London Open House offers a wonderful opportunity to explore buildings all over London - including in our Borough. The full listing of 27 buildings open to see in H&F over the weekend of 22-23 September is available here.  Why not also stroll or cycle round the nominations and winners of our own Environment Awards ?

And as the northern boundaries of the Borough become more important, on both dates there is a walk round part of the Old Oak & Park Royal Development Area led by art historian Magdalen Evans, details here

The walk could be combined with visits to other entries in the sometimes less-familiar north of the Borough include the former governor's house in the gates of HMP Wormwood Scrubs which houses the Koestler Trust, the UK's leading prison arts charity; and the Hythe Road Studios of ACAVA (the Association for the Advancement of Visual Arts). There are tours round the ex-BBC Television Centre Development at White City and the BBC’s previous administrative headquarters, now Westworks on Wood lane.

There have been no new major site applications. The updated Local Plan originally planned for the Spring will not now be ready until the Summer – and this is thought to be due to the difficulties of reconciling the proposals with the realisation that the huge area of land required for the Crossrail Elizabeth line sidings cannot be built over economically and therefore will radically reduce the area of land available for development.

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The plans for the OPDC area continue to advance despite the many problems, not least the funding of the massive infrastructure which will be necessary. It is a concern that often the thinking is not co-ordinated between the various agencies. Transport for London (TfL) recently consulted on the design of two of the proposed Overground stations at Hythe Road and Old Oak Common Lane but these were isolated from the adjoining proposals for the Elizabeth Crossrail line and HS2 station at Old Oak Common Lane. At present there is no funding for the TfL stations and the designs seem unnecessarily  heavy and clumsy.

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OPDC Local Plan

OPDC Planning Applications

• Will the rules on Fire Precautions be drastically upgraded ?
• Will developers want to proceed with such towers ?
• Will people want to live in them?

We continue to challenge the very high densities proposed in the OPDC area which result in these tall towers. We hope that the latest lowered growth predictions by the GLA for London may enable some reductions.

Again, we have previously reported on the development of the Local Plan for the Old Oak and Park Royal Development area.

This has to follow the same standard national procedure and consultation timetable as the H and F Local Plan. We commented on the initial plan in some detail and OPDC are due to publish their next stage Plan, which should incorporate and respond to comments made.

Members of your committee will be examining and commenting on the revisions.

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.

Kensington Gate: This is a site at the top (north) end of Scrubs Lane and is within the OPDC area and adjacent to the Car Giant site. We have been invited to view proposals which are an advanced pre-application stage. We do not know much of the detail except it involves a tower block of about 25 storeys.

OPDC : (See Newsletter Page 4) Also attached is the Society’s detailed response to the Draft Local Plan for the OPDC area. This involved a lot of analysis and attending copious briefing and discussion meetings. My thanks go to Melanie Whitlock and Angela Clarke for their help and support with this exercise. Our major concerns are spelt out in the Newsletter but if you would like to see what else we had to say, please take a look, although it only really makes sense if read it with the OPDC documents which can be viewed on line. We hope that our comments will help make the overall development a more humane environment for all who will live, work and visit there.

There are as far as we know no immediate threats to our Open Spaces in Hammersmith but we always have to be vigilant. For example, Wormwood Scrubs is within the OPDC area and there are anxieties as to what effects all the development may mean for this Metropolitan Open Land. Similarly Little Wormwood Scrubs (on the other side of Scrubs Lane) could be under threat from a re-arrangement of the West London Railway Line. There are of course always issues to do with Parks maintenance which have to fight for funds against other Council spending.

The Hammersmith Society is affiliated to the Open Spaces Society and they have concerns about open spaces in London generally. I would urge members to support their campaign as below:

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