Planning for the future

In March of this year the government promised legislation to improve the supply of new homes, including legislation on building safety, rental reform, social housing – and an update to the planning system.

Following this, a government White Paper Planning for the Future proposed very significant changes to the planning process for public consultation which closed last week.

Changes to the planning procedure

At present, LBHF planning applications are assessed against the development policies in the LBHF Local Plan, in the London Plan, and in the government NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework). The White Paper proposes a new approach:  a new form of Local Plan, replacing the current format of more abstract policy guidance, by a format with a prescriptive system of development rules and a design code. The Local Plan would also include borough zone plans, which would identify three categories of development:

1. Growth areas where ‘substantial development’ would be suitable (similar, we suggest, to Earls Court, Old Oak Common etc)
2. Renewal areas such as existing built areas where development is encouraged (Hammersmith Town Centre, for example)
3. Protected areas like conservation and heritage areas, green belt and parkland.

Planning zones

In Growth and Renewal areas, proposals which are compliant with the Local Plan in height, use-type etc, and compliant with the government NPPF rules, would be effectively guaranteed an automatic outline planning consent, providing a level of certainty in site purchase values. At the next stage, a full planning application,  with detailed proposals, would be granted consent if the proposals comply with the more detailed rules and design codes of the Local Plan.

Community involvement

Public consultation in the planning process would be limited to the stage when the new Local Plan is put together by the local authority: community involvement would be excluded from full planning application stage, because (it is argued)  the application would be assessed against rules which have already been agreed through public consultation.

The intention is to establish a clear set of planning rules, which are in line with government policy, and have been agreed through community consultation; armed with these certainties applications would avoid the ambiguities of policy interpretation and community objection which (it is said) can delay the full planning application stage.

Design codes

CreateStreets – Bonnington Square

To illustrate examples of acceptable design and styling, and to provide a basis of resolution of design disagreements, Design Codes would form part of the Local Plan, and would be reviewed through public consultation when the new Local Plan is being put together. Design codes would be coordinated with the government’s National Design Guide, itself heavily influenced by the CreateStreets campaign and to the emerging National Model Design Code. To help the process, a chief officer for design and place-making would be appointed within each local authority.

Quaker meeting entrance

Quaker meeting house frontage

2021 Environment Award – Quaker Meeting House

Quaker meeting plaque

Quaker meeting room 1

Quaker meeting room 2

Quaker meeting wooden ceiling

Quaker meeting outside and garden

(Click on images for full-sized versions, then scroll through the set)

Our member Victoria Timberlake has been instrumental on the New Meeting House Committee to get this project from inception to completion through many hurdles over a period of 17 years. We first reported on plans for the proposed development in our October Newsletter of 2014.

The previous post-war meeting house stood in a rather noisy location adjacent to the A4 and in the way of the new Town Hall development for which its site was required. The Council offered the new site as a swap, and we think this new use is an excellent fit for the area.

The new building brings a welcome break in the line of terrace houses on Bradmore Park Road, reminiscent of the open playground space that went before. Brackenbury is lucky to have this new neighbour, with its refreshing display of design enthusiasm enriching surface and form: the intriguing circular shape of the building, the gates, screens and brickwork on the street boundary. Careful design and quality of construction dress the functional needs of the interiors, and bring a quiet and serene air to the circular Meeting Room, full of light from the high clerestory windows and the views to the meadow garden behind, while maintaining privacy for the neighbours.

The space to the side and rear of the meeting house has been sown as a wild flower meadow, and will be spectacular next summer.  Alongside this greening, the building uses FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) sourced materials, and is designed to be environmentally efficient, with solar panels and CO₂ sensors for occupancy detection, adjusting air circulation in each space accordingly.  The low energy building database records it as AECB (Association for Environment Conscious Building) standard certified.

We reported earlier this year on plans for the Linford Christie Stadium site, which is right on the edge of Wormwood Scrubs and which, like the open space itself, is Metropolitan Open Land. Last year the Council held a consultation on the future of the stadium, which resulted – with apparently a big push from QPR supporters – in 80% of respondents supporting a possible 45,000 seat stadium. The Society has consistently supported the views of the Friends of Wormwood Scrubs, that development on that scale is not compatible with the character and development of the Scrubs.

