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The size of the hybrid planning application for Earls Court – 826 weighty documents – means that to address it meaningfully needed substantial resource. We teamed up with local civic and amenity societies and London Forum representatives to review the proposals in detail. This was helped in no small part by the work that each group has put in over the last three years of consultation and discussion with the developers, Earls Court Development Company (ECDC), and the huge level of institutional knowledge they brought.
The Earls Court team suggest that the plans are easier to read on their website, as they’re organised by subject, though you may need both as the ‘flipbook’ format used in places won’t cover all needs. The application appears in the respective planning portals under refs 2024/01942/COMB (LBHF) and PP/24/05187 (RBKC).
The word ‘hybrid’ means detailed for phase 1, outline for the rest; there’s a useful planning guide on their site including the helpful timing graphic showing phasing until 2038, included in the montage below. Note that some CGI imagery uses extremely wide-angles, and would not be what we, or the planners, would call ‘verified views’ – i.e. as your eye would perceive.
While we clearly support the redevelopment of Earls Court – a huge empty site for over a decade, known formally as the Mayor’s Earl’s Court/West Kensington Opportunity Area – we’re yet to be convinced that this plan is so much better than the original CAPCO one, appearing higher and much more dense – four times the original gross density in the 2012 SPD – and about twice the gross density of the CAPCO scheme by our best estimates – much of the density being on the LBHF side of the tracks. This has resulted in much greater pressure on open space, reduced spacing between buildings, increased building heights, especially around the Empress State building, and greater impact on surrounding conservation areas, especially Brompton Cemetery and the conservation area of Philbeach Gardens and Eardley Crescent.
We recently submitted Joint comments to both LBHF and RBKC, which we fully endorse, objecting to the proposal on the following seven grounds:
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Last year, we were contacted by residents of Rivercourt Road concerned about the increased traffic they said they were experiencing. Rivercourt is the road formerly running one-way towards King Street from the Great West Road as shown adjacent, with its twin – Weltje Road – running one-way towards the A4.
On Thursday, Rivercourt road became a trial two-way LTN with non-residents (those not registered with an LBHF parking permit), Blue Badge holders, and businesses required to get a permit or be fined by ANPR cameras at the A4 junction. On the same day, Rosamund Adoo-KD (Ella’s mother) described LTN’s as the worst thing ever . Regardless of the intent, we question whether this is the right solution.
These roads are effective ways to get to and from the A4 and King Street without going all the way to Hogarth Roundabout or adding to Hammersmith Broadway’s congestion and emissions, and are therefore important for a significant number of residents, non-residents, schools, visitors and businesses alike – plus the wider environment – hence our interest.
The council have not published audited statistics, though claim ‘4000 motorists’ a day which in itself implies private cars, but is just as likely to be your plumber, a delivery van, cab or a coach serving the three adjacent schools. Some residents of the road have been campaigning to reduce traffic; and there are of course concerns about the increased number of cycle-related accidents at the junction with King Street since C9 was added, notably including a vocal Jeremy Vine.
The LTN was created by an 18 month temporary traffic order in September, which you can see here . It was announced publicly on 20th November – the same evening that Conway were photographed burning off the road markings – and implemented with surprising haste the next day. The fixed signage shown, matches the discreetness of the traffic order, especially amongst the visual cacophony of all the other signage, and one can imagine that many won’t have time to read it, and its potentially expensive consequences, having come off the busy and faster A4.
It’s been suggested that speed bumps might be a rather simpler and better disincentive, but that would cost money rather than raise it. The council will be rubbing their hands with glee as their coffers fill up. Recall that the controversial South Fulham TCPR was created the same way, then made permanent, further dividing the residents, creating a 12,000 signature campaign, and pushing some businesses over the edge, while rapidly ballooning the council’s £34 million fines income which we reported as ‘only’ £18.9m the year before. There is at least a three-week grace period before fines start being issued.
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Will Norman, London’s cycling Czar, has been promoting Danish cycling culture for a decade, usually without mentioning it by name. So, on a recent trip to Copenhagen, it seemed worth making an ad-hoc study of the cycling scene.
