The former Ariadne Nektar Bar at 274 Latimer Road closed its doors a couple of years ago, after its licence was withdrawn by Kensington and Chelsea Council. The building was acquired in May 2023 by local developers and property agents Wentworth Andersen.

Since then various internal and external works have been carried out to the property. The building is a 19th century purpose-built public house, on three floors. Earlier this year Wentworth Andersen applied for a premises licence. Following a hearing on August 1st 2024 the Council’s LIcensing Sub-Committee has granted a licence, including a series of conditions on the operation of the new pub.

The pub was called the British Volunteer in a previous incarnation, and is due to re-open as The Volunteer early in 2025.

The StQW Neighbourhood Forum has long supported the case for retaining as a pub this last set of previously licensed premises in the neighbourhood (the Pavilion in Wood Lane being the nearest pub in the wider area). The Forum applied successfully for the property at 274 to be registered as an Asset of Community Value.

We were disappointed that the licence application and proposals from Wentworth Andersen were for a ‘wet-only’ pub with a reduced licensed floor area, removing the first floor dining area. Our greatest fear has been that these owners may open a pub for a few months and then argue that the business is not financially viable. The could pave the way to a planning application for change of use of the property to residential flats or a ‘family house’. This route was attempted by previous applicants at No.274 back in 2012, and has been the fate of many pubs across the country and in the Borough.

At the licence hearing, Wentworth Andersen and their agents and solicitors gave assurances that their pub proposal is is business venture that aims to succeed rather than to fail. They say they will select a suitable management company to run the pub. A kitchen is to be installed in the former cellar/basement (for which no planning application has yet been submitted).

The presence (or absence) of a resident landlord, using the ‘ancillary’ accommodation on the second floor, remains an open question at present. We continue to see the presence of a landlord onsite as important to a well managed pub operation. There is the original second floor flat available for this purpose. To date, both the first and second floors have been fitted out as flats. These are not yet let commercially, as there is no planning permission for C3 residential use other than ancillary to a pub.

The licence conditions are detailed. They include a series of requirements designed to avoid risks of noise and nuisance for neighbours. We welcome the fact that the Sub-Committee chose to add a further condition, requiring the pub to provide a ‘substantial food offer’ alongside serving alcohol. In our written representations to the Council and at the licence hearing, we argued that a pub serving food is much needed in a neighbourhood with little choice of places to eat out. A pub that attracts a regular customer base of local residents and their families we see as being more likely to succeed financially.

For those who wish to see the ‘full reasoned decision’ of the Licensing Sub-Committee and the details of opening hours and conditions under which the pub will be required to operate, these can be read and downloaded below.

This newsletter for January 2024 gives useful information on crime and antisocial behaviour in Dalgarno ward. We have asked the Safer Neighbourhood Unit if there is an equivalent newsletter for St Helens ward.

Signs of the times are that the newsletter says that the Police response to shoplifting is now that ‘an ASB warning will be issued’. StQW was successful in obtaining NCIL funding from RBKC for a third CCTV camera in North Pole Road. Tesco North Pole has had to introduce new security screens and anti-theft protection for its more expensive meat items.

These proposals for a major development at the Kensal Canalside Opportunity Area were submitted to Kensington and Chelsea Council in October 2023. The public consultation period advertised by the Council runs until January 12th 2024.

The application will remain ‘under consideration’ by the Council for many further months and possibly until late in 2024. There remain issues to be resolved with the applicants. The Council needs its Draft New Local Plan to be adopted and in force before deciding the application, if it wishes to avoid potential policy conflicts with the current 2019 Local Plan.

There will be a further stage of public consultation on ‘Major Modifications’ to the New Draft Local Plan, before this updated version can be adopted,

Meanwhile several hundred responses have been submitted on the Ballymore/Sainsburys application. Many are very brief comments supporting the proposals on the basis that Kensington needs to see more homes being built. The applicants have used two PR firms to collect such responses from shoppers at the existing Sainsburys store, and from door-knocking in the surrounding area.

Responses from local community organisations and amenity groups in the area, and from many individual residents, object to the application. Objections relate to the high housing density of the proposals, the insufficient public open space, building heights up to 29 storeys, and the impact on traffic in Ladbroke Grove. The housing numbers involved (at 2,516 units on this part of Opportunity Area) are near double what the Council envisaged back when it consulted on options in 2012.

Previous ‘development capacities’ for this site assumed a new Crossrail/Elizabeth Line station at the heart of this development. The Council and the developers have now accepted that there is no prospect of this happening, within the 2022-2042 period of the New Local Plan. Levels of access to public transport will remain low for a site in inner London. Ladbroke Grove will be the nearest Underground station, a 16 minute walk from the new development.