The plan now is to invite potentially interested developers of all three levels of stadium identified as commercially viable – a large scale sports stadium or arena as for QPR; a covered entertainment arena for music gigs and events; an enhanced but smaller community sports facility perhaps managed by Imperial College which would would primarily build the facilities for its students, but also allow Kensington Dragons FC, Thames Valley Harriers and the public to hire them – to put forward their bids. They would also have to say how they would address the planning issue of overcoming the protection of Metropolitan Open Land designation for LCS, and other challenges, including protecting the hospital, the pony centre, and the current users and nature of the Scrubs. There will then be assessment of which, if any, of the proposals should be invited to try to move forward. That is when they will have to focus on planning issues including overcoming the restrictions of MOL – almost certainly leading to a public inquiry and a decision by an inspector, not just an LBHF planning department decision.

‘Hospitality in the Park’ run by Slammin’ Events in Finsbury Park

Meanwhile, festivals promoter Slammin’ Events, has approached the Council with a project to put on a music festival for “up to 10,000” people as a test event in 2021. The attractions of such revenue-generating events for the Council must be obvious, but the location – adjacent to Hammersmith hospital, poorly connected to public transport, and liable to impact for all the neighbouring residential areas is just not suitable.

Hammersmith Bridge closed: Motor traffic:10th April 2019; Completely:13th August 2020

A head of steam is certainly building up for Bridge repairs, especially as winter approaches, but it remains to be seen whether this will translate into action.

After much media/social media coverage, including stories on London TV news, a task force was set up on 9 September, chaired by Baroness Vere (roads minister), which includes representatives of the local councils, TfL and Network Rail (for their experience of cast iron bridges), the Port of London Authority and GLA. The task force’s project director is Dana Skelley, a chartered civil engineer, formerly director of roads for London and responsible for the London-wide roads modernisation ahead of the London Olympics and the repairs to Hammersmith Flyover.

Completing the full repair of the Bridge is currently predicted to cost £141-£163m, with stabilisation just to allow safe pedestrian and river traffic at £46m, considerably more than first envisaged.  We covered the announcement of a temporary pedestrian/cycle bridge in April, which is believed to have been costed at less than £10m.  Before lockdown, planning was to be sought for this during the summer with construction starting this autumn, but this has not happened.  We followed up in June with our ideas about widening the pathways while work progresses elsewhere, making the bridge suitable for safe bidirectional cycling and walking; these are also clearly ideas yet to be considered given the new circumstances of complete closure.

Neither the Council nor TfL can finance costs at this level, so government support is essential. The possibility of tolls to finance the work has not been ruled out, indeed some are campaigning for this to make more funds available to speed up the work.

The national picture for COVID-19 is mixed with some areas much more affected than others.  Despite well-publicised issues around test-track-and-trace, in a world of “big data”, the Government has made significant efforts to publish quite detailed data at various levels, if not always easy to tease out. At borough level, infection, test positivity, and death data is available, and we have also included relevant hospital data for our local NHS Trust, Imperial.

To help members better gauge the local situation, we’ve used this data to create an interactive chart, both here, and pinned to the head of the website for the time being, automatically updated every day in the early evening.  Due to the well-known delays in test results, be aware that latest numbers are always revised upwards for severa days after initial publication, so we now filter the newest unrepresentative figures – check here regularly for updates.

The interactive map shown adjacent provides infection data in the last week by “MSOA” (Middle Super Output Area), representing c.7200 people, an area which approximates a council ward. H&F has the distinction of having the physically smallest MSOA in the country – E02000378 – Shepherds Bush South.  Click on the map to see more information about each area.

H&F council COVID-19 advice is here.

H&F HealthWatch

We’ve been contacted by our member Jane Wilmot, also a member of the local H&F HealthWatch committee who want to find out how H&F residents have used GP practices during lockdown and in particular uncover any experiences of health inequality. HealthWatch is a statutory committee of the independent regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

If you would like to help, please:

• Complete the survey by 12th October: Survey Monkey link
• Share the survey among all your contacts including any contacts on Twitter
• Alert anyone you know who does not have a smart phone or internet access to let them know they can contact HealthWatch for a hard copy, ask for help in completing the survey etc.

If you would like any assistance in completing the survey or would like it in another format, please contact H&F HealthWatch at or call 0203 886 0386. Healthwatch Hammersmith & Fulham address: 141-143 King Street, W6 9JG.

The disappearing Crossrail opening date

Crossrail passes through the top of our borough at OPDC, where it joins HS2, the UK’s other high profile and eyewateringly expensive rail project. This, contrasted with failing local infrastructure such as the unfunded Hammersmith Bridge and now A40/A3220 viaduct, puts us in a rather unique position to examine the unfortunate nexus of government megaproject largesse, delays, structural failures, and an apparent absence of funds to maintain London’s essential local infrastructure.

