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These planning cowboys need a sheriff to keep them in check
THE fear that another monstrous Canary Wharf development may arise on the site of the abandoned Middlesex Hospital in Goodge Street is understandably sending shivers down the back of residents.
It perfectly highlights the essentially flawed system of planning controls that govern the capital.
Columnist Simon Jenkins was absolutely right in a recent article in the Guardian when he contrasted the depredations of the London skyline by planners, aided and abetted by local authorities, with the careful re-creation of Moscow now being masterminded by its mayor.
For every decently designed building that has gone up in the past few years there are scores of graceless structures. You can spot them straightaway because they are the sort of buildings discerning passers-by would never look at – except in mild astonishment that their design had ever been approved in the first place.
Two great areas in the borough are now being prepared for a gigantic face-lift – the Euston Road area and Euston Station and King’s Cross.
Considering what has been allowed to be built in the City and the Thames, and the unimaginatively designed skyscrapers recently approved by Ken Livingstone, we can only shudder at the possible mayhem planners might cause.
It is all higgle-piggledy. By and large, planning committees, led by councillors with a sense of responsibility and good aesthetic tastes, manage to keep the baddies away. But others less endowed with these qualities allow developers to ride roughshod over them.
A central London planning committee, democratically elected, with sound back-up services provided by experts, could save London from piratical developers.
But it looks likely that in the good old British tradition of muddling-through, this will not happen.
Barbeque ban will rain on summer fun
THE dreaded health and safety inspectors are at it again.
This time the council is banning public barbecues – unless, of course, you have been on a tick-box training course.
It’s for our own good, they say. We don’t want any compensation claims is the underlying suggestion.
The charm of neighbourhood festivals in Primrose Hill and elsewhere in Camden over the summer is that they allow everybody to come together, muck in and do their bit – cooking sausages on the barbecue included.
Where is the community spirit in the council’s idea of hiring professional caterers – presumably with no link with the area – to come in, pitch up, sell some food and then buzz off again?
Moreover, how will cash-strapped residents be able to find the funds to pay for them? |
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