A planning applications committee hearing a representation.

I’ve no doubt the planning applications committee are bored of me attending their meetings. I know the Conservative side have never reflected a point I made when representing residents (unless it happened to be a point also made by a Conservative) but I do think it’s important residents are represented.

I don’t think I have ever referred to any of those meetings in this blog though, since they are invariably very local issues and, I assumed, perhaps of limited interest. Indeed, this post is perhaps stimulated more by the Let’s Talk meeting (the echoes of Cllr Senior shouting about his role at a meeting he never attended, while criticising me for missing a meeting when, as I apologised to residents, I was on holiday) than by high-minded desires for transparency.

Since I once again find myself missing a meeting, this time unable to rearrange work and travel commitments to attend a meeting, I am hoping to avoid such unfounded accusations and instead am submitting my comments via email and publishing them below.

However, I did find myself, while drafting them, considering the council’s approach to planning policy. Many suspect, perhaps with good reason, that it favours the developer over local residents. It is certainly a view that many local residents have started to share having seen small, but contentious, applications decided in the favour of developers despite vociferous opposition. Policy is always the excuse.

But policy is (and should be) flexible, its implementation open to the exercise of discretion.

There are lots of factors to consider, and they do not always neatly align, so the committee has to choose how to apply them. A classic one in Wandsworth is affordable housing where it seems that, all too frequently, the committee is persuaded of the benefits of lowering that requirement.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the decision is not based on the scheme’s individual merits, or some discernible weighting of the factors, but on the desired outcome: which is usually to support the developer. While a small example I am amused by the Crosland Place application which in the space of three paragraphs is both close and not close to Clapham Junction, depending on which is most convenient to the approval recommendation.

Perhaps this is unsurprising. Leading councillors have very close relationships with developers and lobbyists. The planning department spend a lot of time talking with the same developers about their applications which are refined and honed before they are ever made; no time is spent with residents who might have different opinions.

But the flexibility that leaves people feeling planning favours developers could also be used to reach decisions that favour local residents; that leaves them believing the council is on their side. Unfortunately I fear we’ve a long way to go until we are there.


My email comments to the planning applications committee on Crosland Place (application 2017/3214):

Residents asked me to represent them on this application. Unfortunately I have not been able to rearrange work and travel commitments to enable me to attend the committee, but I hope members will permit me some comments on this application by email.

Residents and others have commented on some of the more practical points, including the overlooking, loss of outlook, overshadowing and parking concerns.

It is difficult to ignore these issues. Car use is declining, but the area surrounding Crosland Place still has high demand for parking spaces and it’s hard to imagine there will never be demand from Crosland Place residents (current policy would allow 10 or 11 parking spaces for a scheme of this size). And while the developer has addressed some of the overlooking concerns it remains the case that there is significant overlooking, particularly of the gardens and rear of no. 13 and other neighbouring properties.

The council’s policy DMS 1a and 1c requires “buildings ensure a high level of physical integration with their surroundings” and avoid harming “the amenity of occupiers/users and nearby properties through unacceptable noise, vibration, traffic congestion, air pollution, overshadowing, overbearing, unsatisfactory outlook, privacy or sunlight/daylight.”


This scheme fails on both counts. It does not easily fit into the style of Victorian buildings in the area, but it’s not just the aesthetic impact that affects the nearby residents. Taking the building to the northern edge of the site will deprive Craven Mews residents with south facing windows of significant levels of direct sunlight. The element of the building adjacent to the garden of 13 Taybridge Road will overlook significant amounts of private space of the residents at 13 and beyond. All those who have windows that face onto the site will see the quality of their outlook reduced, but especially those who live at the lower numbers of Taybridge Road who will have residential properties a short distance from their rear windows (even if the apertures in the walls have been removed from the first floor, the perception of loss of privacy remains and impacts quality of life).

I would also like to address some broader matters.

Cllr Belton commented at the last committee that my points about the history of the site were not relevant. A point on which I must disagree (and to which I will return), although recently it has fallen into disuse the site has a history of employment.