Here we look at why UK railway construction costs spiral out of control, and how projects might be better planned and managed as has been achieved elsewhere, and ask if these projects are even the right transport solutions for the 21st century ?

Construction projects still typically employ analogue leaders in a digital age

Mega transport projects are almost always fraught with delays and cost overruns because of the often inappropriate governance and leadership.  Inappropriate leadership – really ? Surely they’re run by Captains of Industry with huge experience and many letters after their names ?  But the leadership is most often bound up with the management of high budget, and perceived high risk items, such as tunnelling with Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM) – the so called “bricks and sticks” – often 80%+ of the initial budget.

Another day at the TBM office (here for the SuperSewer)

Appointments like these often address last century’s problems, a bit like taking over a British Leyland production line, only to discover that it’s now staffed by strike-free German-made robots, seemingly little delayed by the pandemic, at least here in Hammersmith. These elements are significantly lower risk than they once were, because of such mechanisation and associated technologies, engineered processes, resulting in tighter controls and more repeatability “at the coalface”, even though still beloved of TV documentaries with some false jeopardy added to spice them up.  Still, documentaries do serve a valuable purpose in illustrating the point – the operator at the controls of the TBM deep underground is using a computer keyboard, mouse, several screens, a desk phone, with not a shovel in sight.

To re-purpose a phrase from the last decade, these projects still typically employ analogue leaders in a digital age.  It’s commonly assumed that the “backroom boys” will sort of the hidden techie stuff – keep out of the detail.  WRONG!  This is where the risks are nowadays, in signalling and other heavily software-based systems, sometimes poorly designed code, frequent legacy issues, often clunky low-performance or de-facto interfaces (sometimes as simple as on/off dry contacts, AKA electromechanical relays, or their software equivalent “control points”), logical “gotchas” and subsequent system integration problems.

The issue is peculiarly amplified in railways, where proven operational safety is expected, yet a lot of what could provide that – 100% reuse of existing proven designs, robot style, ironically more akin to a modern tunnelling process – allowing the project to focus solely on what must be changed, is in this environment, swamped by commercial, time, perceived risk, or political pressures to use this supplier or that solution. This results in yet another bespoke railway with the inelegant compromises that Heath Robinson would recognise.  Amplifying the misconception that the project is some sort of smooth production-line shown in the plans, the term “production design” is regularly misused, whereas the earlier compromises mean the endeavour has unwittingly become a “prototype design” – the approach to building a unique prototype like Crossrail or HS2 vs. a production design for 1000, or 100,000 units a year are rather different – your scribe has done all three.

Future leaders should present their software engineering credentials at the door

Health scares, 18 metre masts, autonomous vehicles, economic recovery, critical national infrastructure, Huawei… It’s a long list.

2020/01852/TEL56: Rylett Road / John Betts House: 5G proposed mast and cabinets

In Hammersmith we’ve started to see planning notices for 5G base stations, ironically mostly from the company named Three, and yes, since you ask, they are using Huawei.

From the Society’s perspective, our concerns centre on the mast height, positioning, and the associated, rather retro, street clutter.  There’s some further reading at the foot of the article, but first, to get some perspective, let’s get our terminology clear, review the most prevalent public concerns and take quite a hard look at the benefits – both real and more far-fetched.

The most widely used 5G band in the UK will be 3.6GHz…
…5G is just as safe as 4G, 3G and GSM.
– Institution of Engineering and Technology

A quick canter through some confusing G’s

1G to 5G phones

Here 1G means ‘First Generation’ AKA Analogue ‘brick’ phones of the 1980’s, 2G (AKA ‘GSM’ or ‘Global System for Mobile Communications’), a typical Nokia from the late 1990’s, 3G, the first phones with really usable Internet connections, and today’s 4G, typified by a smartphone – Apple or Android. There was even a 2.5G and we mention 4.5G later.

The gifts of Heinrich Hertz, or a billion of them, come in the form of a Gigahertz (GHz), the frequency a thousand times the Megahertz we’ve had since VHF FM radio days.  1G to 4G phones have used various radio frequencies over the years, depending on operator and country, from 800MHz up to 2.6GHz, but the operating frequency used doesn’t directly affect the data speed as far as the user is concerned.  WiFi is sometimes confusingly termed 2.4G or ‘2.4 Gig’ or ‘5 Gig’, referring to bands – 2.4GHz (the same frequency as a microwave oven but a minuscule fraction of the power) and 5GHz: a less congested, shorter range band that has nothing to do with 5G: 5th generation mobile technology.

