Strange Bedfellows

Politics, they say sometimes makes strange bedfellows. The Hornet’s Nest blog,  full name – From The Hornet’s Nest ,  has been making life difficult for many RBKC councillors for quite a while now, and has lately become a staunch supporter of the Grenfell Action Group.

Dame Hornet, as she is affectionately known, pours scorn on the puerile and self-serving shenanigans of the worst RBKC councillors and their officers, sometimes by whistle-blowing, more often by criticising their wasteful and often crackpot decision-making.

The Dame has helped us in the past by posting timely updates on the twists and turns of the KALC planning process, and has helped more recently with invaluable moral support and by advertising our blog to her followers, thus helping us establish our own readership.

We have no hesitation in fully endorsing the Hornet’s Nest blog – a must read for anyone interested in the inside story from the corridors of power at Hornton Street.

From The Hornet’s Nest

Vive La Difference

Not so much text this time – you may be glad to hear.

We just wanted to show you some pictures to illustrate some of the differences between the £28 million academy planned for the Lancaster Green site, and the £43 million academy that was recently finished in Chelsea.  Aesthetically there seems to be no comparison between the two.

Her’s a pic of another London academy designed by Studio E, the same firm of architects who designed the Kensington Academy. We think this style of architecture might best be described as typifying the ‘Giant Public Lavatory’ school of municipal design.  The City Academy in Hackney, shown above, is a good example of this disposable bargain-basement style of modernism, and with its garish colours and cheap supermarket plastic look, it appears to be very similar in design to what is planned for Lancaster Green.

Chelsea Academy, by comparison, has an understated and almost organic appearance. It has clearly been built to last, mostly of brick and stone, and has an almost neo-classical look. Perhaps we are a bit old fashioned, but if we must have a new school on this site, we think this kind of design would sit far better in the existing landscape, and might even add to the character of the area.

The Core Strategy itself seem to agree with these sentiments:

“Conservation areas cover more than 70% of the Borough.  Careful incremental improvement is needed to ensure these areas remain of the highest quality. However, there are a number of small areas in the south, and two large areas in the north of the Borough, which are not within conservation areas. It is important that these areas are not regarded as ‘second class’ in terms of the future quality and contribution for which we should be striving. We should aspire for these areas to be our future conservation areas and exceptional design quality is needed”.

One wonders what happened to these grand aspirations when they started planning the Lancaster Green project.

Q.E.D

The Latimer Masterplan And The Stock Options Review

By the time the Lancaster West Community had woken up to the danger posed to our community by the Kensington Academy and Leisure Centre project it was already too late to stop the juggernaut. The site allocation had been rubber-stamped before we even realised it was being discussed.

The key to understanding how this came about is in the consultation process itself, and how it was manipulated to exclude our community, until it was too late for our objections to have any meaningful effect.

Throughout the time that the Core Strategy consultation was ongoing the Council was also conducting another consultation exercise in the Latimer area. This was a ‘Stock Options Review’ which had been prompted by anticipated cuts to the government subsidy payable into the Housing Revenue Account, which funds all social housing provision.

The Council was exploring ways to increase revenues from its housing estates to meet the shortfall, and one of the options being considered was large-scale regeneration of the Latimer Area, also known as Notting Barns South.

Unlike the Core Strategy consultation, which was conducted on a highly selective and exclusive basis, the Stock Options Review was widely publicised on council housing estates in the Latimer area and most households were routinely and repeatedly contacted by mail.

The ‘Stock Options Review’ diverted attention away from the Core Strategy consultation.  In fact most local people were unaware that the ‘Core Strategy’ consultation was in progress, had never heard of the ‘Core Strategy’, did not understand what it was, and had no reason to suspect that it might be as important, or even more important, than the Stock Options Review. The Council meanwhile made no attempt to explain any of this to residents, or to engage them in the ‘Core Strategy’ consultation.

Furthermore, the ‘Stock Options’ documentation that local residents were receiving withheld information about the site allocation for the Academy, and gave false assurances that any new development in the area would be confined to the ‘Silchester Garages’ site. In fact the development plans for the Silchester garages were quietly expanded into a full redevelopment of the entire Silchester Estate. It should be noted that the ‘Core Strategy’ consultation was nearing completion at this time and the proposed site allocation for the academy was well known to Council officers involved in the ‘Stock Options Review’.

In a letter to residents in December 2009, the Chief Housing Officer, Laura Johnson wrote::

“The Council is examining options to establish a new Academy with up to six forms of entry (equivalent to 900 11-16 places) and up to 250 post-16 places in North Kensington. We are committed to increasing pupil places in the north of the Borough to meet local demand, provide greater choice, diversity and fair access for local parents and the local community.”