For these and other reasons, the StQW Forum and St Helens Residents Association are submitting an objection to this application. A final draft of our objection letter is below. This will be submitted on January 12th subject to any last minute edits or additions.

Our forum was first designated by RB Kensington and Chelsea in 2013. Designation under the 2011 Localism Act last for 5 years at a time. We applied successfully for ‘redesignation’ in 2018 and applied a second time to the Council in mid 2023.

RBKC consulted on our application from late August 2023 until October 6th. A total of 75 representations were received. Of these 72 supported the redesignation.

The Council has now formally confirmed the decision to redesignate via a ‘Key Decision’.

The documents involved can be downloaded below. We are grateful for the support shown by our members and other in the neighbourhood.

The Forum is now embarking on a review and update of our neighbourhood plan, which was adopted by RBKC as part of the development plan for the Borough in 2018.

The Greening your Home event on September 14^th at West London Bowling Club was very well attended.   Seventy local residents came along on a sunny evening to hear short talks from The Lady Linzie on growing heritage vegetables, and Aimee Spanswick on sustainable gardening and permaculture.

Robert Pereno from LancWest Grows Best started the evening with his presentation (a memorable performance) on the Club’s terrace. Preeti Gulati Tyagi, from RBKC’s Planning Department explained the Council’s new policies to support sustainable retrofitting of homes. 

PDF versions of slides from the presentations by Aimee and Preeti are available to download below. These include useful information for those wanting to do some ecological gardening, or thinking about what needs planning permission when retrofitting a home.

Aimee Spanswick (Westway Trust) presentation

Preeti Gulati Tyagi (RBKC) presentation on Sustainable Retrofitting of Homes in RBKC Part 1

RBKC kas also published a  Householder Guide to the Council’s Greening Supplementary Planning Document. This can be dowloaded from this page on the RBKC website

https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/planning-and-building-control/planning-policy/greening-spd

THURSDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER
6:30 – 8:00PM
WEST LONDON BOWLING CLUB
112A Highlever Rd, London W10 6PL

The Climate Crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our times. St Quintin & Woodlands Neighbourhood Forum & St Helen’s Resident Association are hosting an event that explores what we can do to reduce carbon emissions within our homes and create a greener and healthier environment.

Along with brief presentations, there will be people with expertise on hand to answer your questions. We look forward to seeing you there.

The sessions will cover:

Greening your Garden

With advice from local gardeners and horticulturalists

Greening your Home

RBKC Planning Officers will explain what the new Borough policies mean in terms of retrofitting our homes and greening our neighbourhood.
Send your questions in advance and we will answer them on the night: sthelensassn@aol.com

Refreshments

Meet and chat to neighbours who have experience in greening their homes and gardens. There will be refreshments on hand and the Club pay bar will be open.

Please register via Eventbrite or email sthelensassn@aol.com

The joint AGM of the StQW Neighbourhood Forum and the St Helens Residents Association was well attended on June 8^th. A headcount recorded close to 70 members during the meeting, held as usual at St Helens Church hall.

The following members were elected as officers and management committee members:

Re-elected committee members

David Marshall, Finstock Road
Fiona Withey, Kelfield Gardens
Tania Martin, Highlever Road (Secretary)
Catherine Mannheim, Highlever Road
Pat Healy, Oakworth Road
Henry Peterson, Highlever Road (Chair)
Steve Divall (St Helens Church)

New committee members

Kim Evans, Dalgarno Gardens
Stephen Duckworth, Pangbourne Avenue
Nathanial Gee, Oxford Gardens
Ben Martinez, St Helens Gardens
Jeremy Raphaely, Highlever Road
Co-opted members
Jenny Harborne
Maggie Tyler

The constitution of the Forum was amended (see earlier post for reasons for the changes). The updated constitution is below:

The Council’s preparation of a new Local Plan for the Borough is now at the stage when the Draft document is being ‘examined’ by Planning Inspector Louise Nurse. She is holding a series of public hearings in June and July 2023.

Organisations which submitted representations on the Regulation 19 Draft (along with any individuals) have been invited to attend relevant hearing sessions. These involve the Inspector asking questions on representations made. Additional submissions were invited with a deadline of June 5th.

All the background documentation on the Examination is on the RBKC website under Local Plan Review. This material includes the full draft of the proposed New Local Plan, along with recent further submissions made to the Inspector.

The StQW Forum has made four further submissions, following up the previous post on this website and our Response Form on the Regulation 19 Draft. This was sent to the Council following discussion our open meeting in St Helens Church hall on November 29th 2022.

