Friday 11 October 2019

The Friday Joke - The enemies of the people of Barnet at the Planning Committee?

Firstly an apology, I know you probably expected something funny. This isn't but it is a complete joke.

Last night I had the misfortune to attend the Barnet Council planning committee. Since I started writing this blog, I've probably attended well over a hundred Barnet Council meetings. I've seen many a fiasco, the Iceland investments, the Mapledown special school cuts, the Metpro scandal all spring to mind. But I don't think I've ever left a meeting feeling as depressed as I did after last nights meeting.
Unlike bad decisions about investments, cuts to services, etc, bad decisions in planning are almost unrecoverable. Once an eyesore goes up, it stays up, once a community is ruined and dispersed, it stays ruined and dispersed. Once over development has occurred and suburban roads become clogged they stay clogged.  Under the previous encumbant leader of Barnet Council, Richard Cornelius, despite whatever you may have thought of his policies, he loved the Borough of Barnet. He was born and raised in the Borough and publicly stated on numerous occasions that his goal as leader was to ensure Barnet remained a pleasant place to live. The new leader, Daniel Thomas, a Welshman who stood as a candidate in a seat in the Welsh Valleys not so long ago, has no such association. He despises the ordinary people of Barnet to such an extent that he's gagged them, removing their ability to ask searching questions of the council at meetings.

As Leader of the Council, Richard Cornelius and his councillors cooked up a cunning plan to pass a motion labelling the Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan an enemy of the people of Barnet. The reason? Sadiq Khan had ridden roughshod over the Barnet Councils decision to reject the Barratts redevelopment of the National Institute for medical research. The motion stated

Full Council: 31st October 2017
Administration Motion: Councillor David Longstaff
Is Mayor Khan an enemy of the people of Barnet?
Council is growing increasingly concerned that Mayor Khan is making life harder for the people of Barnet for the sake of political point-scoring. 
In the last six weeks alone Mayor Khan has made several rulings attacking the borough’s already strained transport infrastructure. Most recently the Aslef union revealed he had scrapped plans laid by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, to add 17 much-needed trains to the Northern line and increase services to 30 an hour. The explosion in demand projected for this vital but overcrowded service will now have to be met by current stock — and borne by residents.
At the beginning of this month he also overruled Barnet’s democratically elected Planning Committee in order to force a deeply unpopular development of 460 flats on
the people of Mill Hill. Adding insult to injury, he removed 78 parking spaces from the original plans, meaning residents will have to fight for spaces on neighbouring residential streets. This is despite visiting the site himself by car rather than brave the Northern line.
Before clogging up the borough’s roads and scuppering improvements to its Underground service, however, Mayor Khan decided to make private hire vehicles more expensive and less available for residents of outer London boroughs like Barnet. His decision against renewing Uber’s private hire licence not only risks putting 1,789 Barnet based Uber drivers out of work; it will increase the costs for residents using black cabs.
Council agrees that any concerns about Uber’s safeguarding procedures must be addressed. However, Council is baffled as to why data revealed under the freedom of Information Act showed TfL inspectors had given Uber a clean bill of health on no less than 10 occasions in the last four years (the last after an annual compliance audit in April this year) and why Mayor Khan failed to meet with Uber representatives to discuss concerns. In revoking Uber's licence, Khan's message is that London is closed to innovation and business. 
Council is also deeply concerned by Mayor Khan’s intervention on the Grahame Park development. In making public an error-riddled letter from GLA planners he ensured the retraction, which Barnet was on the cusp of negotiating, would not happen. The planning application now risks being refused or amended by the Mayor. Council calls on the Leader of the Council and the Leader of the Opposition to write to the Mayor to address these concerns and request he rectify them for the benefit of the people of Barnet over party political gain.
Last night, the planning committee debated a change to the  planning permission for the deeply unpopular development of 460 flats .  The developer Barratts had asked for a 'minor' variation of the plan, to add an extra 50 flats. Now you might think that an increase in dwellings of over 10% is not a minor change. You might think that if 460 flats was a bad thing an increase of over 10% is even worse. Given the location of the flats, it is clear that every single flat will have a minimum of one extra car on the road, most couples will have a car each. The 50 extra car parking spaces is clearly inadequate for this development. The council rightly pointed out in the original rejection that there were insufficient spaces. The nearest tube station is a Mile away at the bottom of an extremely steep hill. The Ridgeway, the road on which the development is situation is already gridlocked in rush hour, but none of this counts.

The developer, Barratts have had numerous breaches of the the conditions of their planning permission. They have even let people start living in the flats without having the appropriate contamination mitigation's (the site was deemed highly toxic) being signed off. The council know all about this, I was at a meeting with them to discuss it, but they are simply not interested. What sort of a council lets a developer let people move in without the site being safe to occupy? The question has to be, if, by the Barnet Tories own standards, Sadiq Khan was an enemy of the people for passing the original plan, what are they for allowing it to become even worse? Barratts application last night was  passed unanimously. Whilst I fully expected Labour to support a scheme championed by Sadiq Khan, I was amazed that the Barnet Tories also fell into line. I really shouldn't have been. I was recently told by a Barnet Tory Councillor that the new Leader believes that the only way to fix the budget problems of Barnet was to build its way out of it. It seems that under Thomas, developers are being given carte blanche to build more or less whatever they want.

