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Bid for bigger flats will put planners to the test
• ARSENAL'S neighbours will be grateful for James Hood’s letter commenting on the club’s huge expansion of its original request for planning permission (Arsenal flats creeping upwards and outwards, September 14).
I showed an experienced architect/developer its proposed “amendments” to the original application, which had already received approval, as they struck me as excessive. The architect remarked that it is a common ruse of developers to make fairly modest proposals in the first planning application, counting on these being acceptable, but then to submit amendments changing and/or enlarging their scope considerably.
They find that “amendments” can often slide through and obtain approval with much less scrutiny, since amendments usually cover comparatively trivial alterations to the original application, such as the precise size or placing of a window or two.
Arsenal’s amendments are anything but trivial. They greatly increase housing density and include a huge addition to the height of the blocks of flats. As Mr Hood reminds us, they seek to increase a 14-storey building to 21 storeys, 288 flats to 725, while creating fewer jobs and abandoning the plan to provide a community sports centre.
I therefore submitted an objection to the “amendments” to the council’s east area committee, on the grounds that they were far too large and important to be accepted as such, and should instead require a revised planning application.
The committee passed on my comment to Duncan Brown, senior projects planner. I received a response on July 13. The amendments “were not considered as materially changing the nature of the proposal, and therefore a new planning application was not considered necessary...” The writer continued: “It was the application’s description that was proposed to be changed and not the proposed development” – a comment I find nonsensical.
I hope that the Highbury Community Association and other members of the east area committee demand that the planning committee give closer critical consideration to the huge scale of change to Arsenal’s original planning application when this reaches the stage of final consultation.
ANGELA SINCLAIR
Highbury Hill, N5
• JAMES Hood, of Highbury Coomunity Association, is right to question whether the council will really make a stand against the latest planning application to threaten Highbury.
So far Arsenal and its developers are following their usual tactics – gain planning permission for a huge, highly profitable development with a smattering of community benefits, then put in further applications to add more flats and more parking spaces while cutting back on the community stuff.
The council’s track record in response to this approach has been fairly unimpressive to date – ignore local concerns, extract a few minor concessions to save face, but basically let the increases through. Will it be any different this time?
Councillor Terry Stacy says he can’t comment on the application at this stage. Fine. But he should understand that local people do not want intrusive tower blocks, extra car parking or flats designed as “investment opportunities”.
We want less excessive development along the lines of the original application with genuine, low-cost housing and with the community benefits the area actually needs.
Above all, affordable sports facilities, especially for young people, not more bars or cinema screens; match-day coach parking, as originally promised (below the commercial/
residential development, not below the stadium itself, if that is deemed unacceptable); and business/office space to promote local employment (again as originally promised, to replace jobs lost to the compulsory purchase orders).
Our council seems in the past to have seen any development as good development. Housing is important but regeneration should be about development which fits in and contributes to the community and makes it more sustainable – for example, in regard to family accommodation, employment, transport and recreation.
Not just flats, parking and profits.
ANDREW MYER
Green Party Highbury Team
N5
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