Our four further submissions cover these issues:

• a response to the Inspector’s question on whether RBKC has correctly categorised ‘strategic’ and ‘non-strategic’ policies in is new Draft Plan (this is technical issue which affects the extent to which Borough-wide policies can in future be varied or refined via a neighbourhood plan). Hearing date scheduled for afternoon of June 21st.
• a response to several of the Inspector’s questions on the Site Allocation and policies for Kensal Canalside. Hearing date scheduled for all day on June 22nd, with many parties attending including several local community groups.
• A response to the Inspector’s questions on the Local Plan’s draft policy for Tall Buildings
• a response on Draft Site Allocation and Policy SA9 on Units 1-14 Latimer Road. This requests deletion of the last part of the following sentence in bold, requiring applicataions with High quality design that reflects the mixed character of the area and respects the Employment Zone identity. This row of light industrial/warehouse units is already the subject of a RBKC Design Code and a set of StQW Policies. The wording ‘respects the Employment Zone identity’ appears to refer to planning officers seeking building designs that look ‘commercial/industrial’ in some undefined way. For mixed use redevelopments, what is the merit in including such unclear wording?

Copies of these four submissions to the Inspector can be downloaded below.

Nursery Lane and the application from Northcare

Developers Northcare (Scotland Ltd) have made submissions on the need for extra care home spaces, under the Housing section of the Examination (scheduled hearing date the afternoon of July 11th). We will attend this hearing, but the further evidence which we submitted on why the land at Nursery Lane should remain as designated Local Green Space has not been published by the Inspector.

The Inspector’s note on the Examination states Representors should be aware that it is not my role to examine the soundness of any omission sites. Such sites will not be discussed at the Hearing sessions. An ‘omission site’ is one not selected by RBKC for a site allocation. but now promoted by a developer. We have to hope that the Inspector does not allow Northcare to attempt to challenge the Local Green Space designation via these forthcoming hearings.

Strategic and non-strategic policies in a Local Plan

Kensal Canalside Opportunity Area

Local Plan Policy on Tall Buildings

Site Allocation SA9 Units 1-14 Latimer Road

The AGM of both these local organisations will be held at St Helens Church Hall, St Helens Gardens, London W10 on Thursday June 8th at 7pm.

The agenda for the meeting is below. We will be dealing sequentially with the formal agenda items on the StQW Forum and on the Helens Residents Association, given that this year the management committee is recommending some updates to the constitutions of both bodies.

The details of the proposed changes to both constitutions can be read and downloaded from this post. These changes and the reasons for them are summarised in three slides below, which will be used at the meeting on the 8th.

Agenda for the meeting

1. To receive and agree the minutes of the 2022 AGM
2. StQW proposed changes to constitution
3. StQW election of management committee and officers for 2023/4
4. SHRA proposed changes to constitution
5. SHRA election of management committee and officers for 2023/4
6. Update on current local planning issues • RBKC Local Plan Examination in Public • Kensal Canalside • Nursery Lane application from Northcare (Scotland Ltd)
   7. Forthcoming consultation on redesignation of StQW for a further 5 years
   8. Reviewing the StQW Neighbourhood Plan – process and need for updating
   9. Any other business

A StQW leaflet is being circulated to all 1,700 households in the neighbourhood area, with information about the Forum and what it does. We hope that some of those who have moved into the area in recent years will be joining as members, along with those who have not come across the forum/association in the past.

A PDF version of this leaflet is available below.

If you are already a StQW/SHRA member and wish to self-nominate to join either committee, please email sthelensassn@aol.com by June 5th.

After the AGM, the StQW Forum will be submitting an application to RB Kensington and Chelsea for ‘redesignation’ for a further five years. This is a process required of all neighbourhood forums across England, of which there are now over 3,000.

The Council will then consult on this application for 6 weeks via its website at www.rbkc.gov.uk. We will post information on how to respond once this exercise gets underway.

You do not need to be a StQW member or to live within the StQW neighbourhood boundary to respond to the consultation. We hope that a wider audience in North Kensington values the work that the Forum undertakes on local planning issues.

Our previous post gave the background to the latest attempt to develop this ‘backland’ site behind Highlever Road, Brewster Gardens and Dalgarno Gardens. A care home company based in Scotland held some consultation sessions back in March on their proposals to build a 72 bed luxury care home north of the existing sheltered housing at 1 Nursery Lane.

Savills have subsequently submitted a planning application on behalf of Northcare.  This is now published on the RBKC website with a reference PP/23/02302. 

After RBKC successfully defended its decision to progress the StQW Neighbourhood Plan to adoption, back in 2017/18, we thought that the designation of this backland as one of three Local Green Spaces made it safe from development.  As recently as November 2022 we were told by landowner William Legard that ‘the family have no future plans for the Nursery Lane site at this moment in time’.

