Sudbury Town Residents Association have challenged Brent Council over the planning application to build a block of flats on Barham Park. LINK
They have received backing on Twitter from Wembley Central and Alperton Residents Association who say the plans affect their residents too.
The application substitutes a bulky block of flats for the current two houses (776 and 778 Harrow Road).
This is the letter sent as a matter of urgency on Saturday:
I strongly support STRA in standing up for their planning rights.
ReplyDeleteThe Sudbury Town Neighbourhood Plan was the result of extensive public consultation. It was approved by Brent's Cabinet, supported by 94% of the local residents in the area, and should have meant that STRA was properly consulted on any planning application within the area covered by the Plan.
Barham Park is covered by that Plan, and it includes a specific Green Open Spaces policy relating to Barham Park.
I hope that Brent's failure to consult STRA in this case was just a careless administrative error, and not a "deliberate mistake" (because Planning Officers did not want comments from the STRA on this application?).
Sadly this is not the 1st time that Brent Council has overlooked to consult STRA properly or take into account the fact that there is a Neighbourhood Plan in place that involved a large scale consultation with local people in which hundreds of local participated in.
ReplyDeleteI too support STRA on this issue.
The sooner Brent Council starts taking the views of local people seriously the better.
The same applies in the case of development in nearby Alperton. Some 12 years ago Brent Council identified the area as a possibly growth area for housing. B&Q had just closed their large store in the area and left a very large empty site. A large scale consultation was carried and a local Plan developed. The Plan set a target of 1600 units across all development sites in the Alperton area with maximum heights of buildings at 12 to 14 storeys. The Councillors now running Brent seemed to have forgotten that Plan or that consultations and:
1. Scrapped the height limit allowing monster towers of 28 storeys or even more.
2 Scrapped the 1600 unit consulted target and revised it to a staggering 6,000
The bus garage plans just approved will have 3 massive towers and will take 40 months to build almost certainly causing havoc in the heavily congested Ealing Road/Bridgewater Road area.
Sadly the needs and views of local people are the last on the list for considerations by the Councillors running Brent Council today. The only objective is to build tower blocks as high and squeeze as much into a site as possible irrespective of the damaging impact this has on the local area and the everyday lives of local people.