While the report plays this down, stating that it is not in an employment cluster, it is close to the Clapham Junction town centre (the report takes the usual planning approach of judging distance based on desired outcome rather than as an objective measure, stating it’s “not near to a town centre” in paragraph 1.4, while also stating it’s “close to Clapham Junction town centre” in paragraph 1.7), immediately adjacent to the Lavender Hill/Queenstown Road local centre and is a close neighbour of the fully occupied Battersea Business Centre.

Given that a significant proportion of employment currently being created is through self-employment and small business we should not be so easily relinquishing B1 space. Local plan 4.49 and 4.64 are particularly relevant to this, stating it “is important that new housing is not provided at the expense of employment land needed to support the prosperous, local economy in Wandsworth” and seeks “employment floorspace specifically targeted at the needs of the local economy, in particular the provision of flexible business space will be sought … to cater for the full range of Class B1 uses to accommodate a range of business uses.” While paragraph 1.5 of the application report argues that employment space is not enough to merit rejection on its own, this should be given some weight, and I would argue far more than the report suggests, by the committee.

Like some local residents I’m also concerned about the lack of affordable housing. While below the 10 unit threshold at which affordable units should be provided. Policy DMH 8a (iv) states that where developments fall below the 10 unit threshold but exceed the London Plan space standards the affordable housing requirement can be applied.

The scheme gives the impression of being designed to avoid triggering the affordable housing requirement. The total space of the nine proposed units has, by my reckoning, 108 sq. m. of space above the London Plan requirements (although unit 8 is currently slightly under standard). Almost enough for two 1-bed apartments, or for 11 2-bed, 3-people apartments over two floors if the scheme were reconfigured that way.

While spacious, the committee may want to consider whether this part of inner London would benefit more from affordable housing than a few lucky owners (or perhaps more likely private tenants) would from those extra square metres.

To return to Cllr Belton’s point, I accept there is a limited role for local history in a planning decision. However, if planning policy is to have meaning to local residents it should be able to reflect their community, of which their history is part. This is an application that does not complement the local area, and offers very little—if anything—to compensate for that. I hope members can reflect local opinion, and policy, and reject the application.

My last blog post was about the Shaftesbury Let’s Talk meeting, a rather dispiriting experience to say the least. National and local politics have been similarly dispiriting since then. The government seems determined to plunge to ever greater depths of incompetence in its negotiations to leave the EU (somehow taking back control seems to have ended up with us ceding even more control to other nations).

Locally politics is no better. With elections next year candidates are going all out to win votes, from taking credit for decisions taken seven years ago to deciding that trolling the local foodbank is a good look.

I’ve whiled away the last few months focusing on residents and doing my best to make their lives a little better but some of the issues raised at the fractious Let’s Talk meeting have not gone away, with considerable dispute over what was, and wasn’t, said.

Unfortunately the minutes from the meeting have not been published. The general procedure is that they are agreed with all the participants first. I know the meeting chair and I gave the OK, so can only assume that other participants have not had time to consider them yet. However, since it’s been two months and subsequent meetings already have their minutes published I’m publishing the draft minutes here (PDF). For those interested in whether or not Cllr Cook promised a tree-by-tree audit it is not mentioned in these minutes, although I recall it being promised during the relevant exchange).

Some caveats. While these minutes were drafted by council officers they are not an official record since they have not been approved by everyone. Indeed, I suspect that some will strongly disagree with the contents and, in the interests of balance, Cllr Cook’s comments on the meeting at a recent council meeting are below.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Shaftesbury Let’s Talk meeting last week.

It was a shocking meeting. While I’ve done my fair share of heated public meetings, it’s the first time I’ve ever known all the heat and tension be generated by the people on the panel. And I am sorry for those who witnessed it.

