Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Hawes+Curtis plan breaches Mayor's need for affordable housing
Just had a look at their plans, for the Planning Meeting this Thursday.
I would have thought that the plan is disqualified as their provision of anything but private sale is inadequate. The mayor's manifesto says 'I’ll work with boroughs to deliver on my target of half of all new homes being genuinely affordable'. I don't know how much of his manifesto has been confirmed as policy but that is his target.
"The viability assessment submitted with the application sets out that no affordable housing can viably be provided [the usual starting position]. The independent viability assessment that was commissioned by the Council did not agree with this position and subsequently the provision of 12%, equating to 16 shared ownership units with the NHS facility or 17.3% equating to 26 shared ownership units if a commercial unit is proposed has been proposed. This is confirmed to be the maximum reasonable amount of affordable housing."
So where is the genuinely affordable housing in this scheme?
Tags for Forum Posts: 590-598 Green Lanes, hawes & curtis
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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Just the messenger here.
A Labour Mayor, who realises that 20% 'discount' off commercial rent is simply not affordable. The new flats that will be built in FagPacket Tower above 7Sis tube are unlikely to be much less that around £2000 pm I guess, as even a scruffy 1bed is up to £1500 around here. So £1600pm, in the special deal that allows the building of a 23 storey tower that no-one here wants but will provide 165 dwellings. That rent is from net wage, so needs around 1/3 more in salary. Around 29k p.a. London Living Wage £9.75ph = c £19k for 35h week. Haringey median wage, latest found figure, £24,527. More than I've ever earned.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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>>only the market can find an equilibrium
The market is encumbered with legislation! All the players are taxed (unless foreign). There are different rates on different types of transactions, according to how rich you are. There are controls on how things are advertised and the legal process. There are subsidies and associations that make no profit. All these 'unbalance' the market.
Why doesn't the government get out of the way and leave it to the 'free' market? Every single politician of every stripe will tell you that not only is that madness, but nowhere on the developed earth does it happen.
Capitalism suffers from major, glaring faults that result in boom and bust. Left to its own devices, its 'invisible hand' would happily see us living in death-traps if developers were able to take a profit and run, leaving the state to clean up the mess.
Who pays for the roads, schools, hospitals, parks etc that help make a place valuable?
We need markets to be as free flowing as possible but they simply won't work unless they are regulated - it's a mark of our civilisation how well (fairly) we do that.
Right-wingers promote 'laissez-faire' but we saw in 2008 how 'light-touch regulation' brought us to our knees. Governments govern housing, it's just a question of which policies work. I don't know but I do know that the property market will continue to be seen as a failure until ordinary working people can afford reasonable accommodation.
A fair days pay for a fair days work - it's as simple as that.
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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on
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In your "for only those that can afford it" London, someone still needs to drive your bus to work, and serve your coffee/food, and wash your floors, and take care of your children. If you need those people along with the professional classes, they need a roof over their head.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Within the world of historically low interest rates, lenders willing to lend on the basis of a tenant's income, short term assured tenancy contracts, and the cost of income protection being put onto the tenant (where have we seen that before) in the form of "tenancy fees"... enter the prospective tenant. The deference you are treated with as a home owner by estate agents is the complete opposite of how you are treated as a tenant. You pay their "fees", they use it to engage a certified agency in a creditworthiness check on you so they can buy some "landlord income protection", otherwise known as payment protection insurance. If your creditworthiness is not good enough you've just spent £400 finding that out and get sneered at by the 20 year old in the office who called you up to tell you.
Nice to see you back Phil.
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In addition to the lack of genuinely social or affordable housing, there is so, so much more wrong with this development that it's hard to know where to start:
* a 5-storey block looming less than 10m away over 2-storey houses, but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is;
* a 4-storey block overlooking the back rooms and gardens of existing neighbouring 2-storey properties, but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is;
* in the same 4-storey block, a terrace walkway for front doors on the top floor that absolutely won't overlook the neighbours privacy because it's "only for access" say Planning Officers;
* BRE daylight and sunlight guidelines apparently only count if you're a developer arguing that the figures are good, but not if they show that existing neighbouring properties will have levels reduced to significantly below the guidelines "major adverse";
* a neighbouring property currently under construction will have one of the blocks less than 1m away, and 3 of its rooms with single aspect windows will now have zero light coming in, but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is;
* the density exceeds London Plan, but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is (despite the LP saying it can only be breached in exceptional circumstances);
* the density far exceeds the Site Allocation DPD in H'gey's Local Plan (133 vs the proposed 73), but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is.
