Hammersmith & Fulham Council – “putting residents last”

Posted on January 16th, 2010 by Jasmine Pilgrem

The “radical right-wing” Tory-run council of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham spends a great deal of time and energy promoting its slogan: ‘putting residents first’. On the contrary, its recent behaviour has put developers first, ignoring large parts of the local population, paying only lip service to the notion of ‘consultation’, riding roughshod over rules governing conservation areas and approving planning applications that may well result in popular local employers moving out of the Borough with loss of jobs and associated trade. All this so that developers can build unimpeded.

The most recent of these questionable decisions concerned the redevelopment of 282-288 Goldhawk Road, which entails building a high-density, 66-unit complex on the Starch Green conservation area (see photo above) against the will of the local residents association and the 381 people who have signed a petition in protest. The council was accused of rushing through approval of the development without due concern for residents.

Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh had previously pledged not to present future applications to residents as a ‘done deal’ after an outcry at the approval of the Goldhawk Road Industrial Estate development – now the subject of a call-in by the Secretary of State. But this is exactly what happened when the same dubious process was repeated for the development on Starch Green. Despite substantial objection, the application by Places for People was approved at a rushed planning meeting on December 16th – the agenda for the Planning Applications Committee meeting having been drawn up before the deadline for the ‘consultation’ had been reached, giving some indication of the extent of the council’s commitment to listening to locals’ views. Councillor Colin Aherne commented at the meeting “They’ve already made up their minds that they’re voting in favour of this application, and all the rest is smoke and mirrors.”

And this is just the latest in a whole series of planning approvals in which residents’ views have been bulldozed by the council’s determination to sell off land. As Andy Slaughter MP puts it, “what makes this sinister is the volume of bad planning decisions and the fact they all point the same way. What suits developers is in; what suits residents is out.”

We local residents are up in arms about this Conservative Council’s refusal to ‘put residents first’. We are aware that David Cameron hails H&F as a prime example of his party’s ‘green’ and ‘progressive’ credentials – he chose to kick-off his general election campaign in the Borough on January 5th in an effort to persuade residents to elect Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey at the imminent general election.

Reducing council tax each year may benefit certain local residents, but it comes at a high price – which, in this case, seems to be the need to court developers and sell off prime pieces of council-owned land whilst approving planning applications without any regard for the opinions and quality of life of the community at large.

Green energy and green jobs – “Not in my back yard” say Isle of Wight Tories

Posted on December 26th, 2009 by Jeremy Cliffe

In a forward to his party’s paper on The Low Carbon Economy, David Cameron presents his “vision of a Britain which leads the world in new green technologies” and is “the world-leading economy for green innovation”. This aspiration is shared by the Conservative-run council of the Isle of Wight, whose “inspirational vision” it is to turn the Isle into an ‘Eco Island’ with the lowest carbon footprint in England by 2020.

In 2006 the council was given an opportunity to make its vision a reality when it received an application from Your Energy to build six wind turbines with the capacity to power 6,500 homes (10% of the entire island).

The application was backed by the South-East England Development Agency, which reminded councillors that the local Vestas turbine blade production plant was “critical for future growth on the island”, that there was “a commitment by Your Energy to source the turbine blades from Vestas” and “an agreement in place to use one of the turbines for further R&D purposes.”

SEEDA’s advice concluded that this was “a key opportunity for the island to show proactive and responsible leadership in addressing some very challenging issues both for the island and the region’s future prosperity.” In two local surveys a majority of respondants expressed support for the application, whilst Vestas itself warned the council that without a concrete local commitment to wind energy it would consider moving the blades factory elsewhere.

But the council rejected the application, describing it as “the wrong thing in the wrong place”.

The actions of the council and the island’s Conservative MP in opposing this and other wind farm applications persuaded Vestas (citing a lack of “political support at a local level”) that circumstances would be more favourable in wind-friendly Colorado. And so the plant – and 425 jobs – went west.

In response to this news, Council leader David Pugh insisted that “nothing could have been done to prevent the loss of those jobs” and later claimed that “that planning refusal had no connection with the blade factory whatsoever”.  The council then attacked protesting workers, Vestas and later the government’s planning regulations.

Since then the council has also rejected a motion to sign up to the 10:10 campaign, turned down another turbine application on grounds of “insufficient […] socio-economic benefit” and proposed the closure of half the primary schools on the island, a record which, although arguably consistent with the views of Tory councillors such as Ian Ward (“global warming is vastly exaggerated by those with a vested interest in conning the public into believing that we humans are to blame”), sits less comfortably alongside the council’s pledge to turn the island into a “skills-based […] centre of excellence in renewable energies”.

This is not an isolated example. Of the 51 councils that have signed up to 10:10, only 11 are Conservative-led, and Tory members of the London Assembly recently walked out on a motion to introduce the scheme in the capital. Such prominent Tory MPs as Andrew Lansley, Ken Clarke and Peter Luff have all expressed opposition to wind turbines. In fact, since David Cameron became party leader, Tory councils have rejected 80% of wind farm applications submitted to them, in contrast to Labour councils, which according to SERA have approved 70%. In 2007 alone, 740 megawatts of clean energy generation fell victim to Tory councils, enough green energy to power 400,000 homes.