Looking at a dry list of the topics raised it was fairly typical of any Let’s Talk meeting (I’ve detailed some of them here, here and here): pavements, litter, dog fouling, planning, refuse collection, education, they all came up. The two specific issues that were new were the felling of Chestnut Avenue on Tooting Common and the proposed redevelopment of Northcote Road library and Chatham Hall. And these were the issues that ignited the meeting.

I wouldn’t say it was particularly because those issues affected residents directly, but they touched a nerve. They spoke of a council that doesn’t listen and doesn’t respect local residents, a theme that resonated. The heat though, came from Cllr Senior. The second real question of the night was directed at Cllr Cook, as the executive member responsible for bull-dozing through the Chestnut Avenue decision, but it was Cllr Senior who jumped in, shouting down the resident.

While there were Shaftesbury residents who were unhappy with non-Shaftesbury issues being discussed, they all expressed their discomfort and unhappiness with a totally inappropriate response.

The panel at the Shaftesbury ward Let’s Talk meeting
Sadly it set a tone for the night, with aggressive answers right up to the last question of the night (Cllr Senior once again shouting at a resident).

I want to apologise for my part in it all. While I think my behaviour on the evening was fine, I cannot help but feel I played a part in getting there because the shouting, the ignoring, the lack of empathy from the Conservative councillors was reflective of the culture that exists on the council.

My sins may not have been direct. I would hope I’ve never treated any resident with such disrespect (indeed, one resident who contacted me afterwards commented that he didn’t realise exactly how respectful I had been in our disagreements until he saw what could have been), but in all those years I was in the Conservative group or on the Executive I didn’t speak up.

Perhaps it would have made no difference—in all probability it would not—but I can never know that because like everyone else I just kept quiet.

So when Cllr Senior started his shouting or Cllr Cook spoke at length without actually addressing the question or showing any empathy I realised this was a symptom. They are coming from a culture in which people who disagree are never just people who disagree. They are somehow outsiders.

The most frequent explanation is that campaigns are politically motivated. Since a right-minded person would support the council, it’s likely a Labour or Liberal Democrat (or ‘dog-killer’, as Cllr Senior calls them1) campaign. But in the case of the report back meeting it can also be literal outsiders, residents from Tooting or Northcote, because no-one from Shaftesbury would ever travel to Tooting Common, have an interest in trees or use Northcote library or have children at the nursery at Chatham Hall.

There might be some benefit in this mentality; the sense of being separate from residents might promote impartial decision making. But it carries risks too. You’re more likely to dig in if you see it as a confrontation. And when you see others as somehow different it’s so much harder to find common ground or even the motivation to reach mutual understanding (which might still result in an agreement to disagree). I think those risks are now being realised again and again.

I felt Formula E was pushed through as much because there was a desire to avoid loss of face (certainly there were huge misgivings with the Conservative cabinet and group throughout). I suspect similar factors were at play with Chestnut Avenue, everyone knew it was questionable, but too much had been invested in saying it wasn’t questionable for the council to back down, even momentarily, to reconsider the evidence. It was the ‘council v. them.’

So when the Let’s Talk meeting descended into shouting, it was clear to me that it was the result of Cllr Senior seeing opponents, not residents.

Residents frequently complain they don’t feel the council is on their side, the problem at the Let’s Talk meeting was the inverse, a councillor not thinking residents were on his ‘side.’

The culture is corrosive. I was part of it. One of those that would keep quiet. Some of us would occasionally comment to each other about it, but we never challenged it and never raised it with someone who might be expected to tackle it. It was just the way it was. We all knew the culprits and perhaps that allowed us to relax knowing that while it might be a variant of “Boris being Boris” (before that was the UK’s brand of diplomacy) the majority of us were fine.

What we failed to recognise was that it normalised the behaviour. So you’d overlook it, try to avoid situations where friends from other parts of your life interacted with those in politics, somehow not notice those Twitter accounts. But every time it just allowed a nasty culture to fester.

Inevitably it has started to spill over into the outside world. Twitter has provided something of an insight into this, with local (anonymous) Tory accounts suggesting that female councillors should stand down or forfeit maternity rights, for example. And while the Shaftesbury Tory account was eventually shut down having over-stepped the mark once too often, the person allegedly behind the account was selected as a candidate as their reward.

