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 DTW on
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Chris - you said it yourself - they will be keen so make sure that never happens again. That's the power you can exhort there.
As for the planning committee - I'm not talking about being able to put vote anyone. Rather have councillors and officers do their job properly. In order for that you just need a disruptive force - and for an officer that can be a councillor that is interested and understands the rules.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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Clive Carter is a Cllrs who is interested and understands the planning rules - he built on the work of others and directly helped bring the Council to book over Ally Pally, where the abuse was flagrant.
Nonetheless the Council quickly returned to a state of full hubris - how could someone like Clive make a difference to Hawes and Curtis or, for that matter my interest (Hornsey Town Hall)?
Over HTH the Lib Dems inc Clive 'called-in' the HTH decision and the Cabinet simply ignored them (and the 12 'revolting' Labour Cllrs who called it in for more precise reasons).
The reason HTH was not defeated was because the Cabinet rules - that'd be true no matter which Cllr was involved, wouldn't it? Or are you saying that some form of subtle Cllr-on-Planner nudging would do the trick?
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First thing I would say is don't view it in absolutes. Not sure anything could be done now for Hawes and Curtice but that really isn't my point. If you accept the premis that the council are a) hubristic b) happy to follow officer without question c) happy to see tall buildings thrown up without question - then it's surely more a case of mitigating and not stopping.
At present there is no standing organisation, political or otherwise to either temper the council or oppose if necessary. The infrstructure would need to be built now to prevent abuses 3/4 years down the line.
Going back to Hughs point about building the political. I would use Hawes and Curtis and Hampden to collect emails and use this group to build awareness about future developments. Even if you can get close in council elections you then at least create a mental pause in councillors minds before blindly signing off developments. "If we don't oppose this then the few hundred votes needed for my opponent will be there"
It's not a question of winning everything or stopping development, just preventing abuses. And as far as I can see that will do more than anything else being proposed currently. Unless people are happy for more 14 story blocks to be thrown up as they are now in keeping with the area...
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Thanks DTW - I appreciate this 'trickle-down' approach is a way forward. It validates the world-view that, eventually, reasonableness will prevail if promoted in a gentle way - 'we live in a Democracy after all'.
Sadly I don't see that - I see it starting in the school playground where the bullies asserted themselves, grew up and now refine their assertiveness in the 'real world' - the bullies stamp over 'reasonableness' every time. To win you seem to need to beat them at their own game.
Can we win by meeting aggression with (subtle) aggression? I accept that 'public opinion' is a motive force, but I'm not sure that the threat of losing the next ward election is real. To follow your lead, are we sure that if there's enough public hooha, things can be changed, decisions rescinded?
If so (and assuming we're not going to 'occupy' the Civic Centre), then maybe the reality is that, unless there's a dedicated campaign by a clever group of locals, we've lost.
I see campaigners all over the borough trying to get Big Daddy (the Council) to change 'his' mind (it seems a very male world inside the Council). People don't seem to accept that our collective apathy brought us the totalitarianism but we really only have ourselves to blame - most people don't give a stuff.
I see the attraction of sedition - guess satire would also work well - how about a regualr comedty slot 'KoberNite'? Haranguey?
The nature of the campaigning strategies I've seen seems to breed a 'hate the council' attitude that is totally counter-productive. The Council defend decisions to the hilt, exhausting local efforts. We don't want them abolished, we just want them to improve so that they who pay the piper call the tune.
People seem to labour under so many misapprehensions - they appear to think, for instance, that it's the Cllrs themselves who are directly responsible for the work the Council do - as if it were Cllrs who don overalls and empty the rubbish etc, so when the streets are dirty they 'blame' Cllrs personally. The thousands of Council Officers are practically invisible and that's I guess exactly how they want it - they get the goldmine, Cllrs to get the shaft (apologies Bill Clinton).
To me the answer might be in transparency and participation.
1) Every email, memo, calendar entry and document that is not exempt to be placed on the Council website in an organised manner. Provision for 'exempt' material to me made.
2) Internet 'voting' on every issue. Participatory budgeting.
This seems to hack away at 'representative' democracy but I think it enhances it by allowing people to look over the shoulder at everything done in our name. As you say, collecting facts about calumny will really help, but how about we ask all the campaigners to get together and form a 'shadow council'?
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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Not all 49 Labour councillors are the same. Many of them are frustrated by being excluded from the real decision-making processes. The 'cabinet' structure poisons the chance for back-bench councillors to have any influence, and boy do they exploit it. The Progress gang puts their acolytes into the committee chair jobs. Whatever discussions happen with the officers who do the donkey work, will be done through the very rigid hierarchy.
Tottenham in particular - 27 seats - will always vote Labour. Most voters don't do more than turn up and put their crosses in the rose-clad box because, quite rightly, the Labour Party is more likely to have at least a theoretical commitment to social justice. The brand prevails. So trying to run Independents, which we have considered, is very unlikely to succeed. But what could happen now is the selection of a fresh group of new councillors, plus keeping the more Left ones in place, and shifting the council's direction. We could be run by Momentum by 2018.However - this may make little difference. All councillors have to stick to planning law (in theory). If LBH does not produce plans for 10,000 new dwellings in Tottenham in this decade, they are threatened with being taken over by City Hall which would run a direct administration. Mayor Khan has so far proved himself on the side of the big developers so picture the scene...
