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Developers’ teams remain busy during lockdown. Last week we reported on the planning application for 181 Talgarth Road, with nearly 130 application documents and reports prepared and coordinated by a team operating from their home based computers – a remarkable feat.
In April the Society joined an on-line consultation meeting when the Olympia development team presented their draft proposals due to be submitted shortly to amend the original approved scheme. We have been following their progress on the design of the theatre on the southwest corner of Olympia, and the scheme has greatly improved, now providing a lively and interesting façade to introduce Olympia on the Hammersmith Road frontage. Details of the submission should be available on the LBHF planning website shortly.
We are expecting further news about the Triangle development on Beadon Road, after the developer held an uninformative public exhibition in March to show a proposal for a combination of hotel and office uses in the new building.
The huge Earls Court site is now in the hands of developers Delancey, who have invited the committee to an introductory presentation to take place in the near future. This of course is likely to be on-line, given the circumstances, or much delayed.
Twenty-Twenty was named the “Year of the Tree” by the Tree Council, and moments before lockdown, in Davos the World Economic Forum announced the creation of the One Trillion Tree Initiative, following on from the UN Billion Tree Campaign of 2006. We’re hoping that H&F Council and residents will take the opportunity to participate.
In contrast, while Sheffield is normally noted for heavy industry, recently it became notorious for a rather different kind: the Sheffield Chainsaw Massacre seemingly more for the convenience of the PFI road maintenance contractor than for the public good, under a plan euphemistically called “Streets Ahead”. The before and after shots are alarming. Furthermore, Sheffield Council has been found to have misled residents over the state of some trees.
Here in Hammersmith, we recently praised the council’s street tree planting programme, particularly in the North of the borough, and the associated guerrilla gardening was nominated for an award in 2018. In 2019 however, tree fortunes reversed somewhat, and we had our own mini chainsaw massacre, where a number of street trees were removed by council contractors without notice.
Four were removed in a day at the West end of King Street. A mature tree outside the Sainsburys local was clearly dead, two were young but had died, apparently of neglect, and the 4th (pictured in the background) was partly diseased. The removal on safety grounds is obviously an overriding consideration, however the job was half-done, and nearly a year on, ugly and potentially hazardous metre-high stumps remain littering our pavements, not just in King St. but elsewhere in the borough. We have contacted the council’s arboricultural officer for comment on more than one occasion – so far without response.
Update April 2021 – it took a couple of years – but the good news is that trees have now been replaced by a new Plane and a Magnolia. Now let’s see if we can get to work on those tree pits…
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181 Talgarth Road is the site where the former West London Magistrates building stands, located between the Ark office building and the BP garage, at the foot of the flyover.
After the closing of the court facilities in 2017, the site was sold for commercial use, and in January 2019 the new owner submitted a planning application for a 800-bed hotel development. The proposals attracted widespread opposition from the local community including the Hammersmith Society, and as a result, in an unusual and public-spirited move, the developer, The Dominvs Group, chose to set aside the application, despite receiving a planning report recommending approval.
After discussions with LBHF, the Dominvs Group appointed a new design team with architects Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners (RSHP), who are also the architects for the Town Hall Civic Campus project.
The new design team were set to work to a demanding programme, and the Society joined a series of consultation meetings with the site neighbours, in particular the residents of the streets south of the site, whose outlook would have been dominated by the double slab block of the earlier scheme.
A planning application for the new scheme was lodged at the beginning of April, and the Society has now reviewed the proposals and returned comments to LBHF. The application may be viewed on the planning website here: 2020/00915/FUL.
UPDATED: Our detailed review is here:
Letter to LBHF – Hammersmith Society comments
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We reported in the Winter 2019-2020 newsletter that a proposal was being prepared by Architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris for a new 25-storey tower block to the north of the A40 on Wood Lane.
The proposals replace Browning House, which is a 4-storey social housing block owned by Women’s Pioneer Housing (WPH). They are a housing association providing specialist accommodation.