It now seems that Northcare have taken out a 2 year option to develop the site.  Their team of consultants held a first pre-application session with RBKC planners back in January 2022.

The advice of RBKC officers at three pre-application meetings has now been published along with all the application documents. The Council has said consistently that officers would be unable to support the proposal if an application were made.

Despite this advice Northcare have chosen to plough on. Having spent large sums on consultants and architects before making any contact with StQW, the Northcare’s development director explained at the March 2nd exhibition of their plans ‘we are now heavily invested in this project’. 

Savills are the planning consultants and have a reputation for delivering on behalf of their clients. They are an expensive firm to use.   In this instance, we share the view of RBKC officers that arguments of ‘very special circumstances’ in terms of extra care provision will not outweigh the protection of a Local Green Space designation made relatively recently (2016).  ‘Very special circumstances’ have been used to gain permission for care homes on Green Belt land.  But the NPPF criteria for Local Green Space designation are different.

It was a hard fought local campaign to achieve Local Green Space designation for this piece of land. The site has never been developed and is not a ‘brownfield site’.  One of the three criteria for LGS designation is that the land in question must be demonstrably special to a local community and holds a particular local significance, for example because of its beauty, historic significance, recreational value (including as a playing field), tranquillity or richness of its wildlife.

The independent examiner of the StQW Draft Local Plan held a public hearing in 2015, at which StQW and Metropolis Property (at that time promoter of a housing development on Nursery Lane) gave evidence.  The Examiner inspected the site, which was in a poor state at the time after several mysterious occasions of unauthorised entry and fly-tipping.

Having considered all this evidence, including views from Historic England, the Examiner said in his final report to the Council Overall, I conclude that from the content of the evidence in Annexe C, from the substance of the significant number of representations in favour of the designation and my own site visits, that the site is indeed demonstrably special to the local community; and that it holds a particular local significance for them. It also meets the other two criteria. I therefore conclude that the designation of the Nursery Lane site as Local Green Space meets the Basic Conditions.

In the 2017/18 High Court case on a judicial review application by the Legard family, Mr Justice Dove reviewed the same set of arguments and counter-claims.  His 2018 judgment records that Thus I am satisfied that the Examiner’s reasons were clear and adequate, and further that the conclusions which he reached were arrived at following a proper interpretation of paragraph 77 of the Framework (the section of the then NPPF on Local Green Space).

Savills have provided a Planning Statement and Montagu Evans a Built Historic Environment Statement. These documents are too large to upload to this website but can be found on the RBKC planning file. Both of these reports try to undermine the carefully considered conclusions of a Neighbourhood Plan Examiner and a High Court judge.

Consultants Concilio, who organised the February/March consultation sessions and survey, have prepared a Statement of Community Involvement which is unusually objective and accurate for firms who handle ‘engagement’ on planning applications.  This states that The vast majority of people did not want to see this site developed. The residents were steadfast in their desire to keep this land in its current condition. We were able to get some comments on the design, and the community spaces, which we will take on board. However the key takeaway was that residents would be difficult to convince of the need for development of this site. The full document is also on the RBKC planning file.

The published closing date for responses on the Northcare planning application is May 26^th.  It may be that no decision is made by RBKC until after the public hearings on the Examination of the RBKC New Draft Local Plan.  Northgate/Savills made representations last autumn that the LGS designation for Nursery Lane should be ‘removed’.  It is up to the appointed Planning Inspector (Louise Nurser BA (Hons), Dip Up, MRTPI) to decide whether she wants to hear evidence on this question during the forthcoming Examination in Public hearings in June and July.  We will be there from StQW to take part in the hearing, should this situation arise.

To comment on the Northcare application you need to do no more than send a brief email to planningapplications@rbkc.gov.uk quoting PP/23/02302. 

It will help simply to say that the land at Nursery Lane is designated as Local Green Space, and that this strong planning protection for all three remaining backland sites in our neighbourhood remains important to local residents.  

Were this site to be developed, the potential at the Bowling Club and the Methodist Church site behind Kelfield Gardens will be eyed up next by developers.  Views on the need for an expensive private care home at Nursery Lane can be added in an objection.  Please include your name and street address.

The petition to RBKC organised by the Nursery Gardens Action Group back in 2015 amassed 2,500 signatures.  We need to show for a second time that the land is demonstrably special to the local community, and unsuitable for a care home which will be unaffordable to all but a few.  One day in the future a set of good uses for this open space will emerge, and StQW/SHRA members are not short of ideas. 

It is not NIMBY to want to retain pieces of open space in North Kensington, especially after the long and complex process of achieving Local Green Space designations has been undertaken through sustained community effort.