You can even see it in the council’s social media accounts, which were almost gloating as they gloried in the destruction of Chestnut Avenue. Or the phone calls to the boss of someone who dared question their decision and the slightly bullying tone of their response to the Wandsworth Guardian (we “simply” called someone’s boss, what’s wrong with that?).

Organisational culture is incredibly difficult to change without strong leadership. My fear is that if the Conservatives retain control of the council in May 2018 (you can’t argue their strategy of a low council tax hasn’t delivered electoral results) the lesson they learn from events like the Shaftesbury Let’s Talk is not that their behaviour was wrong, but instead that their them-and-us analysis is not only correct and does not need to be addressed and may even be an asset.

We won’t just have a nasty party, but also a nasty council.


  1. I can’t imagine this reference to Jeremy Thorpe, a former Liberal leader, was amusing even when it was topical in the 70s 

Google Street View of Sendero Coffee, Lavender Hill, Battersea

Sendero coffee, a relatively new addition to Lavender Hill (on the corner of Lavender Hill and Queenstown Road), has applied for an licence to permit additional sales and activity.

The application is for:

  • The sale of alcohol from 4pm to midnight every day.
  • Live music from 7pm to 10pm every day.
  • Recorded music from 6.30pm to midnight every day.
  • Provision of late night refreshment from 11pm to midnight every day.

Sendero is primarily a coffee shop (and a good one to boot, I’d highly recommend it) and I think it is a good addition to Lavender Hill, providing an attractive destination at the less desirable end of a road that, despite its potential, always seems to struggle.

This licence application is not that big and largely within the council’s policy. However, you might think it moves the shop away from being a coffee shop to something else although with only the upstairs flats as immediate neighbours it might be a suitable venue for later opening and quiet entertainment.

If you want to make a representation you have until 6 October. Representations must relate to the four licensing objectives:

  • The prevention of crime and disorder
  • The prevention of public nuisance
  • Public safety
  • The protection of children from harm

The council’s licensing pages provide more information.

If you wish to make an observation you can do so by writing to:
Head of Licensing
Licensing Section
London Borough of Wandsworth
PO Box 47095
London
SW18 9AQ

or by emailing licensing@wandsworth.gov.uk

There aren’t many places in Wandsworth you don’t notice the poor state of our streets, but the Shaftesbury Park Estate has, I think, some of the worst with the road surface starting to crumble at an alarming rate.

I have reported defects when I see them, but sadly the turnaround on these has lengthened from hours to weeks and occasionally months. However, at least some of the roads are now due for resurfacing and letters should go out to residents in the affected streets today.

The roads due for resurfacing are:

  • Sabine Road (due to start on 10 July with works for four days),
  • Tyneham Road (due to start on 14 July with works for five days ) and
  • Elsley Road (due to start on 19 July with works for four days).

I will continue to report other street defects (and you can also report them via the council’s website or services like FixMyStreet or even just let me know).

We are, of course, less than a year from the council elections, so there’s usually a bit more investment suddenly available making it a great time to get those all those faults rectified.

Two trees on Tyneham Road have been killed by vandals. They were young trees, placed in as part of the replanting programme, but will die after their trunks were severed close to the roots.

Quite what motivated the vandalism is a mystery. There have been some justified concerns about the size of some of the trees on the estate, but these were many years off falling into that category.

I contacted the council’s tree section who confirmed that the cut was so low there was no potential for the trees to survive but that the sites, outside 99 and 109 Tyneham Road, are scheduled for replacement in the winter planting season later this year.

Unfortunately there are no witnesses at present, although the council are preparing a letter for nearby households to see if anyone has any information. If you did see something, please contact the council or, if you wish, feel free to contact me to pass on the information.

