What do bankers, private health companies, insurers and property developers have in common? They all are benefiting from legislation that exempts them from regulation, increases their profits at consumer expense or allows them to take over great chunks of the public sector.
Indeed they are often asked to
draft the legislation
themselves. And of course
they all donate
generously to the Conservative Party.
This is a very different approach from previous right-of-centre governments that would have seen the interests of the individual rather than the corporation as the guiding dogma – think council house sales or anti-union laws.
A lot of these battles are being played out nationally - in votes on the Health or Legal Aid Bills or adoption of the National Planning Policy Framework (the developers’ green light).
Now attention is turning to the local impact. In Hammersmith we have already seen advice centres close and continued
rumours of hospitals closing.
But it is the rise of the property developer that singles out this borough as a warning of what happens when due process breaks down. And we should not be surprised. It is the planning function that regulates change. The planning officers and planning committee who act as a break on unrestrained development and mediate between the wishes of residents and developers.
So what happens when the planning process becomes the cheerleader for the developer? When political imperatives dictate supposedly independent planning decisions?
We have a partial answer to this in the Hammersmith Riverside schemes approved by committee last autumn. St George at Hammersmith Embankment and Helical Bar at Hammersmith Town Hall were the first two identikit schemes to pass, though it has proved electorally convenient for Boris Johnson to put the Town Hall scheme on ice.
Maximum density, maximum height, small luxury properties for the investor market. Of no benefit to the locality. They were hugely contentious not least for their spoiling of sensitive sites, but their size – 750 and 300 units respectively – is dwarfed by the decisions taken on the past week to approve the Westfield and CapCo developments at White City and West Ken.
Developers now call the shots as residents are squeezed out
Two planning committees, a week apart, have sanctioned billions of pounds of development along the borough’s eastern boundary. On 8 February Shepherds Bush Market and Imperial Wharf. On 16 February Westfield and Seagrave Road.
These and the further applications to come for Earl’s Court, Imperial and Helical Bar White City will commit the whole area to 20 years of continuous development and at least 12,000 new flats. The Victorian and Edwardian streetscape will be replaced by the concrete slab 10-35 storeys high as the borough’s defining architecture.
There is a reason for squeezing so much into so little time. Actually, two. Ken Livingstone has visited the Riverside, the Market and West Ken Estate and did not like what he saw in the plans. Developers do not want to gamble on a change of Mayor, so the council has been told to get all its rubber stamping done before May.
And there is the Crossrail levy. Major developments approved after 1 April must pay towards the cost of Crossrail. Given that many of them rely on Crossrail if they are to be viable this seems entirely reasonable, but the council is happy to help them beat the deadline even though they are in no fit state for approval.
No planning policy. As you would expect with developments of this size, there is a detailed process to go through. Opportunity Areas are defined, Supplementary Planning Documents (SPD) are consulted on and taken through Full Council, Masterplans are prepared by the developer for outline consent before detailed applications are considered. But that all takes time, and time is of the essence here.
So we were treated to the unedifying sight of planners repudiating their own policies, either because they weren’t ready or because they were being legally challenged.
When considering the plan to demolish the area around Shepherds Bush Market , councillors are instructed they ‘should place no weight on the
SPD’ for no other reason than that the Goldhawk Road shopkeepers have won leave to judicially review it, and the review won’t be heard until after the May election. Shepherds Bush Market and the shops on Goldhawk Road
were featured on the BBC programme ‘Inside Out’, which you can watch
here, starting 19 minutes in.
I wrote, for the first time ever, to the Director of the Environment and Chair of the planning committee to ask that they defer approving 800 new homes
for Seagrave Road until they could consider the SPD and Masterplan for the area. The new homes will be built on the car and lorry park for Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre and will replace in part homes on the West Ken Estate. But until a decision is taken to demolish the Exhibition Hall and the estate there is no logic at all to this application.
Westfield’s 20 storey tower breaks current guidance but there is once again no adopted detailed policy for the area. Other than: what Westfield wants, they must have, and what Westfield gets sets a precedent for the other White City developers.
Planning at war with housing. Every week now I have families coming to my surgery with eviction notices because the Government’s Housing Benefit cuts mean they cannot pay private sector rents in Hammersmith. I also have newly homeless people who have been to the town hall for help. They are being told to move to Dagenham or Margate. It used to be Croydon, but now that is too expensive and
Croydon itself is sending people to Hull.