Back in 2017-18, when the whole CS9 debate got going in Hammersmith, in addition to a proposal for a cycle lane down Kensington High Street, the picture adjacent kept popping up – it’s clearly not London for several obvious reasons. Appearing first in Mayoral pronouncements on London cycling and on Twitter, it then appeared as a huge backdrop as Dr. Norman tried to convince hundreds of residents at Kensington Town Hall that he had a plan for them. A little sleuthing revealed unambiguously that this was Copenhagen in 2015, which, by and by, triggered this story. Copenhagen in 2024 looks unchanged – it’s a remarkably different culture, well worth a look.
Firstly there’s very little testosterone evident, historically the fuel of choice for London’s cycling campaigners – until e-bikes were found more effective. There’s still the occasional Lycra-clad hooligan running the lights in Copenhagen, but that’s perhaps 1 in 1000, and people shrug, assuming that a Darwinian intervention will deal with the problem in time. The lack of testosterone is perhaps due to the fact that there seemed to be as many – probably more – women and there’s a good cross section of the population of every age on two wheels, as the photos show. To reinforce this, all bikes seem to be of the “sit up and beg” style, so you meet and greet your fellow cyclists and pedestrians in a civil way. There are practically no “heads down” racing bikes. Surely to Dr. Norman’s delight, leafier parts of London have started to look like this too, particularly at weekends, but our rush hours look rather different.
Secondly, the wearing of helmets, Lycra, and related body armour simply isn’t the big thing it is in London. Perhaps 10-20% wear helmets, often jauntily, but not in defiance of other road users. A pair of flip-flops and a soft cap are more common. Altogether it’s a relaxed culture, not that they’re ambling. The flat roads allow reasonable speeds to be achieved, and as a pedestrian, you need to watch your step. People both walking and cycling are noticeably more obedient in following of the rules of the road and traffic lights.
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(AGM Photos: Franco Chen. Click for full-size versions)
We were delighted to announce our 2024 Awards at the AGM at 245 Hammersmith Road on Monday 30th September. The Awards were introduced by vice-chairman Richard Winterton and kindly presented by the Deputy Mayor, cllr. Daryl Brown. Members and supporters were provided excellent hospitality for which we would like to thank the 245 staff, committee and member volunteers.
Award details and the associated narrative are posted on our 2024 Awards page together with a link to the updated spreadsheet of all Awards since 1990, and matching interactive Awards map. More AGM photos and the administrative documents are posted on the dedicated 2024 AGM page.
This year there were no suitable nominations for the main Environment Award, which is probably the result of limited major project starts during the pandemic. The projects of recent Environment Award winners had started before the pandemic, completing in the last year or two.
In keeping with a tradition that started in 2015 with The Dorsett, and continued through The Palladium in 2022 and The Hoxton in 2023 adjacent, we had another winner close by, on the opposite corner to The Lawn, The Defectors Weld, winning a Nancye Goulden Award for its newly restored facades.
We broke the recent run of Jane Mercer guerrilla gardening awards this year with no nominations, but we’re pleased to see previous winners still going strong. It’s notable that the most popular picture on our Instagram a month ago was the properly permeable low cost ‘hoggin’ tree pit shown adjacent, a welcome addition to the Hammersmith streetscape, and something we’ve long campaigned for in preference to the council’s default, asphalt, helpfully despatched by last year’s Jane Mercer winners in several spots around the Askew Road. Wooden spoons were awarded to the council in four of the last eleven years for poor asphalt tree pits.
Our second Nancye Goulden award this year was for landscaping associated with the White City area regeneration. There are a number of excellent examples between and around the new buildings which significantly improve the streetscape. We particularly noted the space between the Ed City building and the new home of L’Oreal at Gateway Central – a popular lunchtime retreat.
In the last couple of years, there had been few candidates for the Tom Ryland Award for Conservation, but happily the tide turned this year, and we had three! We awarded the Ravesncourt Park Tea House for the council’s careful restoration, and the well-known Leaning Lady statue, restored through the efforts of affiliate SPRA, Heritage of London Trust and the council.
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Since the election of the new government, we’ve seen a significant rise in medium to large offices in Hammersmith being proposed for conversion to residential use, under Permitted Development (PD) rules which are much more relaxed than normal planning rules. So far, nearly 400 potential flats have been proposed, all on busy main roads, with Hammersmith Road a particular hotspot. The Chairman’s annual report highlights developments at 255 and 149 Hammersmith Road, as well as the former Whiteleys Depository near the railway/A4 in West Kensington. Another proposal at 161 Hammersmith Road (Griffin House, formerly home to Virgin Media), was recently refused by planners, but likely to return with revisions, or an appeal.
