News detail

Local concern over the future of Brentford

- 01-Oct-2004
The Autumn 2004 of the London Forum newsletter carried this article on local concerns into the sustainability of Brentford. Our thanks to the London Forum.

London Forum chairman, Peter Eversden, gave evidence to the GLA Assembly Urban Renaissance Scrutiny Panel on concerns about the potential lack of social infrastructure, community facilities and open space in areas that have received regeneration grants and those that are planned for opportunity and intensification; growth in the London Plan.

One of the examples discussed was Brentford. Resident and civic societies in West London are worried that the town will lack the services that its doubled population will need if current proposals are approved. Planning permission has been given for over 1,200 flats and there are additional developers; proposals for more housing units on several other ex-commercial sites, some up to thirty storeys. Local people would have liked to see the infamous tower blocks of the sixties taken down, not surrounded by modern equivalents.

The area will see a considerable change from the present family oriented population as many of the new flats will be one and two bedroom units. The Brentford Community Council doubts if Hounslow Council has considered fully what sort of housing and facilities are needed for a sustainable community and it fears traffic grid-lock in local roads. The transport accessibility index for many of the development areas is only 3 on the London Plan housing density matrix which would not support such a concentrated building programme.

Residents associations point out that there is hardly any play space now for children, school places are limited, doctors and dentists claim full lists and other facilities are becoming severely stretched.

The site alongside Kew Bridge with a planning application for a mixed use development, predominately flats, has aroused the most local opposition. It is adjacent to three conservation areas, near the listed water tower of the Steam Museum and opposite the World Heritage Site of Kew Gardens. Yet it has no context sensitivity at all in its proposals.

Despite its location, the proposal is for a landmark building with a corner tower of eleven storeys and accommodation blocks thrusting out one above the other, on the edge of the Thames.

A wetland habitat is to be created underneath a riverside boardwalk which is likely to be an unattractive and an inadequate replacement for the flood capacity that has been on the site. Affordable housing within the development is to be contained largely on the north side with many units facing into a tall inner courtyard which has at its base the entry to the car park for the whole development.

The housing density would be two and a half times the maximum the London Plan would envisage for the site. There is a well developed and adopted Council Site Brief, the height limits and design requirements of which are not met by the proposal. What was most surprising was that the Stage 1 letter to the Council from the GLA Planning Decisions Unit failed to pick up many of the ways in which the application is in nonconformity with the London Plan, with the Mayor's other strategies and with the recently adopted UDP of the local authority. Of even more concern to local groups was that the Council's case officer report to committee also lacked analysis of those problems and gave little recognition to the objections of statutory consultees. The way the proposal fails to meet the UDP, Blue Ribbon and other Thames policies had not been adequately identified. The London Forum has criticised those reports on this application and one local society has lodged a complaint.

The lesson of all this is that we will need to be vigilant in Opportunity Areas, particularly in the Thames Gateway, as development proposals emerge. Also that more needs to be done in London to protect historic sites from encroachment and the degradation of their setting. The Government should adopt UNESCO standards for the protection of World Heritage Sites and strengthen the legislation safeguarding our historic built environment.

Our members will need to make sure that local planning policies in LDDs that replace UDPs are well developed, particularly for areas of regeneration. Also that pre-application consultancy is really insisted upon, as the Government has included in PPS1but not upheld well in its related guidance.

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