It is noteworthy that this letter specifies only a North Kensington location for the proposed school. Lancaster West is not mentioned.

The co-incidence of the Core Strategy and the Stock Options Review, both in time and in relevance to the Lancaster West community, raises questions about why it was deemed appropriate to consult the entire community on the Stock Options Review, but only select stakeholder groups on the Core Strategy. It also raises questions as to why the Stock Options review was used to mislead this community during 2009 about the proposed site allocation for the Academy.

Both the ‘Core Strategy’ and the ‘Stock Options Review’ were informed by a detailed masterplanning study of the Latimer area commissioned by the Council early in 2009. This was ‘The Latimer Masterplan’,  also known as ‘The Notting Barns South Masterplan’.

This study proposed a radical regeneration of the entire area involving demolition of virtually all the council owned housing. However this report was withheld from the ‘Stock Options’ consultees, and they were shown only a much edited extract from which all the ‘scorched earth’ detail of the radical regeneration scenario had been removed. This appears to have been a cynical attempt to manipulate the ‘Stock Options’ consultation by witholding information about the more controversial aspects of the regeneration that was being considered.

The site allocation for the Academy, which ultimately appeared in the ‘Core Strategy’, was a key element of the Masterplan. The Council was eventually forced, in June 2010, to publish the full Masterplan under ‘Freedom of Information’ legislation.

When confronted at that time with the detail of the Masterplan study the Head of Planning insisted that it was just ‘blue sky thinking’ and there was never any intention to implement the radical proposals it contained. We believe that the truth is that they had every intention of bulldozing this whole area, and all that stopped them was the collapse of the world economy, the banking sector crisis, and of course the collapse of the housing market.

The redevelopment  of the Silchester Estate is still going ahead, as is the KALC project, both of which were key elements of the Masterplan.  When and if the housing market eventually recovers we fully expect them to revert to type and come after the rest of Lancaster West.

KALC may be just the start of a much bigger fight.

N.B. This is part of a longer critique of the flawed Core Strategy consultation, as it relates to Lancaster West Estate and the KALC project. If you wish you can read this in its entirety via this link:

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/beginnings-3/

Quotable Quotes…..

During the ‘Lights Of London’ debate at City Hall in October 2010 the Council’s then planning supremo Councillor Daniel Moylan notoriously said;

“If we devolve decisions on planning to local communities, there will be no development whatsoever….Planning, development, growth and change in this country are often snared on nimby attitudes. You don’t resolve that by handing the decision over to the people who have that attitude in the first place.”

My father, who shall remain nameless, was sometimes heard to say;

“It takes all kinds to make a world.  Thank God I’m not one of them.”

The Kensal Gasworks Site

In June the Council published an Issues and Options paper for the Kensal Gasworks site in North Kensington. This is a massive site, just up the road from Lancaster West, which they are planning to develop into;

“…a thriving and valued community of over 2,500 dwellings, well connected, high density, mixed use and environmentally responsive, knitted into the surrounding urban fabric, with offices and a range of community facilities, that will provide a successful precedent for the remainder of the Borough.”

The Council are intending to prepare a Supplementary Planning Document early next year. However, given the huge size of the site, and of the major development that is planned,  it is likely that this project will be further progressed via a Development Plan Document, in which case it will be subject to examination by a Government Planning Inspector.

This is also, of course, the site chosen by RBKC for the ill-fated crossrail station which ‘Transport for London’ and the Government have already decided will be best sited elsewhere – at Old Oak Common to be precise.

We always thought this would be a far more appropriate site for the new Kensington Academy, which they are planning to shoehorn onto the Lancaster Green site.  Everybody knows Lancaster Green is far too small for a school of this size. The proof of that pudding will certainly be in the eating – the new academy will have no external sports facilities, and will have a tiddleywinks sized playground.

Here’s what they said in 2009 when they were supposedly exploring options for the new academy, and were looking for excuses to rule the Kensal Gasworks site out of the running:

“The access to the site will be improved considerably by the area’s regeneration, however, the area will still struggle to accommodate high trip generating uses such as a secondary school.

The area is located in a tight corner of the borough and is unlikely to address the needs of the borough.

Due to the potential value of the land, a section 106 planning obligation requiring a secondary school may jeopardise the regeneration of the area.”

Pardon us for saying, but doesn’t this earlier statement completely contradict their more recent and far more grandiose ambitions for the Gasworks site?

Black is white when it suits them, it seems, and two plus two is five.

Lancaster Green Is Residential Amenity Space…..