The Telegraph recently reported Hammersmith a ‘refusenik’ in accepting such conversions, and we can see plenty of reasons why they might refuse. But Deputy PM, Angela Rayner, has just requested 81,000 new homes per year in London (a doubling compared to recent achievements), as part of the new government’s electoral commitment for 1.5m homes in this parliament. There will be significant political pressure.
As a Civic Society, how should we best respond? Should we welcome the provision of more housing, albeit potentially substandard as reported, with few, if any, of the amenities we would normally expect – just to be a place to sleep – and lament the likely permanent loss of business and commercial space? Or just celebrate The Brave New World?
London’s vacancy rate stands at 10%, a 20-year high and up from about 5% when the pandemic struck, though still well below the circa 14% level seen in New York
We have a number of substantial buildings being proposed for conversion, while an equal, possibly larger number, are still being constructed – we refer mostly to Olympia in the same road of course, starting to open next year according to recent news. We’re aware of other smaller developments still on the drawing board, or at early planning stages, such as proposed offices at Shepherds Bush Market and 76-80 Hammersmith Road. The developers of most of these mention “biotech” and “lab space”. Why the merry go round? In an ideal world, wouldn’t we just (re)use what we have?
Many larger offices appeared in the 1980-2000 period when desktop computers arrived making office requirements pretty uniform, and open-plan became a thing. These were refurbished once, twenty-ish years ago, and are all now past their sell-by date – literally – and can no longer be rented because the better, newer ones are what people want to rent, and be seen renting. Hammersmith suffers through having an oversupply of what is said to be dated stock – expensive to refurbish to the expected rentable standards, and perhaps impossible to repurpose for biotech. Some developers claim the restrictions of existing floor-ceiling heights rule them out even as modern offices, though there’s always a way, should one be determined.
Property data company CoStar reports “London’s vacancy rate stands at 10%, a 20-year high and up from about 5% when the pandemic struck, though still well below the circa 14% level seen in New York,” Away from the centre, vacancy rates in Hammersmith are about 19.3% and Docklands about 16.2%, CoStar says.
The developers of 255 Hammersmith Road, the largest PD conversion currently proposed, told us a year or so ago – when they were proposing an extremely green office refurb – that ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) were high on renter’s shopping lists. In building terms, that means green, plus providing better amenities for employees. Existing buildings such as 255 score pretty poorly here – L’Oreal moved to a new building in White City, with its recent award winning landscaping, and 245 next door – formerly Bechtel – was totally demolished and rebuilt with amenities, such as its award winning landscaping.
Then there are prevailing economic conditions, added to redevelopment time – Olympia was consented exactly a year before the pandemic – it might not have come forward as the proposal we see now – and 245 was built in a different economic climate, becoming that most modern of things, shared workspace.
This now all points to the quickest path of least resistance – PD conversion to resi, eschewing all those ESG aspirations, with pretty much guaranteed sales, rather than the more expensive pre-pandemic option of rebuilding like for like, in the hope of finding a tenant to pay premium office rates, when offices per-se, are just a little bit last year.
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Goldhawk Road would have been an attractive boulevard in its day: at the Shepherds Bush end, a wide street lined with terraced housing, shops at ground level, pubs on every corner, changing as you travel west, to the more sedate, semi-detached villas with front gardens – gardens which were later cut short to make way for a road widening which never took place. Over the years, development has eroded this street consistency but the distinctive scale and style remains.
On the north side, near the Paddenswick Road roundabout, there are proposals for residential redevelopment on an unusual site at 190-194 Goldhawk Road, next to the 1930’s style Melville Court flats, a site with a wide frontage and stretching back some 140 metres to the Hammersmith Academy at the rear. The development proposals include a 6-storey block on Goldhawk Road, with 24 flats (50% affordable) and a ground floor commercial unit, and a 2-storey mews terrace of 12 houses at the rear.
Apart from the penthouse, the scale of the front block sits comfortably in its street setting, but the street frontage, with its dominant projecting balconies and pronounced banding, would bring a heavy, dominant presence, out of harmony with the street and belittling the more reticent balconied façade of Melville Court next door. The penthouse proposed for the roof of the block is wholly out of place, its height and its awkward projecting roof an alien feature in the Goldhawk Road streetscape.
