The area for which the Old Oak and Park Royal Development is the local planning authority lies to the north west of the StQW neighbourhood area.  Hence we have taken a close interest in the plans of the OPDC.  This is London’s largest regeneration area and the site of the planned HS2 and Queen Elizabeth Line rail interchange.

The OPDC plans to build 25,000 new homes at Old Oak, at very high densities.  This Forum residents believe this target to be too high, and that the outcome risks being a long-term planning failure – hugely damaging to this part of London.

OPDC Local plan 19.2 Key Diagram

The OPDC has been preparing a Local Plan since the Corporation first took over planning responsibilities for parts of Brent, Ealing, and Hammersmith & Fulham Boroughs back in April 2015.  A ‘Regulation 18’ and ‘Regulation 19’ version of the Local Plan have already been consulted on. Major changes were sought during these consultations.  HS2, the Mayor and GLA, and Transport for London pointed out that parts of the Draft Local Plan, relating to sites at and around the planned HS2 station, were not realistic.  Major depots and other infrastructure on these sites cannot be relocated or built over, within the 2018-38 plan period.  The topography of the land also constrains development.

As a result the OPDC is consulting on a third Draft Plan.  The main changes affect the area termed ‘Old Oak South’ but there have also been significant other changes on the proposed street network and transport routes.

One element that has not changed is the 25,000 housing target, which dates from a set of revisions to the London Plan adopted in 2015.  Very little justification for this target was provided when first added to the London Plan.  Despite this, it has been treated ever since as an unalterable parameter in subsequent Draft Local Plans.

Subsequent modelling of development capacity across the OPDC area has shown that this target can be met only be building homes at extreme high densities.   The latest OPDC Draft Local Plan acknowledges an average density of 450 units/hectare across the various development sites in the plan.  This rises to 650 units per hectare in ‘Old Oak North’, where most of the land is owned by Cargiant/London & Regional Properties.

As this latest version of the Local plan is beginning to acknowledge, these very high densities  will require ‘a new London typology‘ in terms of built forms (i.e. intensive clusters of very tall towers and ‘shoulder blocks’.  A study of the Old Oak proposals by a team from Cambridge and Berkeley University points out that current OPDC proposals are ‘more akin to residential densities in Shanghai or Hong Kong than the densest parts of London’.

Quite way this part of London should be planned in this way is not explained, beyond bland statements that ‘London needs more housing’.  There are no proposals for radical improvement to the local road network, already highly congested.  Much faith is placed in the ‘connectivity’ available to new residents (post 2016) from the new station interchange.  Two new Overground stations are also promised as ‘potential’ additions to the local transport system, but no funds have yet been secured to construct these (at £150-200m apiece).

The OPDC consultation webpage, with links the Draft Plan and extensive Supporting Studies is at this link.   The StQW Forum will be responding to the consultation.  Our previous 2017 response to the Regulation 19 OPDC Local Plan can be seen here StQW response to OPDC Reg 19 Plan.

One of the original aims of setting up this neighbourhood forum was to revitalise Latimer Road.   Ever since the construction of the Westway, this street has not flourished as a part of the Freston/Latimer Employment Zone, one of the Borough’s only three such zones.

Public transport access to the area is poor, and the street lacks the cafes, coffee shops and eating places that office locations need (although the arrival of the bar at the Playground Theatre has helped).  Low footfall on the street makes it less secure for residents.

New policies in the StQW Neighbourhood provide greater flexibility on permissible planning uses in the four sections of the street designated for employment use (see map below).   There is scope for Units-14 to redevelop with housing above the employment floorspace at ground and mezzanine level.

Latimer Road map, showing sections of the EZ (in purple) and location for proposed Overground station at ‘Western Circus’

The long delays on construction of the proposed pedestrian/cycle underpass between the southern end of Latimer Road and the Imperial campus in Wood Lane has not helped matters.  We are promised that Imperial College remains committed to this project, to be delivered by the third quarter of 2019.

Now in summer 2018, the Council has expressed interest in some new planning initiatives in Latimer Road, working with the StQW Forum.  Westway Trust is also carrying out a major review of its property portfolio, which includes the land at 310 Latimer Road (site of the proposed subway) as well as those parts of its estate at the Westway Sports Centre.