These are mainly families who have lived in the borough for many years, who work locally, who have kids in local schools and family support networks here. I
spoke about this in the Commons debate on the benefit cap.
They have also often been on council waiting lists for many years. A council or housing association property would not only provide a secure home it would be affordable, and save the taxpayer thousands a year in Housing Benefit.
H&F Council is already notorious for
selling off empty homes rather than using them for the 8,000 waiting families. But the current planning consents compound this abuse of power. Ninety five of the 1522 Westfield homes will be affordable (and these are decants not additional properties), none in Shepherds Bush Market, no additional homes in West Ken. And yet the council’s Core Strategy, adopted last October, says 40% affordable housing is required on each of these sites.
The one feature that could mitigate the major developments would be if they provided affordable homes – family houses for local people on low or average incomes rather than stopover flats for City traders. If we were building for the community rather than private investors. If they tried to solve the appalling housing crisis in west London. These plans will make it worse.
No access to information. The reason there will be almost no affordable homes on these major brownfield sites is – the council-developer says – because they are not viable. Viability studies have been done which prove this, they add. But you cannot look at them, they conclude, you must take our word for it. I have been refused permission to see any of them. Councillor Mike Cartwright, the Labour lead councillor on the planning committee has seen one, the Westfield study. He cannot however tell anyone else what he has read, and was made to sign a six-page confidentiality agreement, which defines everything from the ‘appropriate security arrangements’ when he is reading the study to the fact that the developer will indemnify the council against any attempt by the courts to get it to reveal the precious information.
These are complex issues and we are lucky to have in H&F bodies like the Hammersmith Society, Historic Buildings Group and individual residents’ associations who are prepared to take on the developers, as they did over the Town Hall site and are in West Ken. Many communities would lack the expertise, funds and organisation to do this.
But that misses the point. We pay our taxes so that professional planning officers protect our environment and heritage. So that local politicians act morally as well as efficiently to assist people in need and promote social cohesion. When the local authority becomes the instrument and voice of the developer, Hammersmith & Fulham is the result.
- I met Thames Water for an update on the Thames Tunnel but also to discuss the risks of drought this summer.
- As an officer of the new All-Party Britain-Kosovo group in Parliament, I spoke at the 4th Independence Day celebrations held at Hammersmith Town Hall.
- I was re-elected to the Hammersmith and Fulham Community Law Centre management committee at their AGM. This will be their toughest year yet thanks to cuts in council and government funds.
- Co-hosted the Parliamentary re-launch of Street Games, a national programme of sporting events in the community, which not only runs projects locally but gets £1 million sponsorship from Hammersmith-based Coca Cola GB and Ireland
- As a member of Fulham Supporter Trust I attended the Commons meeting of Supporters Direct to champion the fans’ role in professional football.
- I spoke to a wide range of schools about Parliament and politics from Melcombe Year 6, to Latymer 6th Form, to the Hertha Firnberg vocational school, visiting from Vienna.
- I attended the White City Neighbourhood Forum which is looking to take control of all public services in the area, and also Rainville Road Residents’ Association who have longstanding management and maintenance problems with their landlords – a toxic mix of H&F and Notting Hill Housing.
- The manager of our local King Street cinema took me on a tour that revealed some hidden secrets.
- I did an hour-long interview for Egyptian TV on the failure of the British government to investigate fugitives and stolen assets of the Mubarak regime now in the UK.
Work in progress
I am busy with meetings about or investigations into the following issues, which I will report on soon, but please let me have any information you think is useful:
- The sale of Hammersmith Park – why is a private company being given a third of one of our major park on a 35 year lease?
- White City Health Centre – is it finally going to be built?
- Imperial’s next planning application – the Shepherds Bush shard
- College Park residents’ fight against eviction from their community hall.
- Riverside Studios and Queen’s Wharf - will the new plans be better or worse than those turned down last August?
- Nomis Studios, Sinclair Road – can we stop this folly, including the two-storey underground garage of the kind that has caused so much chaos in Westminster and Kensington?
- Haymarket’s plans for new flats overlooking Sacred Heart, to pay for their new offices in Hammersmith Road – overlooking Latymer Court.
- The ‘air rights’ over Planetree Court – no longer up for sale. A victory for the elderly residents who would have lost daylight and peace and quiet, but are there other plans to dispose of sheltered housing?
Andy 