In the digital world we similarly have Megabits describing the speed of received data – whatever the technology that delivered it – and the Gigabit of your scribe’s home, and likely your office’s high speed Ethernet wired network. We won’t discuss the many flavours of WiFi on top of the frequency bands mentioned: A, B, G, N AC, AX… a story seemingly involving yet another G, until WiFi leapfrogs 5G by changing it’s letters to numbers, becoming WiFi 4, 5, and 6, and in future extending into a new 6GHz band.  That’s the GG’s corralled 🐴

The most popular 5G band, 3.6 GHz, is slightly higher than current ranges, the implication may be more base stations as range is slightly reduced, but other bands may be used to compensate. The 700MHz band for example, cleared in June this year (responsible for the loss of several HD TV channels from Crystal Palace), has yet to be auctioned off, but is earmarked by OFCOM for 5G.

Mobile emissions

If you are at all concerned about health effects, first check and understand the implications of the SAR value for your existing 2G/3G/4G phone, which have been published by manufacturers since the days of 2G when such concerns first arose – or better, stop using it now !

Unfortunately in addition to the above health concerns, the 5G cause has been muddied, and probably harmed by overzealous marketing, too many G’s and spurious claimed benefits – we prefer to keep to the tried-and-trusted recipe of ‘more & faster’, on which it certainly will deliver. 

12-14 Wellesley Ave – 2019 proposal

The Hammersmith Society is supporting our affiliate, the Brackenbury Residents Association and the local action group in objecting to the development proposed for the former Aston Martin garage at 12-14 Wellesley Avenue.

The application scheme proposes a 3-storey building, significantly higher than the street building line, with 1,800 square metres of office space for an estimated 150 employees, in a street with a residential population of around 80.  We reported that an earlier application for a larger scheme was refused planning consent and lost a subsequent appeal – refer to our related stories with more recent coverage in last winter’s newsletter.  The current, slightly reduced scheme was again refused consent earlier this year.

Former Nicholas Mee garage, Wellesley Ave

The applicant is appealing against the refusal, and the local residents group is inviting support for their petition against the development.

Hammersmith Society’s letter of objection

Town Hall extension demolition

Since the Town Hall extension was shrouded in scaffolding last year, internal strip-out has been progressing, and this year a gentler strip-out has been taking place inside the old Town Hall building, pictured. 

We’re told that this continued where permitted during lock-down, but now we can see that the real demolition has started at last, and the destruction of the concrete steps and walkways is wonderful confirmation that the new Town Hall and the new Civic Campus are on their way.

The steps and walkways recently featured in the wedding episode of BBC2’s well-received series Trigonometry, together with the entrance hall of the old Town Hall itself as wedding venue, a space facing the new Town Square that will be hugely improved by the removal of the ugly 70’s construction.  Nearby filming locations included the adjacent Riverside Gardens and Macbeth Streets.

Civic Voice launched its Manifesto 2020-2023, 50 years after the Skeffington Report on Public Participation in Planning, which arose from growing concern about the top-down nature of post-war planning and development and growing interest in the idea of ‘participatory democracy’ (that ordinary people need to be engaged in decision-making rather than simply voting for representatives to make decisions on their behalf).

A Civic Voice members survey last year found that 80% of people feel that developers do not effectively engage with the community and 72% said the same about local authorities. Recent research by Grosvenor Britain & Ireland also found a significant distrust of the planning process within communities. Just 2% of the public trust developers and only 7% trust local authorities when it comes to planning for large-scale development.  

This week’s news concerning the housing minister, the role of large developers and oblique arguments about viability, plus the role of CIL, brings these issues into sharp focus

The Civic Voice ambition is to move away from ‘confrontation to collaboration’ and from ‘consultations to conversations’. Its manifesto consists of the following three key recommendations to the Government and to Local Authorities, which aim at placing Civic Societies like the Hammersmith Society at the heart of their communities:

1. Create a more ‘accessible, balanced and collaborative’ (ABC) planning system with communities at the heart.
2. Move towards a citizen-led, participative model of governance for our towns, cities and villages.
3. Ensure local authorities have the appropriate resources and proper powers to enhance the historic environment to make better places.