An application has been submitted for a 29-storey tower, the proposals increasing the number of 2-person, 1-bedroom flats for WPH from 36 to 80, plus creating an additional 350 co-living accommodation units to be rented by developer HUB. These provide compact 1-person studio flats serviced by communal kitchens, living spaces and other facilities.
One justification for the 29-storey tower is the approval granted for the recently completed 34-storey ‘Ziggurat’ tower on the Imperial College White City campus site on the opposite side of Wood Lane. The latter was unpopular locally, but was approved on the basis that it was within the White City Regeneration Area. Tall buildings are only permitted under LBHF Planning Policy and the Mayor’s London Plan if they are considered ‘appropriate’, and are within one of four development areas identified in the Local Plan.
The proposed tower is located outside of the White City development area, which raises the questions: how are applications decided for tall buildings located outside, but adjacent to the outer boundary of development areas ? And whether approvals within development areas can be used as precedent to justify nearby developments outside of the area, that would otherwise not comply with planning policy ?
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The Hammersmith Society decided to make a £300 donation to the costs of a legal opinion from Landmark Chambers on a new planning manoeuvre, because it looks to set a precedent and become frequent in Old Oak and elsewhere.
Henry Peterson of the Old Oak Neighbourhood Forum and Grand Union Alliance – whose planning knowledge has been invaluable to local groups such as our affiliate St. Helens R.A. in the past – spotted that developers were seeking increases in height to approved planning permissions by means, not of a new planning application, but through a technical route using Sections 96A and 73 of the Town & Country Planning Act 1990 to seek minor material amendment approval, to “optimise” a planning consent. The amendments in question are often by no means minor and should warrant a new planning application.
This route has been used in a permission for North Kensington Gate (South) on Scrubs Lane where the developers have sought to increase the approved height of the development from 19 to 22 storeys, and the housing units by 20%. The Society and others have opposed the application as the planning context has dramatically changed from the original permission, where intensive development was envisaged on that side of the area – now no longer part of the development plan following the exclusion of the Car Giant site – and with significant public transport additions planned via a new Overground station at Hythe Road – also no longer on the agenda, partly because of the many pressures on TfL finances.
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Hammersmith and Fulham Archives want to hear about people’s experiences during the pandemic. Working with our partner charity UNITED In Hammersmith and Fulham, the Archives is documenting the experience of the coronavirus pandemic of all those who live, work or play in the Borough.
All submissions will be deposited permanently in the Borough Archives as a community memory of this unprecedented time. The Archives staff are seeking selfies with personal stories, photographs featuring empty streets, children’s rainbows, your workplace or shop notices, and artwork or poetry. Details of what sounds like a fascinating community project can be found here
For those interested in family history, Ancestry Library Edition has kindly been made available remotely to library members during the H&F library closures – details here
TfL is planning a temporary footbridge parallel to Hammersmith Bridge at the request of H&F Council, to assure pedestrian and cycle transit throughout the repair programme. The aim is to give over the entire Bridge space to the continuing works, with the result that the total closure time could be reduced by 9-12 months.
In an online webinar on 3 April (replacing planned exhibitions which had to be cancelled), representatives of TfL and LBHF set out their scheme for a prefabricated steel structure supported by 2 piers in the riverbed, on the downriver side of Hammersmith bridge. It would be the same height as the Bridge and would have no impact on river traffic. The usable deck would be 5.5m wide and there will be separation of cyclists and pedestrians (no motorbikes allowed).
Access would be via Queen Caroline Street on the Hammersmith side via gradual ramps. It would take 6-7 months to complete, and planning permission would stipulate it being in place for up to 5 years, with the aim of re-using the structure elsewhere afterwards.
Keeping foot and cycle traffic flowing has to be a welcome initiative. The one downside is that the structure would close the Thames Path on either side, meaning a detour – possibly via the rear of Riverside Studios or past the Apollo and round by Fulham Palace Road on the North side, and via Riverview Gardens on the Barnes side.
Meanwhile the pedestals, hangers, chain bearings and hanger connections are being worked on and acoustic monitoring of the Bridge structure continues. A detailed Scope of Works together with costs is expected later in the spring. The new deck will be steel, with resin on top, which will perform far better than the asphalt over boards which were alarmingly visible previously. The repairs will give 60 years of design life.