Dog poo is inevitable, both for the dog and the councillor. Sooner or later it will be an issue. I was aware of this even as a school boy when having a history teacher who was also a local councillor could lighten even the darkest moments of world history. All it took was a reference to the latest leaflet in his crusade to (we paraphrased, chortle) ‘stamp out dog poo’. How we laughed.

But it is a quality of life issue. People rather like living in relatively clean streets. The fact it is becoming an issue again in the Shaftesbury Estate was highlighted to me as I checked email on my phone yesterday while doing a Poo-shoi Ballet impression around the post-digestive remnants of Pedigree Chum smeared over the Ashbury Road pavement by (I assume) an unlucky child on their way to the school. And what emails popped up? Another resident complaint about the issue and a response from the council to my attempt to get something done.

I’ve mused on dog turds before, sadly it’s not a terribly inspirational topic and it’s hard to come up anything new to say. The council have the same problem. It’s an issue of education and awareness, and they had a session on the Shaftesbury Park Estate last December talking to over 30 dog-owners about the issue.

The problem, it seems, is that it was the dog owners they didn’t meet that are causing the problems. It’s certainly my, and many other people’s, subjective opinion the issue has got worse. (I’m afraid I’ve not quite started keeping detailed statistics on the phenomenon, so objective proof is beyond me.)

Several have pointed the finger at the removal of the litter bins that were, until recently, on the estate and it’s hard not to think there is a correlation, if not causal, link. I did ask the council to consider reinstatement of these, or at possibly even the introduction of some dog fouling bins but the idea got short shrift.

To be fair I think the council’s argument that the bins created more problems (like fly-tipping) than they solved has some merit. Likewise, this has long been a problem on the Shaftesbury Estate, in my old campaigning days people coming to help from other parts of the borough, and even other boroughs, would comment negatively on how bad the problem was. One Westminster campaigner told me in no uncertain terms how bad it was before leaving me to clear up the dog turd he’d unknowingly smeared over the hall carpet.

Wandsworth is not the council it once was, street cleaning is one of those areas that have degraded and there has to be an adjustment of expectations from residents. But there are some standards that we should not see lowered. The daily game of Poo-ssian roulette (I have lots of these puns) is not one residents should be expected to endure.

Despite my sympathy for the ‘irresponsible owner’ argument I can’t help coming to the conclusion that the council should be doing a little more in the area to tackle the problem: they are, after all, the only ones with the authority to enforce the by-laws relating to dogs. So I’m asking them to undertake some more active work on the estate to tackle the problem in the hope it will see an improvement to the cleanliness of the pavement.

The new signs advertising the protected space (click for a larger version)
The new signs advertising the protected space (click for a larger version)
A Public Space Protection Order is coming to a large part of the area around Lavender Hill. The order is aimed at dealing with street drinking in the area by the cut-through from Queenstown Road to Ashley Crescent covers all the Shaftesbury Park Estate, many of the roads to the south of Lavender Hill and to the north on both sides of Queenstown Road.

I did a lot of work representing local residents in getting this even though, I have to confess, I am not a supporter of such moves. It is one of those peculiarities of representative democracy that occasionally you have to represent views you don’t share. However, having implemented several council policies with which I disagreed (although several of which have subsequently been reversed—one of the reasons I rate Ravi Govindia as a leader is his willingness to reconsider policy when he gets things wrong) I really can’t complain about this.

I do have several issues with such zones. One is that I do find it rather hard to believe that extra powers are needed, is there really a need to regulate defecation in public? Another is that if the resources aren’t there to deal with it at present, from where will they come now? My biggest issue is the concern that it doesn’t really solve problems, it changes them or shifts them.

A zone doesn’t cure alcoholism so the drinkers go elsewhere. When a similar zone was implemented in Roehampton one of my former colleagues commented that they didn’t care if the drinkers “went off and drank themselves to death, as long as they did it in their own home.” Perhaps I’m too much of a bleeding heart.

