| Topic: | Re:Check and double check what you are told by WBC Planning | |
| Posted by: | Sarah Roberts | |
| Date/Time: | 10/06/12 22:25:00 |
| I believe the protection of West Hill Road C.A. and the Grade II listed former home of Victorian novelist George Eliot defined the very "exceptional circumstances" that warranted a delegation be heard by the PAC. I was told by our councillor representing the many hundreds of residents (426 letters of objection) that had unanimously objected to the renewal application for a greedy development on West Hill Road, that we could attend the PAC only. I could not speak on behalf of my neighbourhood and the residents I represented. We campaigned for three and a half months to put the planning and legal facts of the case across. The first PAC meeting in May 2010 was deferred to consider the shortfall in affordable housing for the renewal application and secondly, to consider whether PPS5 Protection of the Historic Environment was an applicable policy - if so an impact assessment from the Applicant was now mandatory. The Borough Planner (collective term) had wrongly and consistently turned face to PPS5 and attempted to mislead the PAC and residents that it was not applicable because it was published after the application was received. (The application was received in February. The PPS5 policy was published in March and once published any planning policy is immediately enforceable and applicable to any Decision thereafter.) Eddie Lister e-mailed me this rubbish just hours before the PAC meeting. That in itself is a disgrace. For the second PAC Meeting I requested representation by our Councillor, again and again. She would only ever communicate through e-mail. Representation that I believe we were democratically entitled to was denied. I requested our Councillor meet with me, my barrister and the former Head of Conservation & Design before the September PAC Meeting in September. Denied. She didn't show up. Instead she took her seat in the board room once the PAC meeting had commenced. We were denied any representation at all at that second PAC meeting. So it was that residents had to suffer in silence as this so-called quasi-judicial committee put on a duplicitous pre-agreed charade blatantly stage managed for the public gallery. An Opposition Member asked Chairman Cuff "Why make an exception of this application because of an 8% shortfall in affordable housing?", where normally WBC would have much larger shortfalls approved in the blink of an eye. It was Councillor Steffi Sutters who calmly confirmed that it was indeed "exceptional". Were PAC Members to have refused the renewal application based on its undeniably detrimental impact it would have exposed the Council to accepting wrong doing in the first instance they'd passed planning permission in 2008; for what the Deputy of Conservation & Design, Dave Clarke described to me as a "mistake", "a dinosaur" and "a poor example of a development". Of course, the cost of WBC owning up to their mistakes would have cost them dearly in compensation to the developer and loss of face. Any formal acceptance of error by WBC was impossible. The Borough Planner (collective term) went on to misinform those present about the lack of significance of the two heritage assets in question, underplayed the impact of the development on them and the listed building's "wide horizons", and spouted utter rubbish about the curtilage of the listed building defining its setting. Totally unreasonable. A shabby Borough Planner (collective term) whitewash. It sickens me that 'my' delegation of a Local Authority barrister, the former Head of Wandsworth Council's C&D Group (a planning and conservation expert who had designated our cherished neighbourhood a C.A in the first place) plus hundreds of residents some of whom have lived here all their lives were denied representation. Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor, London Assembly: "This is the other fallacy. The Planning process isn't democratic. The planning system is more often than not stitched up between developers and planning officers and councillors are put in invidious positions of saying well you either agree to what we've stitched up or it'll just go to the planning inspector and you'll get over-ruled. There is something fundamentally wrong with the planning system." Our Councillors had a moral and professional choice to do the right thing by existing residents. They bailed out and let the Borough Planner (collective term) push the existing permission through. |