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Why this rush to approve flats plans?
• COUNCILLOR George Allan acted wrongly in using his casting vote to force through the large development application in Central, Seward and Peartree streets in Finsbury against considerable public opposition and half of the planning committee who voted against it last Thursday.
At the very least such a degree of disagreement within the council’s planning committee about such a large and precedent-setting proposal for 274 flats should be grounds for a deferral to allow more considered review of the issues involved.
As a resident I strongly object to the hurried and cursory manner in which this planning application has been handled.
The two public meetings where it might have been sensibly discussed have not been, as the Liberal Democrats assert, examples of area committees (a flagship policy of their governance) “bringing decision-making down to the lowest level”, or anything like the description on their website of a local democracy that has been made “more public and less structured than the stuffy old council meetings by allowing resident participation”.
I disagree that such committees “have so far been a great success” or that they have helped “to build a community spirit in the area, involve more local people in shaping decision-making and be an important way for the community to be involved in the council”. Our experience is that they have been used to allow the chairman’s action to make a mockery of procedure or reasoned debate.
The development is much too large to be built in an already densely-populated area. It will make the streets around it more unsafe, less passable and darker. It is not viable for Peartree Street, which is 170cm in width at its eastern end, to remain a two-way street.
The opportunity to widen the street, to make a bike path, to provide more room for recycling, to plant some trees, to enhance public amenity or to maximise the residential and commercial value of the new building by improving its surroundings were all resisted by Cllr Allan, planning officer Mathew Rosel and the developer.
Their collective insistence on siting this huge development less than eight metres from a floor-to-ceiling, glass-fronted residential building – and to build it so close that a condition of louvred cladding has been placed on all flats in the new building facing south – is absurd and beyond any definition of sound planning principles.
Tellingly, the plan changed very little over the course of the brief consultation period, except to be enlarged.
Throughout the consultation, we were unable to clarify basic discrepancies in the calculation of daylight impacts, the registration number of the developer, ownership of the land or what consideration had been given to so many developments at once in the area. These and other important questions were sidelined.
Above all, what has disappointed residents throughout the proceedings surrounding this application is the fait accompli cynicism apparently motivating the decision to “re-tower block” east Clerkenwell, and which made reasonable discussion of the application essentially pointless.
We hope the future of planning will not be of continued Lib Dem arrogance but can genuinely engage with informed public opinion to generate productive debate about new developments in this densely-populated borough.
PROF SARAH FRANKLIN
Peartree Street, EC1
• THE planning application for an in-part 10-storey building of 280 flats was approved last week even though it contravened some of the borough’s guidelines.
Councillor George Allan, who chaired the planning committee, said there are no places in Islington that would not contravene its guidelines that could help them meet Mayor of London Ken Livingstone’s targets. So, despite the plans contravening guidelines regarding privacy, canyoning (there will be a distance of eight metres between an existing residential building in Peartree Street and the new development where residents will be looking directly into each other’s bedrooms) and daylight/sunlight, it was approved.
The developer’s representative pointed out that they are “only guidelines”. It appears they are there only to be enforced at the whim of the council. The developer had two-and-a-half years to bring this proposal to the planning committee and not once did it consult residents, because it is not obliged to.
Cllr Allan said the higher the density of these developments the less they will need to build to meet Mr Livingstone’s targets. It appears this will be used as a precedent for at least three or four more developments in the pipeline for this small area of east Clerkenwell/St Luke’s.
My concern is that this development is extremely large for this area and as a result will stick out like a sore thumb. It will be the new millennium’s version of the tower blocks of the 70s.
While this area does need to be redeveloped, its replacement should be at least of architectural merit if it is something that will not blend into the existing area; aesthetics is not something the architect was particularly worried about in this design. Even the council’s independent conservation and design panel did not approve this design.
The council’s own conservation and design team, run by a medieval historian, did not uphold the independent body’s concerns. Cllr Allan’s comment was that the panel is independent and as such does not have as much weight as the council’s own team.
I have written to Mr Livingstone to ask if it is his intention that the priority of housing outweighs the priority of good practice? Obviously, Islington Council’s stance is you can’t have both.
I look forward to hearing from him.
JULIE HOESLI
Paton Street Residents’ Association
• THE future of Finsbury, as was its past, is to be one of high-density, low-quality housing, thanks to Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and Islington planners.
Two planning applications being considered at the moment are for sites between Lever Street, Seward Street and Peartree Street. Under the first, approved last Thursday, 274 apartments will be squeezed into a high-density development, with tall buildings, between Seward Street and Peartree Street. The second would squeeze another 169 apartments onto land between Lever Street and Seward Street.
There are also possible plans to build three large tower blocks in Peartree Street on the NCP site and more apartments on the St Luke’s Parochial Trust site in Central Street, which would also cover Paton Street and at least one of the existing football pitches.
This would mean that, over the next few years, there would be at least 900 apartments built in a small area that has little or no amenities to offer existing residents, never mind another 1,500 or so who would flood into the area.
In the plans for one of the developments the only amenity on offer is a small crèche. I would have thought that, with so many people coming into the area, we need more doctor and dental surgeries, citizens’ advice centres and other amenities for the vastly increased population. These amenities are in short supply in the area and the ones that do exist are vastly oversubscribed.
These high-rise, high-density developments in such a small area are going to have a negative effect on the lives of residents in a major way.
ADRIAN CROFT
Seward Street, EC1
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