not be forgotten. The residents of Lancaster West Estate have been treated as poorly as the residents who faced the same callous Council indifference in the mid 70s, when the Westway flyover was first built, and they were forced to live, abandoned and betrayed, in the shadow of the motorway.

At the KALC Planning Committee one Tory councillor did not even know the basic layout of the proposed site and repeatedly interrupted an objector who was raising legitimate objections – rude at best and intimidating at worst, particularly under such circumstances.

The actual KALC Planning Application was so flawed and full of misleading facts and claims that it was not fit for purpose and would never have survived even the briefest scrutiny from a competent Planning Committee which, of course, it never got.

Needless to say the KALC application was a shoo-in!

The issue of pollution in the vicinity of the Westway Sports Centre will come back to haunt the Planning Dept, and other members of the Council, who appear to have bullied a number of Majority Party Councillors into covering up this shameful ill-treatment of sports facility users, who are now forced to play football mere feet away from the slip road of a highly polluted and dangerous motorway.

Councillor Professor Sir Anthony Coates (Conservative), who expressed his own concerns on this issue, was promised a report into pollution levels but seems to have been silenced and sidelined by an act of collusion between the Planning and Legal Departments.

Our own Labour Councillors and local campaigners have to swim through treacle to make any progress on this issue, such is the determination in Hornton Street to bury this matter under the carpet.  Councillor Coleridge’s (Conservative) platitudes to local campaigners do not impress, and the Council’s collusion in the poisoning of our community will eventually be exposed to the great shame and embarrassment of Coleridge and his ilk at the Rotten Borough.

What a cess-pit!

A Small Victory

We received the following yesterday in an email from Peter Wright at RBKC, one of the head honchos for the KALC project:

“Leadbitter have been instructed to re-open the n/s route across the site as soon as possible, while ensuring that the safety of pedestrians is maintained. Please do not attempt to access the site until the appropriate fencing is in place, some has been installed today and more will arrive tomorrow – the gates will then be opened. As per Mr McCool’s email of last week a temporary order to close the rights of way on site will be made starting from 1st February, when they will be shut.”

This was just one small victory snatched from an implaccable enemy that is utterly indifferent to the hardship caused to residents of this community, young and old alike, who have seen their trees butchered, their open space enclosed behind ten foot walls, and their rights-of-way illegally denied.

Don’t you find it a bit off that this brief Council statement contains not even the slightest trace of an apology for their illegal actions in denying our right-of-way without due process, and the very real hardship this has caused to residents?

If we hear any more on this we will post it here as promised.

Meanwhile, make the most of this kids, because it won’t last long!

Support From The Open Spaces Society

The Grenfell Action Group are members of the Open Spaces Society and have benefitted much from the expert advice and guidance that we have received from them.

The Open Spaces Society has expressed serious concern at the Council/contractors apparent disregard for the Law and have written to the Transport Planners at RBKC to seek clarification on a number of matters.

We would prefer not to publish this correspondence in full until the Planners have had a chance to respond to the Society directly but, as time is very much against us, we felt it appropriate to publish the main points in order to keep the community properly informed.

This is an edited version of the Open Spaces Society email, addressed to the Transport Planner referred to in our previous post, and sent on 20/1/13:

“You state that there is not yet a temporary traffic regulation order in place to permit the closure of the north-south route across the KALC site and that such an order will be in place from 1 February.

We are dismayed to learn that the route has been closed since before Christmas. Since this is a public highway, such closure would appear to be an illegal obstruction under section 137 of the Highways Act 1980. Your council has a duty, as highway authority, under section 130 of the Highways Act 1980 to assert and protect the rights of the public to the use and enjoyment of the highway and to prevent the stopping up or obstruction of the highway. Such a duty cannot be passed to the contractor, it is your legal duty to ensure that the route is kept open unless and until it is officially closed. Please therefore confirm that you will take swift action to reopen this route.

In addition, can you please confirm that you have published notice of your intention to close the route from 1 February in the local press, or will be doing so by 25 January? This is a requirement of section 14 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and the Road Traffic (Temporary Restrictions) Procedure Regulations 1992. Also, you claim that it will be closed until 30 July 2014, but the Secretary of State will only authorise closure for six months at a time, so at present you can only guarantee its closure to 31 July 2013.

