Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Consultation Deadline - Application for Finsbury Park Neighbourhood Forum - (including Finsbury Park)

Following my earlier posts about the proposed Finsbury Park Neighbourhood Forum (linked via tag), a formal application has now been lodged to Islington, Haringey and Hackney councils.

Whilst Islington wil apparently be the lead council, Haringey are acting as a partner and will be running a local consultation.

Neighbourhood forums are set up by local residents but are given an official status and have a strong influenced over local planning and development. Given that part of the ward of Harringay is included in the boundaries of the area proposed by our neighbours, it is in our interest to consider the issues and get involved on the consultation.

Unfortunately, the email I got about this form the Council included a link to a page on their website which was supposed to include all documentation relating to the application, but didn't. It gave two phone numbers, the first of which is for an officer away on holiday and the second of which I've left a message on but have yet to hear back. My email to the officer who sent the email enquiring after the documents has received no reply. Not a great start Haringey.

Having said that, there is some documentation out there on the web:

Whilst the Haringey page doesn't yet include what it is supposed to, it does contain some useful general explanation about neighbourhood forums and links to other material.

I'm attaching what documentation I've been able to find by using a Google search of the Islington Council website (as you can see from their web page, they don't offer them as being available online, but only for viewing in person). Three are attached to this original post. A further three are attached to my comment that follows and one that is to big for either is available on my Amazon server at https://hgyol.in/2GgKuZU.

The consultation is running from 14th May to 25 June. I will ask the LCSP to cover this issue at their next meeting on 14th June.

Tags for Forum Posts: finsbury park neighbourhood forum

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Attachments:

20180510FPSGNeighbourhoodAreaandForumapplications1.pdf, 421 KB
20180510FPSGEqualitiesAssessment.pdf, 289 KB
20180510FPSGConstitution.pdf, 162 KB

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Arkady on May 18, 2018 at 10:17

Thanks for your constructive comments Hugh.

"The park itself has not expressed an opinion" - no, but i think the Friends are the closest thing to that wondrous yet unsentient landform being able to express a view. I'll let them explain their thinking further.

Ben

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on May 18, 2018 at 10:28

Fair point. Having said that, the view of FoFP cannot be taken to be broadly representative whereas the results delivered by the significant amount of hard work you put into the survey can be said to be so.

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Permalink Reply by Arkady on May 18, 2018 at 18:04

Hi Tris

If you have a peruse of our boundary justification document I'm sure you'll appreciate that that is very far from being a fair categorisation. We've been extraordinarily careful (vastly more than most any other proposal, from what the Council officers tell us) to reflect people's views when forming the boundary, and this is just the latest round of consultation.

I'm open to correction on this, but I'm not sure that the Localism Act gives a neighbourhood Plan any say at all on events in the park anyway. It gives powers over development planning. And as the park is Metropolitan Open Land that would be extremely limited power in the park itself. The Friends' main concern from the perspective of a Neighbourhood Plan is to prevent inappropriate development on the fringe of the park, and in that sense our proposed boundaries would give us no say at all on developments in Harringay (though some in Haringey!).

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on May 18, 2018 at 18:43

I wonder if a solution might be then to redraw the boundary to only include the fringes of the park that border the NF area?

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on May 18, 2018 at 18:56

Neighbourhood Forums have an explicit role in the development of Haringey’s Local Plan which is the overriding plan for the borough. The local plan has specific policies for the use and development of Finsbury Park including open space and biodiversity policies and possible future policies regarding culture and leisure use so yes, the Neighbourhood Forum would be major influencers in these areas.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on May 18, 2018 at 19:11

Arcady, I am concerned when you say the the FoFP have insisted on the inclusion of the park as their “price” for cooperating with the NF. The park does not belong to them and it is not for them to decide on this approach. The park an asset for all those who live and work around it. Including it for no valid reason but the wishes of a friends group is wholly unacceptable.

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Permalink Reply by Arkady on May 18, 2018 at 20:42

Again, that's a rather extreme characterisation of what I said. Perhaps best to let them clarify their position.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on May 18, 2018 at 21:56

Precisely. The decision to include the Park was made by those wishing to set up an NF, not the FoFP. Including Metropolitan open space requires justification and the NF needs to explain why it is a good thing for all those in the area. The only justification I’ve seen is “As for the park itself - the reason for including it as a whole was because that was the express desire of the Friends of Finsbury Park“. And it does seem that the desire to include the FoFP was the deciding factor as Arcady says above “Members of the Friends of Finsbury Park, regardless of where they live, will have influence on FSPGNF as we expect them to be an affiliate member of the Forum. That would be less true of the park were excluded!”

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on September 28, 2018 at 15:20

Thanks for the update, Tris. Good decision.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on September 28, 2018 at 17:04

Just had a chance to skim through the minutes and noticed the following:

The decision to not include the Park in the designation was not based on the consultation responses but on a separate governance duty to ensure that local influence is maintained in the Park

'not based on the consultation responses' - I wonder why this is emphasised? Do they protest too much or is there some other logic? (There were, by the way, only 19 responses. Of those, seven were by large organisations like Historic England, one from a councillor (Barbara Blake) and only 11 from residents.)