Topic: | Empire House - Plans approved | |
Posted by: | Elizabeth Ross | |
Date/Time: | 30/01/15 10:21:00 |
Attending the meeting last night was both an interesting and dispiriting event. Once we have distilled the shock of the proceedings I will post more. Perhaps we should have been on the alert for the proceedings to be decided on party lines. Katherine Dunne - Labour Syon, opened her opportunity to speak by announcing very proudly that she was ' a socialist and would like to see the whole of Chiswick converted to Council Housing'. A mix of other Councillors cross examined effectively about the Council's Character & Context Study and the Local Plan all showing why this development was very much against the plans that the Council and the Planning Department had been working on for the last 5 years to which Shane Baker, the presenting Planning Officer, replied that it was not due to be implemented until March and therefore did not apply. His presentation could not be said to have been either balanced or fair, every point contained adjectives that were very positive towards the merits of the Lend Lease proposal. The Sainsbury representative was very simple in his approach and stated why Sainsbury was against the plans for the road and buildings on Essex Place. Lend Lease had made much of their connection and consultation with Sainsbury and their mutual co-operation on the matter. Under cross-examination, the Representative made is known that there had not been much communication and no co-operation. There were 2 Hounslow Councillors who spoke copiously about the lack of parking and how such a scheme was a disaster in their area with people parking on pavements and in every tiny space available after the CPZ parking restrictions finished at 6pm and over the weekends and what chaos this would cause. Someone called 'Bob' spoke for the Council saying that his department could deal with this through increased hours and other measures. Not having received satisfactory answers, these people still voted for approval. The star of the night was John Todd who, as ever, had done his homework and asked appropriate and searching questions giving no quarter to those who failed or tried to fudge the answer to the question asked. The proceedings were being videod live but, whether it was gremlins, an idiot or by design, the broadcast failed seconds into the presentation by Chris Chauncy, speaking on behalf of the 4 associations who were actively campaigning for the modification of these plans. It was very evident that throughout the questions, there was much that had not yet been determined or properly thought through. I would have thought that on those grounds alone, this application should have been put back for approval to another date when all the details were sorted out. Chiswick BUZZ continued to video so we hope to be able to get a copy in order to review the proceedings in full. So we lost but what next? It is open to us to ask the Examiner to go through all the planning procedure but that is time consuming and very expensive which is probably why most people opt to go for JR - Judicial Review and this too can mount up in costs with the loser paying for both parties. We did learn that Lend Lease only acquired the whole site on 28th February 2014 and lodged documents so late that no one in opposition had time to read and digest them. Sainsbury also revealed that they will be looking to develop their site including the car park. Let us hope they will be more sympathetic to Chiswick than Lend Lease. |