My personal choice has been to join the Labour Party as that's the only way to have any influence on any of this, jumping up and down as a single pissed-off human does nothing except give you ulcers. £4 a month, half that for concessions. You have to be a member for 12 months to stand as a representative, or for 6 months to vote in the selection meetings, so get in there now to be able to help choose those candidates next year.
Yes I had to break a lifetime's pledges to never join any political party, but things are desperate now.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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It's worth remembering how we got to where we are now. Prior to 2000 all local authorities had a committee structure. Because of the range of responsibilities and services provided by local authorities there were dozens of committees, each requiring committee members, so in theory almost every elected councillor had some power and influence as the committee posts had to be filled.
The committee model had the perceived disadvantages of being expensive, cumbersome and decision making wasn't predictable. It was also difficult for Government to directly influence individual local authorities as decision making was held in the hand of thousands of councillors rather than one Mayor or Leader per council.
The Local Government Act 2000 made available four governance options for councils – leader/cabinet, executive mayor, mayor and council manager and a ‘streamlined’ committee system for shire districts with populations of less than 85,000. Subsequently, the mayor and council manager option was removed, leaving most councils in England with only the first two governance options.
In theory local authorities can go back to a committee structure under the provisions of the Localism Act but having a centralised Leader/Mayor model makes this difficult to achieve - would the very people whose role you are seeking to abolish vote for that or seek NOT to influence other councillors to retain the Cabinet model?.
Planning Committee is one of the exceptions. It has a quasi-judicial role and was left more or less as was. But of course it is now subject to the influence of a much more powerful Leader/Cabinet than it was pre-2000.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thanks for that background Michael. Do you feel that the new forms of governance work in general better or worse than the old ones. Is it easy to summarise why?
With respect to planning decisions in particular, do you have any opinion about what the changes have meant for the decisions we're getting?
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Judgements of better and worse depend on what you want from governance. Some local authorities spend £1bn+ per year so if you are looking for them to act more like businesses it's a positive thing. If your view of a local authority is that it should set its policies and priorities as part of an inclusive, democratic process then no.
Planning has always been different from other functions. It operates within a well established legal framework. Most of the decision making is by officers, not councillors. As several thousand decision are made by a London local authority each year it's hard to see how that could be otherwise. It does have two advantages though. All decisions must firstly abide by law and then by policy. In this particular case though policy seems fluid, open to interpretation and local policies can be overridden by policies up the chain of hierarchy. Planning's main draw back (in my opinion) is that the power sits with the applicant. As there is no third party right to appeal a decision (I.e an appeal brought by the public) and an appeal by an applicant cost them nothing but, in some cases, the local authority a fortune, there is little enthusiasm to say No.
There are clear incentives now to accept development that would have rejected only a decade ago. Business rates retention makes approving large commercial development very attractive and the Community Infrastructure Levy, based on £x per sq metre means more floors on relatively small footprint can rake it in.
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I really encourage you to stand m8 - the vital thing is that reps are able to articulate and you are good at that.
You can't please all the people all the time so I guess you'll hit the brick wall of division that plagues us - an unwanted by-product of the progress we've made in the toleration of difference.
Cllrs seem to be in the position where if only the public would stop, listen and think about what is said they'd see how right-thinking Cllrs are but people make snap value judgements based on prejudice that reinforces their world view.
Cllrs (and Officers) end up writing off a big slice of the public as incapable of being reasoned with - hence the disconnect.
Must be awful if you're a Cllr to know that most people don't care and won't engage - they are the majority so how do you get round that? That's one big reason I think people should be able to vote in a meaningful way on every issue - ram it down their throats that they only have themselves to blame and issue prizes for voting - local government is a postcode lottery anyway :)
One anarchic issue is the revelation (well, to me anyway) that planning law is being regularly flouted. That cannot stand - I completely and utterly disagree with the horrible right-wing ethos that underlies current planning but whatever the rules, they really need to be followed or planning becomes above the law.
I don't know enough about planning and it seems buried in secrecy (particularly the input from planning officers that went into the 'recommendations' they make). I only know that once, when the Hornsey Town Hall planning permission they'd granted themselves ran out as it must three years later, they openly discussed and decided on a token demolition of a small breeze-block building because, under planning laws, if you do that you are deemed to have started the work and so planning permission is extended indefinitely.
I find so much wrong with this but I don't think it is at all against planning law so don't have a factual basis for a complaint. My complaint was that if the Council themselves use this type of trick, the message to unscrupulous developers is clear - bend the law to your advantage. As so much planning seems to be judgements on competing issues rather than simply right or wrong, the 'spirit' of planning law really matters as I saw this as a form of corrupt thinking that no council should ever undertake, let alone openly discuss as wise.
If, over our Borough, we are subject to the mockery of technically illegal decisions thrust upon us that is an argument for serious civil disobedience. Our whole 'social contract' depends on the fair application of agreed rules - if they won't play by them, why should we? The heart of the Labour project is the devotion to 'social justice' so it really is no justice, no peace.
Has anyone taken the time to have a serious go at individual Cllrs on the planning cttee? Drawn up a list of all the ways in which they are party to this rule-breaking? At least get it more clearly on the record?
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Chris. For what it's worth the Ham and High says that the Supervision Committee ( forget the correct term ) has directed that the HTH sale cannot go ahead and be sent back for reconsideration.
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Wouldn't hold your breath John. The Scrutiny Committee can ask that the decision goes back but they have little power. The original decision can still be upheld.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Are any of the bookies in Crouch End offering odds of how long it will be before HTH is accidentally burnt down during "careful refitting"?
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