Cineworld Hammersmith

Cineworld in King Street have finally announced the formal closure to make way for the Town Hall Redevelopment Scheme. This will close in Mid. April.

To many of us this will be a sad loss with many family memories. A small replacement cinema complex is promised as part of the later phase of the Town Hall scheme. In the meantime, we will have no local cinema and Riverside Studios is not due to re-open for a couple of years.

Our day to day work of monitoring and commenting on planning applications continues relentlessly. Recent and current schemes include Savoy Circus (Student Housing) – turned down by the Planning and Development Committee in February in spite of officer support : Proposals for Latymer Upper School  Boathouse, St Paul’s Girls School, Cambridge House, Auriol Road, Dimes Place, the Walkabout site, the Triangle site and many others . . . There has been a focus on several applications for tall Telephone Masts by mobile phone providers : In themselves they sound relatively harmless – except where sited in front of Listed Buildings – until you realise they also require up to three large metal cabinets on the footway nearby. Fortunately planning officers agree with our view and those of other groups that the siting of these on public footways is unacceptable. The suspicion is that the companies do not want to pay the tall buildings owners (where they should be mounted) for putting them there.

Bush Theatre

The theatre has got approval and funding to undertake some alterations and a small extension. The theatre will close shortly and hopes to re-open at the beginning of 2017.

Information can be found at : www.bushtheatre.co.uk/our-plans

Following the workshop event on which I reported previously, I am delighted to report that Henry Peterson has received overwhelming support for his proposal for St Quentin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Plan (just over the border in Kensington) in the public ballot. Henry is now progressing that and a proposal for a plan at Old Oak Common. Meanwhile Charles Wagner and others are looking at a possible proposal around Barons Court area. More news in due course.

I have mentioned this in previous updates. The Draft Local Plan is now available for scrutiny and comment. Melanie Whitlock, Angela Clarke and I are very much involved in the extensive consultation and we shall be submitting a Hammersmith Society response by the end of March.

If you wish to review the plans, please visit : opdc.commonplace.is

Please either pass any comments you have to us or send them in independently.

This is the panel set up to advise the Council and Planning Officers on the design quality of major planning schemes.

We have been critical of the operation of the panel for a long time as we felt it was not transparent in its operation nor representative of local views. The current administration closed the panel down at the beginning of last year. The panel has now been reinvigorated and we are delighted that our comments and recommendations have been listened to, and the new panel will include non-architect members from the Hammersmith Society, the Fulham Society and the Hammersmith and Fulham Historic Buildings Group. The West London Architectural Society and the local RIBA Branch will also be able to nominate local representatives.

I have received a range of comments back from members on the TfL Consultation on the Gyratory Cycle Plans. There is not really a consensus of views other than it needs to be made more cycle friendly. I shall be responding formally to TfL before the 15th March which is the closing day for comments, If anyone who has not let me have their comments would like to do so, please let me have them by the end of this week.

Tunnel options

Four of your Committee are on the Council’s Hammersmith Residents’ Working Party (Melanie Whitlock, Rosemary Pettit, Richard Winterton and myself)  : We have had three meetings since its inception, which have included a presentation by Transport for London (TfL) on their current thinking for the Flyunder and the Broadway. Mysteriously, they failed to mention the strategic tunnel proposal (from the A4 in Chiswick and A40 at Park Royal to East London) which the Mayor/TfL announced a couple of weeks later and which in our view puts a very different light on their current lukewarm support for the Flyunder project. See below TfL diagram which shows how a long Flyunder would form the first section of their strategic south tunnel . . .The main objective of the group is to feed in Residents’ views as to how Hammersmith Town Centre should be developed. Our last meeting involved some brainstorming and in the meantime the Council are looking to appoint a firm of Masterplanners. Watch this space . . .