At ground level a gated access-way under the block leads to the mews housing behind, where you arrive in a more domestic, private world. This is an ingenious design, making the most of a difficult site, and creating an attractive backwater tucked away from the busy road. The layout is very compact, leading to one or two shortcomings which deserve further consideration: there appears to be no access to the houses for delivery/removal vehicles, and there is little outdoor recreation space for children or adults – and if there is to be reliance on proximity to public parks, a development contribution should be included towards parks maintenance; noise from comings and goings at the front of the houses is likely to disturb the private gardens of Cathnor Road very close by.
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You’ve probably heard that the old copper phone lines will soon be switched off for good, after over a century of service. Since December 2023, you haven’t been able to buy a new land-line service from any company, the so-called “Stop Sell” date.
The exact switch-off dates have been moving around between the end of next year and January 2027, with variability in what Openreach (the wholesale supplier), and BT, Plusnet, Virgin Media etc (the retailers) say, which confuses the situation, but early 2027 appears the latest possible date. Beware that if you upgrade your broadband to “fibre” now, or terminate your phone service rather than switching to another provider, you’re on the slippery slope to no conventional land-line, you cannot get it back once lost – possibly including your number – at any price.
Here we look at what the options and opportunities are, and note how surprisingly environmentally unfriendly and limited the default BT offer turns out to be, when compared with other options, and especially when compared with existing and in terms of environmental impact, the old tech. Google has similarly discovered that its new AI tech caused a 40% rise in power consumption last year, with AI reckoned to be 100 to 1000 times as energy intensive as traditional server activities, but here the percentage increase can dwarf even that, recalling that the IT industry is currently as responsible for as many global CO2 emissions as air travel.
The change is happening globally – the US date was 2022, Canada 2023, and European countries have set various dates from 2021 to 2030. The Luddites amongst us will be forced to act shortly, in one way or another, and if “full fibre” needs to be installed, the front of your building will very likely need a new hole drilled in it, hence our interest.
Here’s what Ofcom say. What they don’t appear to say is that there are independent services, a range of magic boxes, and even virtual solutions to convert your land-line number to the new tech, so that if it’s of value, you can keep it, without physical upheaval, and even use it on a mobile, independently of your existing supplier or broadband contract – read on.
The lack of a land-line won’t worry many, with unlimited calls now the norm for mobile contracts, and the most frequent users of land-lines now possibly nuisance callers, but it may be of concern if :
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We’ve reported on progress of this substantial development three times over the last two years; the plans are now complete and public, with 385 documents under planning reference 2023/03129/FUL. We’ve been in regular contact with the developers and attended meetings, as have the immediately neighbouring residents, and groups including Residents Associations either side – Ravenscourt Square – and our affiliate in Ravenscourt Gardens RA. These public consultations are summarised in the proposal’s Statement of Community Engagement on the planning portal.
We’ve said publicly many times that rescuing and repurposing this Grade II* set of hospital buildings is most welcome, but as usual, not at any cost. We review the proposal in that mindset. On the plus side, it’s a relatively sensitive proposal without the usual gross overbuilding we see in almost every other development. The team has engaged widely and openly with interested community groups, and many of our concerns have been considered and several addressed in the plans now proposed.
We welcome the refurbishment of this precious building, and appreciate the care that has been taken in the design of the alterations necessary for the new residential use; however we still have some significant concerns, most of which have been expressed in previous updates and are summarised as follows:
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The council has reworked several pieces of longstanding planning work, and is asking for feedback from you in a series of consultations – details in our diary. We’ve been keen to progress this matter for a while, and it’s good to see new activity. Firstly we should set the historical context, to better understand how we got here, what’s new, and not so new.
Longstanding members will recall the 2008 Flyunder proposals that were developed originally by the West London Link group of architects and Hammersmith BID, including our former chairman Tom Ryland as a leading light, and then presented to the London Festival of Architecture that year. A significant part of that plan involved a reworking of Hammersmith to face more towards the river, by removing the awkward A4 spur road to the Broadway (seen above), and connecting King Street to St Paul’s Church, creating a much better and more identifiable ‘centre’. The flyunder would have been funded by building over what is now the A4, linking the roads cut in the 1950’s. This website maintains a series of articles under the flyunder tag, that details some of this work, along with the WLL website above which includes a detailed archive and feasibility study from the time.
