We are analysed

[Tim Lund]

This may ramble a bit, being just a train of thought prompted by an item in today's SydSoc eNewsletter, about a public meeting - also today, so don't blame me if you missed it - about a pretty large planning application

Invitation to view proposals for St Clement’s Heights Wells Park Road

Monday 11th August from 3pm-8pm
St Bartholomew’s Church
4 Westwood Hill, London SE26 6QR　

In 2013, an outline planning permission was granted for the St Clement’s Heights site, on Wells Park Road. The St Clement Danes Holborn Estate Charity and Crest Nicholson (London) would like to invite you to view updated plans for the development, which will include the re-provision of almshouses, the construction of new homes and additional landscaping.

The St Clement Danes Holborn Estate Charity and Crest Nicholson are committed to consultation and engagement with the community. Members of the project team will be on hand to answer any queries you may have and there will be an opportunity to offer feedback on the proposals.

For any further information contact
jenniferb@curtinandco.com | T: 0207 399 2293

Here is how it is summarised on the planning application, DC/11/78207/X

The demolition of existing buildings at St Clements Heights, 165 Wells Park Road SE26 and the construction of 7 four to six storey, comprising 50 one and two bedroom Almshouses and 46 two, three and four bedroom self-contained flats and houses, together with the provision of 76 car parking spaces, vehicular accesses onto Sydenham Hill and Wells Park Road with associated landscaping. (Outline Application). | ST CLEMENTS HEIGHTS, 165 WELLS PARK ROAD, LONDON, SE26 6RP

What intrigued me was the email address for further information. Looking up the web site, I learned of a company I'd never heard of, but who will certainly know about people like us.

It is a PR company, with an impressive range of people working for it, with the aim of helping their clients get planning permission. So what they say about how community politics works is probably accurate, for example

Political Diagnostics and Audits Diagnostics and political audits provide the ‘road map’ for focused, effective consultation with key stakeholders in the local political arena.

This is not just a desk-based piece of work. Our research gets to understand the community and its representative bodies by researching parish council and community group minutes, finding out local concerns and ensuring that we have an understanding of local issues to guide our further actions. It covers:

• Political history
• Who knows whom?
• Influential parties
• Previous media coverage
• Issues which might affect the site moving forward

This understanding is key to a successful relationship with the local community and it paves the way for assessing how best to engage with stakeholders.

Should this worry us? I bit, I think, not so much because such professionals are involved, steering the community to get to the right answer, but because I wonder how much it all costs, and the extent to which it makes the market for development less competitive. But, to be honest, it's such a complex area that I can't say I have a feel for how much it does.

I certainly don't blame the developers for paying for this sort of PR.

[Tim Lund]

Did anyone go to this meeting?

The application seems just the sort of thing described as 'densification of suburbia', a phrase I borrowed here in "How to Evade the Housing Crisis: A Guide for 2016 London Mayoral Candidates", but here it is, in local reality, with actual numbers and site plans. So the before





and after





Source here

There will obviously have been - possibly still be - questions of detail, which the various other teams of experts involved will have looked at, but it's the sort of development which I at least think ought to be happening.

A couple more points I find of interest:

1. This development is not happening on a brown field site. It is already developed - in the 1960s - with buildings now recognised to be of poor quality. I am sure there are many other such sites around, just looking for brownfield sites is not the solution to the housing problem.
2. There is a single owner - the The St Clement Danes Holborn Estate Charity. This means there is no freeholder fragmentation, which will make the redevelopment much harder of similar council owned sites where right to buy has operated, and older formerly privately owned estates where leaseholders have exercised similar rights to acquire freeholds