Thoughts and ideas from building owners in Latimer Road would be welcome.   We will convene a meeting of residents and businesses in the street in the the next couple of months, to discuss emerging ideas from the Council and the Forum.   Let us know at info@stqw,org  if you have any immediate ideas, or would be interested in attending such a meeting.

A long-running legal challenge to the St Quintin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Plan was dismissed by Mr Justice Dove, in the High Court on 12th January 2018.

Owners of a backland open space in the neighbourhood area had sought judicial review of the decision of Kensington and Chelsea Council to progress the draft neighbourhood plan to its referendum.   The referendum was held in February 2016, and the plan was supported by 92% of those voting, with a 23% turnout.  The Council has since been applying the policies in the plan.

The Legard family of North Yorkshire, as owners of one of three sites designated in the plan as Local Green Space, joined with developers Metropolis Property Ltd mounting the legal challenge.  A  planning application to build 21 townhouses on the land had been previously been deemed premature by the Council, pending publication of the neighbourhood plan.

The local authority defended its decisions, with the neighbourhood forum involved as an interested party.  After 5 days of hearings in the High Court, all three grounds of the claim were dismissed.

Previous posts give more background to this legal action.  Our view is that the landowners at Nursery Lane (the Legard family) could have avoided the whole scenario has they responded to the initial letters which we sent to them at the end of 2013, asking to discuss the future of this former nursery garden site.

Instead they chose to partner with Metropolis Property Ltd and to work up detailed proposals for a development of 20 townhouses, without so much as a single conversation with the StQW Forum.

Subsequent decisions by both parties to ignore the recommendation of the independent examiner of the StQW Draft Plan, and the referendum result on the plan, meant that substantial legal costs were incurred – on all sides.   The Council bore the brunt of costs of defending the action, and it is not yet clear whether more than a small element of their expenditure will be met by the claimants.

The Forum is very grateful to those members and local residents who contributed to fund which allowed us to retain Stephanie Hall from leading planning chambers Francis Taylor Buildings, to represent us at the High Court.   The case ran for five days rather than the expected two, and Stephanie kept her fees to the modest level which we could afford, working as a Direct Access Barrister.   This saves significant costs on use of a solicitor.

The Kensington Society also made two match funding contributions to our legal costs, at important moments.

The judgment is very detailed and cane be downloaded here https://t.co/5aAaft9oEQ.  We hope that it will give encouragement to other neighbourhood forums and parish councils preparing neighbouring plans, who find their proposals challenged by landowners or developers.

The legal case took an unusual turn, with the claimants arguing that the level and content of correspondence between the StQW forum, the council, and the independent examiner rendered the process ‘apparently biased’ and unfair.  The judgment analysed in detail the factual background to these allegations, and dismissed the three grounds of the claim.

The judge concluded that the forum had been ‘persistent’ on many issues, including some            disagreements with the Council’s planning officers.  We did indeed have to send many letters and emails to the Council, and previous posts on this website record why this became necessary.

As all those working on neighbourhood plans will know, it takes persistence to see these plans through to the finishing line.

The Council has been consulting recently on the route of a proposed TfL/RBKC ‘Quietway’ route through the StQW neighbourhood.  ‘Quietway’s form part of the Mayor of London’s Cycling Grid.   The intended users are not cycling commuters but those who wish ‘to use clear, direct routes along quiet side streets’ .  They are different from the cycling superhighways, which are two-way largely segregated routes designed to bring people in and out of central London.

At the StQW/SHRA open meeting on June 9th, RBKC transport officers gave a presentation on the North Kensington section of a proposed new Quietway.  A map of the overall route is shown below.

Discussion at the meeting centred on the proposed junction where the Quietway crosses North Pole Road.  Local residents were very doubtful about the viability of the proposed junction layout, using two ‘Tiger’ crossings which are acknowledged as being experimental.

The major traffic problems in North Pole Road make it unsuitable as part of a Quietway route, in the view of local people.  There is congestion (and resultant poor driving practices) almost every day at mid and late afternoon.  Sightlines for cyclists are poor, because of parked vans and other vehicles.  Parking enforcement is weak.