However, my views are academic and I have the luxury of not living near the affected area (although I do live in the zone). While I think there were faults with the consultation (I know very few people who received it, including the people most affected, I certainly did not get one) it seems to have resulted in a positive response: I was told that there had been about 30 responses in favour with only one objection which officers believed had misunderstood the question.

The street drinkers are being given leaflets to make them aware of the zone and signs are being erected to highlight the behaviours prohibited by the order. Once finally in place it will hopefully improve things for the local residents.

Empty shops on Lavender Hill

The blight of estate agent boards will soon be gone from Lavender Hill now the Secretary of State has approved the council’s application allowing the signs to be banned from certain areas.

The application—under the town and country planning regulations—essentially removes the deemed consent for advertising in the area. While it might be reasonable for estate agents to advertise properties, such signs are less relevant in an internet age. Instead the signs are often left in place as a advert for the agents themselves, but leave the area looking tatty and down-at-heel.

Town Centre Partnerships across the borough have been campaigning for years to see this introduced, it has been very effective across the river in large parts of Kensington and Chelsea for several years. More locally, the inclusion of Lavender Hill in the scheme is largely down to one local resident’s tenacity in standing up for the road.

It’s a small step for Lavender Hill, but one in the right direction.

The every-two-years-or-so Let’s Talk meeting took place at Shaftesbury Park school on Wednesday. About 35 residents attended to hear councillors and raise issues affecting the Shaftesbury ward. The three ward councillors were joined by Rex Osborn, leader of the local Labour party, and by Paul Ellis, Cabinet Member for Housing, who was standing in for the council leader (which seemed a peculiar slight to Jonathan Cook, who is the actual deputy leader and chaired the last meeting).

While I always wonder about the relevance of public meetings in the 21st century (it was 35 residents from a ward population of over 10,000, although it’s a fairly open secret it’s more a justification to fund a leaflet to every household) they do offer an interesting evening and are a great way of finding out if my sense of the public issues actually match public issues.

So what were the issues? Well, in something like the order raised.

Pavements… and trees
The poor state of the pavements were raised and particularly the effect of tree roots on them. This expanded into a wider discussion on the impact of trees generally, those that are seen as overgrown and the impact they have during autumn.

Fly tipping
There was lengthy discussion about a number of fly tipping hotspots in the ward. The council tends to be quite good at removing fly tips when it knows about them. And that is the key, if fly tips aren’t reported, they may as well not exist as far as the council is concerned. You can report fly tips on the council’s website.

Neglecting the Shaftesbury Park Estate
One person expressed the opinion, and several agreed, that the council neglected, and had perhaps even abandoned, the Shaftesbury Park Estate. I don’t think that’s true at all, but equally I can understand why the perception has formed. The roads, for example, seem noticeably worse than elsewhere, and even though I have been through a phase of assiduously reporting faults it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

However, I think that is far more a factor of the age of the surfacing than any policy of neglect and I’ll certainly continue to highlight those places where I see (or am told about) issues.

Waste collection
There were several complaints associated with waste collection, including concerns about the timing of street cleans in relationship to rubbish collection, the provision of recycling facilities and the collection process itself.

Antisocial behaviour
A couple of antisocial behaviour hotspots were raised: action is being taken at one already, while the other perhaps needs a bit of attention. The sad fact is that such ASB hotspots tend to be recurrent because they have features that make them attractive, perhaps being comfortable and convenient places to loiter, being out of areas of natural surveillance and therefore having a degree of privacy.

Planning
The council’s planning policy, and specifically a concern that it didn’t do enough to protect special places like the Shaftesbury Park Estate, sparked some discussion, partly on extensions and then on the protection of frontages.

Formula E
One resident raised Formula E. I won’t go into length on this because I have written enough about it already. I was, however, pleased to see that most (if not all) those pleasant appeared to share the residents opposition to holding the event in Battersea Park.

I did find it an interesting and useful meeting, and was pleased to be able to chat with several residents afterwards to pick up some more issues and get contact details so I can follow up on some of those raised. However, if you have something you want to bring up, you don’t need to wait two years for another meeting, just get in touch.