A local Mill Hill resident Laurence Bard, addressed the committee. He used his three minutes to detail many of the breaches Barratts have made developing the NIMR site and why this application should be rejected. My wife, who has not attended many council meetings was shocked to see the Leader of the Council, Dan Thomas roll his eyes as he approached the speakers chair. Mr Bard and his family have a long association with the Borough of Barnet and the Conservative Party.  When I first met Mr Bard 20 years ago, we nearly came to blows discussing local politics. Sadly (for him), he has come around to agreeing with me about the local Conservatives. His business has been devastated by the Barratts development and he has had absolutely no support from the local Conservative councillors or MP.

He was treated with total contempt by the committee. It seems that long standing local businessmen and Mill Hill families are viewed with disdain by the current administration. Alienating your natural supporters is bad politics, but the our local politicians seem far more interested in keeping rich and powerful developers happy than the people who have paid tax for generations in the Borough. My daughter, who was attending her first Barnet Council meeting was left in disbelief. She admitted she now knew why I spent so long writing blogs about Barnet Council. Sadly, to me this was a totally normal experience when attending council meetings. Under this Conservative administration, residents come last.  Another fine example of this was the application to build a nine storey block of flats on Cricklewood Lane.

A local resident known as Ben T and local councillor Anne Clarke spoke against the application. Many local residents had objected that the development was flawed. Councillor Clarke listed numerous errors in the Council report,a list that was quite shocking. Cricklewood is an area of high social deprivation. It is an area crying out for social housing, and the London plan states that for such developments, a minimum of 40% should be set aside for affordable housing. The report notes

8.1 London Plan 2016 Policy 3.12 seeks the maximum reasonable amount of affordable housing to be negotiated. The Barnet Core Strategy (Policy CS4) seeks a borough wide target of 40% affordable homes on sites capable of accommodating ten or more dwellings.
So what proportion of the flats will be affordable?

8.7 Following the initial review of the FVA, the Council entered into further discussions with the applicant and the applicant has agreed to provide 10% affordable housing on site, with all of the units being shared ownership. DVS carried out a further review of the amended FVA comprising the 10% offer and concluded that the offer of 15 shared ownership units is over and above what the scheme can viably support and offered clear advice to the Council that this offer should be accepted. This 10% 210 offer is in accordance with Paragraph 64 of the NPPF which states that “where major development involving the provision of housing is proposed, planning policies and decisions should expect at least 10% of the homes to be available for affordable home ownership”.
That is correct, this huge block will only be 10% affordable. So a huge eyesore, which the local population do not want, will not conform to the London Plan. Why has this been allowed? Well the developers stated that as they had to reduce the height of the building, the social housing element had to be scaled back to ensure their profit margin did not suffer.

You may question why anyone would think building 'unaffordable flats' is a good idea? Well the reason is quite clear. Sadly, no one called the Council out for it, but let me explain. The council ward is Childs Hill. This is the most marginal ward in Barnet. Until 2014, it was a Lib Dem ward. In 2014, the Tories took two of the three seats. In 2018, Labour took the remaining Lib Dem seat. Lib Dem polling shows that the seat is now back in play, with both Labour and the Tories polling numbers declining. If the Tories want to keep the seat, then the more residents of unaffordable flats they can squeeze in, the better. As to the report. This states that there will be 145 flats in the development.

Given what has happened at Grenfell Tower, I could not believe the following statement in the plan.
The first floor demonstrates more than 8 units around a double loaded corridor. This should ideally be brought in line with Standards 12 and 14 of the Housing SPG (GLA, 2016).
How can an application be recommended without basic safety issues being resolved? It simply beggars belief that this has not been resolved before the report was presented.

One other highly alarming point is the matter of the NHS drop in centre that is being replaced. The report states

NHS Walk-In Centre Reprovision The applicant shall provide an equivalent extent of commercial floorspace for the use of the NHS for the reprovision of the walk-in centre. The applicant shall submit for the approval of the LPA an engagement strategy for engaging with the NHS in this respect. A cascade clause would be included to allow for the relevant floorspace to revert to flexible use commercial floorspace after an agreed period of time (and following the necessary engagement with the NHS).

As you can see, there will be 'space for an NHS walk in centre' but this will revert to a commercial space if the NHS and the developer can't agree a deal. The council could insist that the space was made available at the same rent as the existing space. The developer will make a packet out of the development, so a bit of pay back to the community should be a no brainer.

So when it comes down to it, when the Council passed a motion declaring Sadiq Khan an enemy of the people, for allowing an unpopular development in Mill Hill, what does that make the administration in Barnet now? They've allowed a bad scheme in Mill Hill to become even worse and they've allowed a development in Cricklewood that any sane person would reject. Labour Councillor Anne Hutton described the scheme as an insult. The vote was split on party lines. The consideration was clearly "Do you want to adjust the balance in one of Barnets most marginal seats by a hundred and fifty odd voters". Enemies of the people? The Barnet Tories started this pathetic name calling, now they are clearly exposed as even worse.

The bottom line is that Capita now run the council, councillors are too useless or two lazy even to read reports and send them back when there are clearly things that are detrimental to the local community (with a few notable exceptions such as Anne Clarke). It makes me sick and we will have to live with these mistakes for the rest of our lives.

Here's a little music video we made about the whole thing. Barnet Council no longer works for you.

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