The StQW Forum has written to the Council asking that two alternative routes are considered, one using Eynhaam Road and one using Highlever Road.  A copy of our letter can be found at this link StQW to RBKC re Cycle Quietway.V3 final [1225250]

The Council has assured us that these options will also be examined, before any decision is made.  The consultation on the RBKC website, with maps of each junction is at https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/parking-transport-and-streets/getting-around/cycling-and-walking/cycling-grid/mitre-lane-ledbury.   It closed on June 25th 2016.

A first meeting of the ‘interim’ Old Oak Neighbourhood Forum was held on May 25th, at the Woodward Hall, in North Acton.   This new body is made up of residents and businesses interested in preparing a neighbourhood plan for the Old Oak part of the OPDC area.

The meeting was chaired by Mark Walker (chair of The Island Site Residents Association (TITRA).  Henry Peterson (chair of the StQW Neighbourhood Forum) explained that it had been agreed with the OPDC that a formal application for designation of an Old Oak neighbourhood area and forum would await the outcome of the London Mayoral elections on May 5th.

While Sadiq Khan is now Mayor of London and has been appointing a new team of Deputy Mayors, it was not clear (as of May 25th) who would become the new chair of the OPDC Board.

The meeting reviewed and discussed the proposed boundary for an Old Oak neighbourhood area, and agreed a number of changes.  The map below reflects this latest thinking (the yellow line shows the proposed NP boundary, and the purple line the OPDC boundary).

The proposed boundary may well change as a result of the 6 week public consultation that will be undertaken by the OPDC and LB Hammersmith & Fulham, once a final designation application is submitted.  Residents and businesses in areas not currently included will have the opportunity to ask that their streets are added into the neighbourhood area.

This applies (for example) to the Eynham Road area, to the east of Wood Lane.  This is not currently included because this is already a designated neighbourhood area as a result of LBHF decisions made in 2013.  The Council would need to vary its previous decisions for these streets to become part of an Old Oak neighbourhood, since an area cannot lie within two designated neighbourhoods.

The latest draft of the designation application for an Old Oak neighbourhood area and neighbourhood forum can be downloaded here

Old Oak designation application.Final draft May 2016

If you are interested in joining the Old Oak interim neighbourhood forum, and live or work within the orange boundary in the map above, please email to info@stqw.org or ring 0207 460 1743 for more information.

A group of residents associations on the borders of Wormwood Scrubs/Old Oak Common have been working together in recent months on proposals to prepare a neighbourhood plan for Old Oak.  The suggested boundary of the neighbourhood area is shown in the map below (the yellow line).

The Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation has been the planning authority for this area, since April 2015.  The Corporation has consulted in recent months on the first draft of a Local Plan for the area.

Rather than simply responding to this and other consultations, local residents see a neighbourhood plan as a good way of identifying shared concerns over what is being planned for Old Oak, for feeding in local knowledge, and for influencing the final outcome of the OPDC Local Plan.  The idea would be for preparation of a neighbourhood plan to run alongside the next stages of the OPDC Local Plan.

The draft of a designation  application for a neighbourhood forum and neighbourhood area has been put together.  This will need to be approved by the OPDC Board and by LB Hammersmith & Fulham, for the neighbourhood plan to go ahead.

Old Oak designation application.Draft V9 April 3rd

The application will be submitted shortly after the London Mayoral election on May 5th.  The OPDC and LBHF will then organise a 6 week public consultation, seeking views on the suggested boundary for the neighbourhood area, and on establishing an Old Oak Neighbourhood Forum.

The ‘interim forum’ put together a collective response to the OPDC consultation on its Draft Local Plan, and this can be seen at the link below and on the website of the Grand Union Alliance.

RESPONSE TO OPDC DRAFT LOCAL PLAN.Final

A second version of the OPDC Local Plan will appear later this year.  Whether its policy proposals on density and building height are any different remains to be seen.  The arrival of a new Mayor of London could bring about change, as could a majority for Brexit and the resultant impact on the London property market.

Email the StQW Forum at info@stqw.org if you would be interested to know more about the proposals for the Forum, or what is happening at Old Oak.

The level of turnout at last Thursday’s referendum is a testament to the fact that local residents care deeply about our neighbourhood.