When RBKC first began planning for this project they made no mention of the open space on the site, as though it didn’t exist.  At that time the Grenfell Action Group queried the absence of any reference to Lancaster Green, and officers in the planning department didn’t know what we were talking about. They had never heard of Lancaster Green, even though it occupied half the site they were planning to develop, and was listed on the RBKC website as a local park. Later, under pressure from us, they did at least pay lip service to it, but it soon became clear that their version of Lancaster Green was very different from ours.

 

On the map above all the green space is clearly marked in green. Local residents regard all of this green space as Lancaster Green. There is no reason not to,  as it is not enclosed except by the surrounding streets and roads. The Council, however, have decided that only the area marked in bright green is Lancaster Green. There is no logical reason to define Lancaster Green so narrowly, except perhaps that it serves their own interests to do so.

Furthermore, in 2010 the planning boss, Jonathan Bore, ordered a Title Revew of the whole site to establish the exact ownership of the various land parcels of which it is composed. They later released the Title Review documents to us under Freedom of Information legislation. To our great surprise the review revealed that all of the open space surrounding Grenfell Tower, right out to the edge of the carpark and sports pitches, belongs to Lancaster West Estate, and not to the Leisure Centre as previously thought

This is illustrated in the map below (one of the Title Review documents) by the swathe of yellow shading added by the Council’s legal team.

 

The planners were confronted with this information in a meeting of the KALC Working Group in February 2011, but they dismissed it as irrelevant. Strangely, they took the view that any problem would apply only to the playground (to the left of Grenfell Tower), and since they were intending to retain the playground, the problem was therefore resolved.

There is nothing in the minute of the meeting to suggest that the solicitor who was brifeing them made any attempt to correct this obvious ‘misunderstanding’ by spelling out the implications of the Title Review for the rest of the Lancaster Green area. One has to wonder why. Was this just carelessness on his part, or could it have been collusion with the pretended ignorance of the planners? Could it be that the Working Group members had no intention of allowing this inconvenient information to deflect them from their intended course, and so they contrived to ignore it?  It is hard to believe that they didn’t realise the significance of the yellow shaded area and its’ implications for the academy, which they were determined to progress, come what may.

It is clear from the yellow shading on the map that Lancaster Green was created as residential amenity space for the residents of Lancaster West Estate, and especially for Grenfell Tower residents who would otherwise have no external amenity space at all. This information must have been an unexpected and unwelcome surprise for the planners because the maintenance of Lancaster Green had long been the responsibility of the Parks Department.  Hence,  its origins as part of the housing estate had been obscured, and the planners had wrongly assumed that the open space belonged to the leisure centre and they could use it as they wished,  and dismiss our objections.

According to the Open Spaces Society it’s not unusual for this kind of confusion and misunderstanding to arise in relation to residential amenity space attached to council housing estates, and once the true origins of such amenity spaces are discovered another interesting anomaly comes into play.

There is a frequently misunderstood and overlooked provision in Section 22 of the Commons Registration Act of1965. Under Section 22 applications to register a Town or Village Green must normally include a significant number of witness statements as evidence of at least 20 years recreational use by the local community ‘as of right’ (meaning without permission of the landowner). However Section 22 also provides that ‘land allotted by or under any Act for the exercise or recreation of the inhabitants of any locality’ is entitled to registration regardless of whether the ‘as of right’ condition can be met.

Lancaster West  Estate was almost certainly built ( in the mid seventies) under the authority of the Housing Act of 1957, which gave local authorities both the responsibility, and the powers needed, for the massive slum clearances and housing regeneration projects of the 60’s and 70’s. It seems certain that Lancaster Green was created under this parliamentary authority, and it should therefore be entitled to the protections available under the Commons Registration Act.  Time is short, but it may still be possible to make an application for registration as a Village Green. This will need to happen before planning permission is granted, which it almost certainly will be in September.  Any volunteers?

The Grenfell Action Group has repeatedly raised the Lancaster Green issue with the Council in recent years, and we have repeatedly confronted them with the Secretary of State’s Planning Policy Guidance for open spaces, with the GLA Open Spaces Strategy and associated guidance, and with their own open spaces policy as set out in the RBKC Core Strategy.  As if all this wasn’t enough, here is yet another reason to afford Lancaster Green the full legal protection to which it is entitled.

Clearly no-one is listening.

We may never win this fight to save our green space, and protect our community from this monstous and inappropriate overdevelopment. Indeed we were never so naïve as to expect that we might win. We know the system too well, and we know the Rotten Borough too well. Nonetheless we will continue this campaign, and will seize every opportunity to reveal and uncover the truth about their ruthless and self-serving machinations.

Watch this space.