The potential money ran out fairly spectacularly a year later when the finance industry melted down, but the whole issue had its first revival in 2011 when the flyover closed and was thought to be doomed. However the 2012 Olympics came to the rescue, because, as those imbued in the dark arts of Olympic transport will know, there are very strict maxima laid down for journey times between Olympic venues, no doubt causing the Parisians sleepless nights ahead of this year’s games. Without a flyover, the time to the western venues such as the rowing in Eton would be easily exceeded. That logic led to the special Olympic Travel Lanes, of which there is still the odd vestige if you know where to look. The flyover, as a piece of critical Olympic transport infrastructure, was patched up quicker than you can say ‘Hammersmith Bridge’, and then said to be good for about another fifty or sixty years.
The Hammersmith Residents Working Party was an early version of what came to be called resident-led commissions, which produced the Grimshaw report of 2019 addressing the central Hammersmith regeneration area. Sadly due to the range of topics covered and the divergent nature of the competing demands and constraints, the HRWP couldn’t agree the outcomes in the report and it was never adopted as a Town Centre Supplementary Planning Document as intended.
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There should of course be an obvious answer to the question of what constitutes a park. Summer’s faded into a distant memory, so it’s a good time to take stock, with a season of site visits, reviews of virtual CGI, and actual wooden models of new developments in full swing, showing the newly alluring sunlit ‘park’ images, here in our mid-winter. So far, these suggest that many a developer has rather different idea to us, but perhaps it’s just a naming thing.
Without even considering Wormwood Scrubs, we have several wonderful parks in H&F, the largest of which – Ravenscourt and Bishop’s Parks – provide for almost every conceivable outdoor leisure need, even including exhibitions and Laser shows. From basketball nets in the north to a paddling pool in south, taking in sufficient space to play several team games – of football or cricket – in the middle, tennis courts, toddlers playgrounds, dog exercise areas north and south, popular all-weather football pitches adjacent, and greenhouses and community gardening alongside. Even a renovated and listed Tea House. And that’s just Ravenscourt Park.
Bishop’s Park has a Grade I listed palace adjacent, the river and riverwalk too. This gives us a pretty comprehensive idea of the purposes of a park. We even have possibly the world’s smallest park, Beckett Wharf Park, between the bridge and Riverside Studios. One of our members has recently worked with Kier Construction to renovate it as part of a community contribution.
The Open Spaces Society, to which we’re affiliated, noted recently that parks are under unprecedented pressure from commercial activities, and we see a little of that here with fairs, concerts and so on, but those are modest by comparison with say, Hyde Park, where a good part is cordoned off for most of the summer for the huge ‘BST’ outdoor concerts. Even so, some damage occurs as the photo adjacent shows.
Perhaps we’ll get a better feel for the modern take on a ‘park’ or open space by looking at recent developments? Kings Cross seems a reasonable place to start, with the possibility to do what it likes with public spaces and presumably with few budgetary constraints. The ‘park’ shown adjacent is about the size of a communal garden of the type you might find in Notting Hill, the difference being that this is expected to be shared by a thousand or more people, the original by perhaps a hundred or two. There is perhaps no coincidence that the name of this example is connected to one of the great 18th century builders, Cubitt, rather than a name we might choose, say, Capability Brown.
A review of some proposed new developments we’ve looked at might help. We don’t have to go far for CGI proposals, and to compare then with some recently built. Mayoral Opportunity Areas, notably Old Oak and it’s environs provide good hunting grounds, in addition to those actually in the borough. The evidence suggests that developers, rather than producing fanciful CGI’s, might perhaps go and visit some of the many Victorian and Edwardian parks around us to see what they do, and what their public values might reasonably look like.
Which one of these new developments has the space to play a team game of some sort or an individual game of tennis? Or any of the other activities listed above? Perhaps one.
Increasing physical activity must be a central part of everything we do
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One news item from each selected source – more on our Local and Affiliate news page. Subscribe to our weekly highlights
14-storey Tower Block Proposed Next to Hammersmith Gyratory
Queen Caroline Street building would contain 179 rooms for students https://www.hammersmithtoday.co.uk/#!pages/hammersmithtoday:info:ldrsplanning007queencarolinestreet
Council Seeks Comments on Article 4 Direction
Move to change rules on turning office blocks into flats https://www.hammersmithtoday.co.uk/#!pages/shared:common:hfplanning010article4
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