We had been hoping that most of the 370 members of the neighbourhood forum (same membership as St Helens Residents Association) would take the trouble to vote.   But going along to a polling station, or completing a postal vote or proxy vote form, takes time and effort and has to be fitted into busy lives.   The turnout of 700 plus (including all postal votes) came as surprise.

To put a 23% turnout in context, this is not much below what happens in a local election in several wards in the Borough (in St Helens and Dalgarno wards we are more active voters, with a turnout of 34% in each ward in the 2014 local elections).

In one of the very few neighbourhood plan refererendums held to date in London (West Hampstead and Fortune Green) the turnout was a lower 14%.  This is the sort of level we were expecting.  Neighbourhood plans are unfamiliar to most people in London, although now much more common in rural and parished areas across England.

So it was very welcome to see people streaming into St Helens Church to cast their vote, having heard about the referendum from their neighbours, our flyers, or from information left with Shelley the chemist, the butchers at North Pole Road, St Helens Cafe and other venues.   Getting this neighbourhood plan in place has been a real joint effort across our London ‘village’.

One lady voter who came with her carer told me that she had lived here all her life and remembered being at the opening of the Princess Louise Hospital, by Queen Mary.  As noted in the short historical section of the StQW Plan, this event was in 1928, nearly ninety years ago.

A main aim of the StQW Plan has been to keep this pocket of London multi-generational as well as ‘neighbourly’.   More ways need to be found to enable older and younger people to stay in the area – far from easy in a housing market which increasingly excludes all but the very wealthy.  We hope that the policies and site allocations in the StQW Plan will help to achieve this aim in the coming years.

And thanks again to all who voted.

Henry Peterson, Chair StQW Neighbourhood Forum

An application has been filed for judicial review of the decision by Kensington and Chelsea Council to advance the StQW Draft Plan to a local referendum on February 25th 2016.

This is not wholly unexpected.  It was clear that some parties were going to be very unhappy about the decision of the independent examiner of the StQW Plan, that the remaining three St Quintin ‘backlands’ meet the national criteria to be designated as ‘Local Green Space’.

The judicial review application has been filed by William Legard, as one of the members of the Legard family registered as owners of the land at Nursery Lane.  It is not yet clear whether Metropolis Property Ltd, the developer who submitted a planning application last May to build 21 townhouses on this green space, will take an active part in the legal case.

The Legard family was informed in December 2013 that a neighbourhood plan for the area including their land was being prepared.   They did not respond to the query from the Forum as to their intentions for their land at Nursery Lane, but instead arranged for the site to be marketed by Knight Frank as a residential development opportunity.  

No attempt was made by the Legards, Knight Frank, or their planning consultants to discuss plans for the land with the StQW Forum.  We made very clear from the start that this site, and the two other remaining St Quintin backlands, were likely to be designated in the neighbourhood plan as Local Green Space, and were not suitable for housing development.

Such a view was hardly radical or extreme.  It followed the policy adopted by the Council in the 1990 Oxford Gardens Conservation Area Policy Statement, that these three pieces of land should not be developed for housing.

The Legards and developers Metropolis Property Ltd thought that they knew better. Detailed plans were drawn up for a housing development and exhibited locally in December 2014.  Local opposition was vociferous.  A petition to Save our Green Spaces gathered over 2,500 signatures.  At a debate at the full Council meeting in April 15th 2015, the Council committed to leaving the decision on the future of the land at Nursery Lane to the independent ‘examiner’ of the StQW Draft Plan.

At a public hearing on 22nd September, held by examiner John Parmiter FRICS MRTPi the landowners and developers had the chance to set out their case for a housing development at Nursery Lane.  The StQW Forum responded, pointing to the fact that this piece of land had never been developed, and had been rated as an agricultural hereditament during its 50 years of use by Clifton Nurseries.   The idea of it being a ‘residential development’ site was the creation of the owners and Knight Frank, seeking to exploit the enormously high values for residential land in this borough.

