Elizabeth, If you want to stop this project you have to work fast. You should form a fighting committee, like the Save Our Skyline group against the Hammersmith Town Hall redevelopment 2010-12. You need to study the proposals and write a detailed letter of objection in planning terms in the name of "Save Chiswick Roundabout/High Street" (or whatever you call yourselves). You need start a paper petition outside the major supermarkets/schools/sports against (1) extending the "Golden Mile" and (2) this out-of-scale planning application. You also need a Wordpress website to solicit on-line signatures and to communicate with supporters. You should solicit by phone letters of objection from local and national conservation and amenity groups like "Strand-on-the-Green Association" (if it exists), the Victorian Society (if there are any nice Victorian buildings whose setting would be ruined), Kew Gardens, English Heritage, etc... We eventually got 750 letters. You should write to Zac Goldsmith MP in Richmond for the Strand-on-the-Green "strand development". Do not despair about the planning officials having been nobbled. It's worse than that: no LA planning department can afford full-time staff, so the applicants (poachers) pay for the officials (gamekeepers), but they still have to obey the law. Go to see Sadiq Khan and ... Zac Goldsmith, the Mayoral candidates. If possible, get them to promise to call in the decision and refuse it. At that height AND so close to the Thames (500m) I think that it is in the Thames Policy Area of the London Plan and must be called in by the Mayor (not SoS at DCLG). Also look up Hounslow's old UDP of 2003 on Waterways (http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/udp_6_waterways.pdf), parts of which are still current. Have a look whether it would be too tall under height restrictions for planes approaching London Airport. Archaeology requirements, sound insulation standards, "equality impact", etc, etc: all of these matters which are in the planning application somewhere can be attacked in your letter of objection. Then the substantial issue: trying to get the developer to redesign with a better architect. You might suggest Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands (http://www.lds-uk.com/). They are designing something much, much better for Hammersmith Town Hall than the mediocre plans which Sheppard Robson originally suggested for Helical Bar/Grainger plc. |