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King’s Cross shows a failure on heritage
• TWO things have bedevilled the opposition case at King’s Cross.
First, the refusal of the statutory conservation bodies – English Heritage and the Victorian Society – to do what they are meant to do, that is, protect the heritage.
Secondly the ‘fact’ that Argent carried out extensive local consultation.
Now that the Government’s new planning white paper will make it easier than ever to destroy anything that gives an area, urban or rural, its character, it is vital that those two failings are addressed.
Conservation and heritage have been appallingly neglected by this Government and John Gummer’s open loathing of the King’s Cross protesters in Estates Gazette suggests a Tory government may not be better.
The new chief of English Heritage will take up his position with reduced hours and much reduced salary over his predecessor. The only major funder for decades of conservation schemes, the Heritage Lottery Fund, has lost far more of its cash to the Olympics than the Arts Lottery, but you’d never know from the press.
The sector has been frightened by constantly reducing funding into keeping its head well below the political parapet. It knows how much history and heritage matter to people, as it has numerous surveys to say so – it needs to be brave enough to act on its own findings.
The consultation invariably takes the form of “wouldn’t you like lots of money for jobs and housing instead of those crumbling old buildings that can’t be economically repaired anyway?”
Of course, people say yes. The more run-down and desperate the area, the more willing people are to agree to anything. By the time they realise the implications – the housing won’t be provided for years then will be unaffordable or built at the butt-end of the site, the jobs will be for incomers, or will be low-wage, low-status, low-security, the neighbourhood will be transformed into another clone town – it’s too late.
Councillors have heard a ringing endorsement for the plans and all imagine themselves cutting the ribbon on a new sports centre or whatever.
Any honest professional will admit that consultation yields the results the employer wants. Consultation must be detailed and open not phrased by those with a vested interest, and those consulting must then listen and react.
Questions asked and replies received should be published and changes made, if any, spelled out.
The white paper will make objecting to heavy-handed plans tougher than ever, but if national and local government want to keep even a shred of democratic accountability, they need to pay attention to those who prefer heritage and environment to private profit and ever-expanding volumes of CO2.
JUDITH MARTIN
Industrial Buildings Preservation Trust
N1
• THE King’s Cross issue shows how money has triumphed over democracy.
The very name of the developer, Argent, means money in French. If I’ve
understood correctly, the court verdict means that council officers may warn elected members that turning proposals down could land the council with a costly bill for the planning appeal. So a well-resourced developer can cow the council into submission and the votes we cast at the borough elections last year – and I’m sure that the King’s Cross issue caused some seats to change hands – might as well have been thrown in the recycling bin for all they could achieve in improving our
environment.
Environmentalists who fail to work their way through our arcane planning
system get humiliated. But when developers, and bodies like the Highways Agency, cut corners and lose a case, they just go back to the drawing board.
Eventually they win, which is how a major airport (Stansted) got superimposed on the formerly quiet, prosperous rural area, unrivalled in its heritage buildings.
This has three consequences. First, sustainable development has become a joke – why should developers trouble to be “good neighbours” when they can make money more by steamrollering their opponents? Secondly, those of us who care about our surroundings find our quality of life continually eroded.
Thirdly, our political system is undermined because people no longer feel that putting forward a reasoned argument has the slightest effect.
Is the apathy which politicians bemoan surprising?
SIMON NORTON
Howitt Close
NW3
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