The Railway Hotel in Edgware - Now the owners want to build a coach station

This morning, I received a whole stream of emails etc from local pubs and heritage campaigner Mark Amies. Mark is currently featured on a series on the Robert Elms Show on BBC Radio London, discussing Londons Industrial Heritage. When Mark isn't preparing for his broadcast career, he's busy fighting the good fight preserving our local pubs and other landmarks.

I was shocked to see what Mark was reporting this morning. Firstly, he has found a list of enforcement actions against the owners. Mark has tweet this (click on the picture for more details)

Read it and weep- a series of planning abuses by owners of the #railwayhoteledgware
This is a disaster, & I ask @HistoricEngland to get on top of this situation immediately @Barneteye @BBCLondonNews @KC_Journo @Annareporting @standardnews @PubsSaving @jscott110 @HeritageCrime pic.twitter.com/JxsxEtlhar

— Mark Amies (@Superfast72) January 16, 2019

I suspect that Mark was tipped off by another local Tweeter concerned with local issues.

This planning application for the Railway Hotel confuses me. Why the need to apply for such a small extension? Also the operation hours of 7am till 2pm is such a lie it's laughable. Lots of anecdotal evidence of them turning up way outside these times.https://t.co/tkIb3RB0GB

— Alex (@inalexworld) January 15, 2019

Photos from application

The planning permission contains a document that shows just how badly the situation is with the neglect of the area. The owners have demonstrated a blatent disregard for the local community. This scheme will damage the ability of any business in the building to prosper. It will remove car parking spaces and generally contribute to the run down nature of the building.

It is clear to me that only someone with total disregard for the neighbours could think that thee pictures would help a planning application.

Click here if you want to object to this awful proposal. It is clear that the owners have only decided to comply with the law as there is enforcement action.  A quick search and review of the Councils enforcement pages reveal that a complaint was received in Jan 2018 and the case was closed with "informal compliance". I assume that the council rang up and said stop this and they said "Ok" and carried on without taking any notice. The latest notice was issued on 12th December. As the owners have shown that they take no notice of what the council says, it really is beyond belief that they will start to comply now.

 The other local Councillor with a Twitter account is Sarah Wardle. She at least promised us an update on 20th December.

A cross-discipline officer task force has been assembled r.e Railway Hotel. There are a no of complex problems on the site, when I have an update on how we’re moving forward I will let you know.

— Sarah Wardle (@swardle30) December 20, 2018

We are still waiting for this and have just given Sarah another nudge.

If you want to see just how bad the whole site is, myself and Mark Amies made a short film about it last week. Please make sure you comment, tweet to your councillors and do everything you can to make sure that our community is not destroyed by such awful schemes.



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