Furthermore, we are deeply concerned to learn that there is a plan to close Station Walk on 22 January, again without any legal authority. Could you please confirm that, as highway authority, you will exercise your legal duty to ensure the path is kept open unless and until it is officially closed.”

As soon as the Council answers these questions we will publish on the blog.

In the meantime, we fully intend, on behalf of the Lancaster West community, to reassert our right to use our Right of Way along the North/South route and Station Walk until the Council obtains the necessary legislation to prevent us doing so.

We call on the KALC contractors Leadbitters to remove their illegal barricades without delay.

Times and dates of meetings to assert our Right of Way will be circulated, by word of mouth, throughout the Estate.

Rights-Of-Way Update

In response to a number of queries we directed to the Council, challenging the legality of the rights-of-way closures associated with the KALC works, we finally received the following response from James McCool, a Traffic Planner at RBKC:

“There is not currently a Temporary Traffic Regulation Order in place to permit the closure of the north south route across the KALC site. Such an order will be in place from 1 February 2013 to July 30th 2014. Similar orders to temporarily close Station Walk and the east west route to the south of the leisure centre will become effective on 1 February 2013.

Following the construction works, we believe that pedestrian linkages across the site will be greatly enhanced.

The Council is currently investigating how a pedestrian link could be provided to the west of the Academy building on the current alignment of Station Walk. “

Some of the implications of McCool’s response are clear enough, but others are less so.

It is clear, for instance, that the closure of the north/south right-of–way was illegal and should not have happened without the correct permissions having first been procured, and the proper legal procedures having been followed. Needless to say that despite our demands that it should be reopened immediately, there are no indications that the Council, or its contractors, have any intention of restoring our right–of-way through the heart of the site, despite the statement from Mr McCool indicating that the closure was illegal.

The McCool email is also unclear as to whether the Temporary Traffic Regulation Order for the north/south right-of-way has been sought from, and will be issued by, the Secretary Of State, as our independent advice indicates it should be, and it makes no reference to the provision of adequate notice, and no mention of a right–to-reply, for the local community. These details will have to be further queried with Mr McCool – and we fully intend to do just that.

There are also worrying references to the imminent closure of the two other rights-of-way, especially the one along Station Walk. McCool’s email refers to a “similar order” applying to Station Walk. Does this imply that the temporary closure of Station Walk may well be long-term, like the north/south closure? If this is so then what happened to the short-term closure(s) previously indicated in the rather pompous (and we now know erroneous) formal notice signed in December by Councillors Blakeman and Coleridge?

Blakeman and Coleridge assured us that that it was now Council policy for Station Walk to remain open “in perpetuity”, but McCool has cast considerable doubt on this promise by revealing that the Council are still  “investigating how a pedestrian link could be provided to the west of the Academy building on the current alignment of Station Walk”.

This seems to imply that the logistics have not yet been resolved and that the promise to keep Station Walk open may be premature at best, and possibly worthless.

Someone in authority needs to sort this mess out – sooner rather than later – and communicate the facts clearly and unambiguously to the Lancaster West community.

The way the Council and its quislings have dealt with this so far has been contemptuous and disdainful of the local community  – and grossly incompetent to boot.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

Highway Robbery

Residents of the Grenfell Tower area don’t need to be told that all their open space and residential amenity space has now disappeared behind a ten foot wall that marks the boundary of the KALC site. This ten foot wall also has the effect of isolating the entire western half of Lancaster West Estate from Ladbroke Grove and the rest of North Kensington. The only remaining way out is via Station Walk, one of our estate’s traditional, much used and much loved rights-of-way between Silchester Road and Bramley Road. Without this last remaining corridor everyone, including small children, the old and the infirm, will have to go the long way round on a long cross-country hike to reach civilization.

In mid December the Council began posting notices, signed by Councillor Coleridge, the Cabinet Member for Housing, and Councillor Blakeman, the most senior of the local Labour councillors, which claimed that the Station Walk right-of-way, the only remaining pedestrian route out of the Grenfell Tower area, was subject to an Extinguishment Order and could be closed with just a weeks notice from the Kensington Academy and Leisure Centre contractor. We can expect a number of these temporary closures over the coming months.

