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| The Planning Committee in action |
Guest blog by Alison Hopkins
This is a rant, and it’s long.
It’s about Gladstone Parade, the loss of our shops and the fact that the
planning committee on Brent Council is a total waste of space. It never
used to be like that: back in the day, the committee was impartial
regardless of political composition and also had long serving members
who actually understood planning matters, with an excellent Chair. Now,
it changes membership constantly, and is, frankly dominated by the
leader of the Council and his agenda. That agenda is the wholesale
drive to build more and more flats all over Brent, just like Barnet.
Now, this would not be so bad if any of those flats were real council
housing, not the nonsense called affordable housing. It would also not
be so bad if Brent’s Planning officers didn’t simply give in on all
fronts to developers who then promptly advertise and sell said flats
overseas. Fat lot of good that is to anyone here.
So, the
Parade. Built with the houses in the 1920s. The grocer corner shop was
there when I was a baby and long before. Hairdresser: fifty odd years.
Chip shop – thirty, with a butcher before. Pub, a couple of decades. Two
shops have been empty on and off for a while, and that, in my view, was
deliberate. The freehold of the land has changed hands a fair bit, and
the leases of the shops had lapsed.
The shopkeepers had of course
been paying rent and ALL of them had been pushing hard for lease
renewals for a long time. There have also been rumours flying of
redevelopment for a fair while, but nothing concrete. The first real
intimation was when the chip shop owner phoned me in February with the
bad news that he’d had a notification letter from Brent Planning. He,
and all the rest, had heard NOTHING from the freeholder of the Parade
and knew nothing until the letter from Brent arrived. I’d had
conversations with other shopkeepers before that and had been keeping an
eye on planning applications on Brent’s website. I actually check those
all the time for Dollis Hill anyway – I did it as a councillor and I
think it’s good practice, as well as keeping one’s ear to the ground.
Having read the application I went and spoke to the shopkeepers, who
were obviously devastated. My view from the outset, as someone who
knows the area and who we are, was that this was a totally flawed
application which seriously disadvantaged us. I tried contacting the
developer, who was essentially – how can I put this – mendacious. I
know how Brent’s consultation works. A letter to a very few neighbouring
houses and a notice on a lamppost. So, I hand delivered about a
thousand letters, emailed eight hundred people, and Facebooked this,
and we also then went and door knocked.
In all that, I found ONE person
in favour. Oh, and we put a petition in the chip shop.
We know
what happened next. Lengthy detailed and well thought out objections on
line. The petition in the fish shop, got over 650 signatures from all
over Dollis Hill and beyond – there were more, but those were too late. A
whole bunch more signatures from the hand delivered letters, which also
resulted in more on line objections. There were, in the end, five pages
of those! Other local people emailed and wrote in directly. Brent
Planning, by the way, got those numbers wrong in the officer’s report.
On Monday, the leader of the council was supposed to come and visit the
Parade to “listen to locals”, but didn’t – some kind of family
emergency. This meeting was also not publicised anywhere, of course. The
three councillors finally showed up, having been less than keen to be
engaged up until literally the last minute. They have, as has been
published here, finally replied to some emails but I am convinced their
replies were not written by them. One of the councillors said they’d
been talking to Planning “for some months” about the development – a
shame they’d not talked to residents, isn’t it.
That same
councillor also said that local people seemed less than keen on a CPZ,
which may be because of Brent’s outrageous charges. One of the other
councillors knew about the issues with bus drivers parking locally, but
had no idea who the manager of the bus station is, or the steps they’ve
taken to try and fix this. I know what those steps are, because I’ve MET
the man. That councillor also claims people from the Hassop Road
garages in Cricklewood are parking on our roads, but I doubt that – and
I’ve had no complaints about it.
Anyhow.
Wednesday was
the Planning Committee meeting. The officer’s report had already
recommended passing the application as did what’s called their
supplementary report – that’s what gets written after they visited the
site. That site visit was last Saturday and I went along. You aren’t
supposed try to nobble the committee members but I did manage to point
out some of the problems, as did the shopkeepers.
So, the
meeting. Some fool had decided to hold it on the same night as 100,000
people were watching Adele at the Stadium. We also weren’t heard till
almost ten, as there were two highly contentious other applications
before us.
Despite that, all the shopkeepers and the pub owner
showed up, as did many locals, who managed to sit it out. Two locals
spoke in objection, including the fact that they have right of way and
use of the garages – this may yet present a problem for the developer, I
hope. I spoke – or rather, I ranted.