The independent examiner concluded that all three of the St Quintin backlands meet the tough criteria set in the National Planning Policy Framework for designation as Local Green Space.  The Council subsequently endorsed this decision, and confirmed that the StQW Draft Plan meets all the necessary legal requirements to be voted on at a local referendum.  If supported by a simple majority vote, the Draft Plan will be adopted by the Council and used when future planning decisions are made.  Local Green Space designation will give strong planning protection to all three of the remaining St Quintin backlands.

It is understandable why the Legard family are not happy at this outcome.  A lot of money must have been spent on working up a detailed planning application.  It is not clear whether the Legards or Metropolis will lose out on this.  More money is now being thrown at a legal challenge.  But the StQW Forum does not have a lot of sympathy for either landowner or developer:

• the Legards made a previous attempt to build housing on this site. This was rejected at a planning appeal in 1982
• this piece of land was inherited by the Legards, by marriage, from the St Quintin family who laid out this part of London in the late 19th and early 20th century. The family did not have to pay for it.
• It was agricultural land when the streets of the St Quintin Estate were built, when the Legards inherited it, and remains so in 2016.  It is a ‘greenfield’ site in planning terms, and will remain so as Local Green Space.
• After all these decades, the family could easily have awaited the outcome of the StQW Neighbourhood Plan, and known the up to date planning status of the land, before attempting to sell it.
• instead, they tried to make a quick sale and see a planning application pushed through the system in order to realise a very large capital gain.

It is for the Council to defend the judicial review application and to demonstrate that its decisions on the StQW Draft Plan have been fully considered and properly made. The StQW Forum is an ‘interested party’ in the case and has retained a planning barrister to represent the forum in Court.

We hope that all our members, and other residents in the neighbourhood, will ensure a good turnout for the referendum on Thursday 25th.  Voting is at St Helens Church from 7am to 10pm.

Neighbourhood plans are all about allowing local people to decide what development should happen where in their area, on the basis of sound evidence and extensive consultation.  This is what has been achieved within the StQW Draft Plan.  It is not for a single landowner to impose their own preferred financial outcome on a collective and well-reasoned community view.

Neighbourhood plans are being put together by parish councils and neighbourhood forums in many parts of the country (over 1,500 now, with 100 that have reached the stage of independent examination).   Yet there remain very few plans in London that are close to the finishing line.

This may be because planning in London is more complicated.  Or developers more powerful.  Or local authority planning departments more resistant to the idea of ‘amateur planners’.  The pattern across different boroughs varies significantly, giving some support to this last possibility.   But a major reason may be because local resident and community groups feel that a neighbourhood plan cannot make any real difference.

We hope that the experience of the St Quintin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Forum shows that a real difference can be made.  Several proposed policies in our neighbourhood plan were opposed by the Council at the start.  Some policies continued to be ‘strongly opposed’ by the Council right up to the stage of independent examination.

But we have stuck to the principle, as set out by the Government and stated in the National Planning Policy Framework, that Neighbourhood planning provides a powerful set of tools for local people to ensure that they get the right types of development for their community. 

The Examination of the St Quintin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Plan has confirmed this principle.  It supports policy proposals on which the Council argued a lack of ‘general conformity’, but where the level of detail in the relevant Council policy could not be justified as ‘strategic’.  The ‘general’ in general conformity means what it says, as the High Court decided in the Tattenhall case.  Neighbourhood planners should be encouraged by this outcome.

The Examination has also tested the national criteria for designation of Local Green Space, in a situation where a landowner and developer (on being notified that a neighbourhood plan was in preparation) then attempted to beat the Draft Plan to the finishing post via submitting a full-scale planning application for a housing development on an undeveloped backland site.

Detailed research on the planning history of a site, coupled with very strong evidence of local interest and support, can indeed prove a ‘powerful tool’ which developers cannot simply brush aside.  The Local Green Space designation has been supported by the Examiner in this case.

Similar situations have arisen in many rural areas and around villages and market towns.  We are not aware of this scenario arising before in a London context.

Neighbourhood plans involve a lot of work and the processes involved can be slow or strung out by reluctant planning authorities.  The Government is taking steps to speed up and streamline the process, in the new Housing and Planning Bill.  Meanwhile the StQW Neighbourhood Forum will be preparing for the next stage, of a local referendum that will seal the outcome for which local residents and businesses have worked long and hard.