Both Councillor Coleridge and Councillor Blakeman owe a duty of care to the Lancaster West community and their support for the KALC project represents a fundamental betrayal of that duty of care. Denying our right-of-way is just the latest piece in this jig-saw of betrayal.

However, some of the detail in the formal notice has subsequently proved to be fictitious and provides evidence of the confusion the Council quisling’s have clearly got themselves into.

Acting on advice from the Open Spaces Society (www.oss.org.uk), the Grenfell Action Group has recently managed to delay the closing of our right-of-way along the aforementioned Station Walk until the contractors have obtained the necessary Temporary Closure Order under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

Before the Council can close a public right-of-way they need to obtain an Extinguishment Order, if the closure is to be permanent.  For a temporary closure the Council can issue a Temporary Closure Order (TCO), but only if the closure is for a period of less than six months.

To temporarily close a public right of way for longer than six months an order by the Secretary of State is required. In this case the application should normally be accompanied by details of whatever alternative provision has been arranged, and the provision, or non-provision, of an alternative right-of-way should be a material consideration in the Secretary of State’s decision making.

To make matters worse for the Local Authority, it now transpires that the Council planners may not have obtained a TCO for the main north/south right-of-way that was our community’s major pathway off the Estate and has traditionally allowed Lancaster West residents access to Ladbroke Grove and North Kensington.

This right-of-way runs right through the heart of the KALC site, and disappeared behind contractors hoardings during enabling works in the run up to Christmas. No prizes for guessing that the temporary closure of the north/south route is scheduled to last much longer than the six months that the Council itself can authorise, and we believe this closure should have been referred to the Secretary of State for his consent. We believe that the Council/contractors are therefore acting outside of the Law and we are questioning if they have a right to remove our public thoroughfare without the proper legal procedure being adhered to.

Obviously, it will be highly inconvenient, embarrassing and a show of complete incompetence from the Council’s planners if this proves to be the case.

Local residents have a right to expect that if the Council have yet to secure the necessary permissions to remove our traditional north/south right-of-way, construction will cease immediately and our pathway will be reopened to allow community access until a Temporary Closure Order has been obtained.

This is the LAW, after all

An Act Of Pure Vandalism

Several weeks ago the KALC contractors, Leadbitters, fenced off the academy site for “enabling works” and more recently they began ripping up the ground inside the fenced area with heavy machinery.

However, during the past week they have also destroyed most of the trees on the grassy mound adjacent to Grenfell Tower which is outside that fenced-off site. This is the only area left as playspace for the children of Grenfell Tower, and there is no reason to destroy these trees at this early stage of the development as they are not in an area associated with the construction of either the academy or the leisure centre.

One might have imagined that they could have left these trees alone until the final stages of the project, a year or more hence, when the building construction is nearing completion, and they could then turn their attention to landscaping the lawns etc that they are planning in front of the new leisure centre.

Needlessly destroying all these trees at such an early stage is an act of pure vandalism and a direct attack on the residents of Lancaster West, and especially on the children of Grenfell Tower.

Below is the text of an email we sent to Councillor Coleridge on 13th December:

Dear Councillor Coleridge,

We are still waiting for an answer to our email dated Monday 10th December.

Meanwhile, almost every tree on our Estate has now been slaughtered. It is truly heartbreaking to witness, and those responsible for this carnage, and the destruction of our community, should hang their heads in deep shame. The Council have murdered nature and beauty and have left us to live in a concrete wasteland.

According to the Grenfell Action Group’s enquiries the Council do not have permission from the Mayor to proceed with these works as the Mayor’s Office has not granted Stage One and Stage Two approval as yet.

Please can you explain why the Council are abusing the democratic process by cutting down our trees and committing other acts of vandalism without awaiting approval from the GLA?

How will the contractor replace these trees if the Mayor decides to “call in” KALC and review or reverse the Council’s planning permission?

Please answer this email asap.

Grenfell Action Group