You’re only allowed two minutes
which is absurd and hardly enough, but so be it. The presentation by the
planning officers lied about discussion with the shop owners and
presented the development in a manner that really showed how much this
was already decided. The planning officer also said you could walk to
Cricklewood Station in twelve minutes – has he actually TRIED that? It’s
a good half hour. He made reference to the supposed new Brent Cross
station which is imaginary and to a possible CPZ, also imaginary. The
real bombshell was that Brent had been talking to the developers for
over a YEAR. That’s BEFORE the freehold got sold to them! The leader of
Brent Council would have known about this and so, I think, would the
Dollis Hill councillors.
To repeat: it’s supposed to be
councillors who run things, but this whole sad sorry mess makes it clear
that it’s officers, the head of so called Regeneration and the Leader
who hold the power. There are a handful of councillors who dare fight
back and they get both abused and side-lined.
Another local made
an excellent speech about the poor living quality of the flats, the air
pollution on the Edgware Road, their unsuitability for families and the
parking issues. He was speaking on behalf of a statutory consultee, the
Dollis Hill Residents Association, who had also NOT been properly
consulted.
Anyhow, I raised two of the many issues, namely, the
loss of the shops and the parking and traffic issues. The committee
ignored the latter. In his summing up after, the Planning Officer
blithely said that yes, he agreed the Brent Cross station would be
delayed but that didn’t matter, as the transport assessment was based on
what is there now. He also, equally blithely, said that the solution
would be to effectively impose controlled parking in our roads. Whether
that’s an answer or not, it ignores the real issues around the flats,
namely high density and access. I am convinced Brent wants to impose
controlled parking all over the borough: it’s a great money spinner for
them. I also ranted about the flats across the road being marketed to
China, and that there’s no guarantee the affordable housing level will
be maintained, or that the flats won’t lie empty.
I was
questioned by some of the committee members. One stated that all the
shops were run down and shut, that they’d not been there long and that
Lidl had taken business from them. Given that they’re open and doing
well, and that Lidl has been there for what, ten years? – this is
nonsense. I had pushed for regeneration, and another councillor asked
which companies might do that, so I quoted several. Another asked about
the petition and looked through the fish shop one. But it was all
rather half hearted.
Cllr Dixon spoke. The three of them
seemed, on MONDAY, to have finally got off the fence, but it all felt
very half-hearted to me. They had still lodged not one objection on
line. She didn’t address planning issues, which is actually what you
need to do when addressing the committee, but rather talked about the
community round the Parade. The gist of it was that she had only
discovered in the past few weeks how strong the community is and had
been unaware of how thriving. She did pick up on the low level of
affordable housing, but didn’t seem aware of the difference between that
and social housing – that’s council housing, to you and me. She also
said that she’d been backing the plans up until she became aware of this
strength of community. She did query the lack of consultation: in my
view, one of the functions of a councillor is to tell people what’s
going on, and they had all known about this for many months, supposedly.
The Planning Officer summed up. He again claimed the shop
keepers were in discussion with the developers, to which they shouted
back that they were not. He claimed consultation had been adequate: a
few letters, the newspaper notice, the notice on the lamppost. He said
that this was proven by the volume of objections, to which I shouted
back that hand delivering a thousand letters was probably more of a
reason. He acknowledged my remark about Brent Cross and the station,
and called it irrelevant, then stated AGAIN that it’s only a twelve
minute walk to Cricklewood Station.
This was roundly jeered at. He
talked about how important it is for Brent to hit housing targets and
that the developers would have to give £400,000 to Brent for “local
projects”. There is, by the way, no guarantee at all that Dollis Hill
will see a penny of that.
They voted and passed it, with one
exception a councillor who lives in Brent North, and seemed to
understand far more than the rest. The hairdresser was in tears, the
pub owner is furious and the chip shop and Londis owners, stunned and
bewildered.
This is not democracy in any way. This is a failure
to listen to local people, yet again. It’s also not how you represent
local people: the campaign against this has been grass roots, with no
help at all from elected representatives. I’ve both fought and
supported planning applications in the past and managed to get real
improvements in them. You can’t win every objection but as a councillor,
you really should fight.
So, let’s just sum that up. Over a THOUSAND written objections ignored, which represents far more.
Just remember that next May, hm?