* a number of the dwellings breach the Lifetime Homes Standards - but the architect denies this, so it's ok;
* recommendations from the QRP not delivered, but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is;
* breaches both Haringey's and London Plan policy on Tall/Taller buildings, but we all know now that that one's not worth the paper it's written on;
* doesn't meet Haringey's required housing mix, but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is because of the "constraints of the site"!;
* "most" of the habitable rooms in the new development receive "adequate daylight!", but that's ok because Planning Officers say it is;
* 133 extra dwellings will have absolutely no impact on parking spaces in the local area - because the developer conducted a survey covering 5 points in time across 2 whole days and Haringey's Transportation team agree it's all ok.
The developer was so fortunate that there weren't any mature trees on the site that might have impeded things - oh, yes, because they happened to have been cut down prior to planning application.
So, basically, staff in Haringey's Planning Services team will recommend and Councillors on the Planning Committee will give permission for pretty much anything of any height to be built on any plot of land anywhere, regardless of any planning guidelines and regardless of how badly it affects existing neighbours.
More and more of these are being shovelled through at a growing rate. Maybe it's time Haringey residents considered if we have the right Councillors.
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If they don't build enough homes in Haringey then the planning function is taken over by the GLA I believe. Expect more of this.
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That's just an easy cop out for them to not do their jobs properly - it's not either / or.
No-one is saying new homes shouldn't be built - we just need them to be proportionate to the existing locale. Which obviously doesn't mean 7 or 14 storey blocks which are more than double/treble/quadruple the height of any other building nearby.
They can build plenty of homes in Haringey - but they could at least try to do it without harming the lives of existing residents.
How about they actually start building something reasonable in the "Growth Areas" or the "Areas of Change" instead of steamrolling these ridiculously excessive developments through in designated so-called "Areas of Limited Change".
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Can you get your local Cllr to get planning to confirm that they are breaching guidelines in the hope that we can use their statements to challenge them?
It'll also be valuable to ask the Chair of the Planning Cttee to confirm that he has the power to agree to these guidelines being broached when he gets this advice by planning officers.
Is there any way we can discover where and when this happens in Haringey and thus how often?
If they've created a culture of breaking their own guidelines we can help get them back on track - after all it's us that suffers, not them.
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...or 23 storeys, in the middle of two and three storey houses.
That will be the one that gets referred to in PhD's for the rest of this century as the perfect example of the arrogance of The Establishment, and why the voters suddenly kick off.
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But Pam, it might be more than that.
I'm guessing that policy must be 'checked' by Council Officers so that it's legal and eventually that means that Officers end up dictating policy so it's their fault. Cllrs can't be trusted to make policy on their own because it would fall foul of the many 'guidelines' there are, guidelines that only Officers are paid to be aware of and follow.
So what I guess happens is that Cllrs say to Officers, 'we want less unemployment' and Officers tell Cllrs what can be done to meet that goal. Officers then carry out the work.
Because the problems (e.g. unemployment ) are so intractable there's very little Cllrs alone can do about it in reality so they get steered into 'aspirations' and equipped to defend progress by officers giving them stats to quote.
The 2007-2016 Community Strategy is:
A place for diverse communities that people are proud to belong to
This is pure meaningless BS - it's what Cllrs do all day, make policies like this. They're all so vague that the Council can do the opposite anytime they want as they're judge and jury. Their own Council Officers can examine any policy decision, it appears, and judge it 'conformant'. I guess that's because they know that a good policy is one that a coach and horses can be driven through, effectively meaning that no policy means anything at all and Cllrs should be ashamed of themselves for participating in this charade.
can legally be declared to be OK (by their own Council Officers, who knew this would happen).
There was just a 'mini-revolt' by 12 Labour Cllrs over policy and the 'monitoring officer' examined their complaints and declared they were wrong - so who's in charge exactly? To me this is a proof that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
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How can you produce any number of "affordable homes" if you only build 2 storey high buildings? It just doesn't add up.
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