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Heathrow Expansion was temporarily derailed by the Judicial Review (JR) in February, ruling the Airports National Policy (ANPS) illegal through its non-compliance with the existing UK Climate Change Act, and by extension, the Heathrow expansion plans that relied on it. By law, the Climate Change Act commits the UK government to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels (net zero) by 2050.
There have been many setbacks to the Airport’s expansion plans over the years from Terminal 5 onwards: claims that several top politicians would stop expansion, elongated planning enquiries, and many anti-expansion campaigns, but like the addict it appears to be, suffering Compulsive Shopping Disorder, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) keeps coming back for just one more hit, claiming that it will then be satisfied. Like it’s maniacal namesake in Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001 – a Space Odyssey, to accept this would be to seriously misjudge the machine.
HAL’s public response to the JR is “10,000 quality apprenticeships by 2030, New Routes and 180,000 new Jobs”, plus the inevitable appeal against the judgement. While new routes could be created easily with a new runway, they could also be created by displacing cargo and short-haul flights onto greener options, such as rail or electric vehicles (remembering that Heathrow is actually the UK’s largest cargo destination, with 1.8 million tons in 2018: up 20%, matching passenger volume increases since T5 opened). The other two claims stretch credibility beyond reason, given that Heathrow currently employs 76,000, the expansion would represent a more than doubling in size. Or perhaps that gives a clue as to the full plan ?
Heathrow doesn’t appear to be addressing the issues that most of us care about – the effect on the environment, surface transport, and the lives of residents in large parts of the South-East – all the more so having recently become used to not being woken at or before 6AM with fewer flights during the Coronavirus pandemic; Heathrow has temporarily reduced to single runway operation. In the new Greta-inspired world, HAL makes additional claims regarding sustainability, but it again stretches reason that the discredited greenwash baked into last year’s consultation could have been warmed over sufficiently to pass muster this time round.
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Committee and several members attended the recent Climate Change event at the Lyric to hear what the recently formed commission has been discussing, and to provide input. Sian Alexander, the Director of the Lyric, opened the meeting making the following points:
We were then presented with a personal story of the effects of climate change from actor Fehinti Balogun, making an informative and entertaining presentation. He touched on how climate change affects not only himself but his wider family here and abroad, highlighting that the issue is about eco, not ego. He’s been giving a similar presentation to schools in recent months.
He noted that the Commission is believed to only need 3.5% direct support from the population for success to be guaranteed by influencing all those connected.
Paul Beaty-Pownall summed up and introduced the workshop sessions that followed. The audience were invited to participate and circulate through four separate discussion groups in order to gain ideas and recommendations from the participants.
We hope to see the report from the commission in the coming months to inform the Council’s progress in accelerating our local responses to Climate Change.
To visualise the extent of the problem, the UK’s current emissions of thousands of tonnes of CO2 per hour caused by electricity generation can be seen here
Along with others, the Society’s activities have been severely curtailed during the government’s enforced lockdown. We’ve found a little solace in the popular Zoom video-conferencing application (used with appropriate security precautions), and on Monday this week, keeping to schedule, managed our first online committee meeting – with 75% attendance.
The committee decided that the Society should use some of its limited funds to make a donation of £1000 to Hammersmith residents in need of support at this difficult time, via our local charity and affiliate Hammersmith United Charities which represents an excellent model of giving relatively small grants to local groups which know what practical help is needed and target it accordingly. The donation will be distributed through their Community Coronavirus Appeal, which is run in conjunction with the Council.
We have inevitably decided to postpone this summer’s AGM until government rules allow us to convene again. We’ll announce a new date when rules change. The Spring Newsletter, which would normally be posted out in April, will be published on this website, as a series of articles released over the coming weeks, with summaries and links emailed to members as usual.
We hope to be in a position to at least make nominations for the 2020 Environment Awards by reviewing what material is available to us via photos, and we encourage you to submit nominations by email if you have a suitable development in mind. We may not be able to visit them, or make a formal award until later in the year, but expect to be able to publish and consider the suitable nominations.
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