Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
House prices
Speak to the estate agents, something unprecedented it's happening with the cost of home ownership, especially between wood green tube and ally pally.
It's possible this government may become known as seeing through the largest distribution of wealth from the poor to the rich ever ....
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by David Schmitz on
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I'm not a class warrior; I am a liberal with both a large and small L. But I am very concerned about what I think is a trend in the attitudes and the policies of the Council with regard to regeneration and its possible side-effects.
On Monday the 18th November the Council at its meeting held one of its "Haringey Debates". It being our turn to choose the topic, we chose planning.
Unfortunately, the Labour group brought the debate to an early end by insisting on strict adherence to the rarely enforced rule that proceedings end at 10 pm, and they made it worse with a series of long-winded points of order. As a result I had to shorten drastically a speech which I had prepared on the subject. Moreover, the last couple of sentences were shouted down.
Anyway, here is what I tried to say, the comments on Wards Corner and on Spurs being the most in point for this discussion:
In planning this Borough has lost its way. Three examples.
First, before the upturn in the market, the planning committee often got applications to forego S. 106 monies [contributions to infra structure usually required of developers in exchange for planning permission] The argument was that because the developers’ likely receipts were lower than had been hoped when the developers bought the property, the development would be unviable unless the S. 106 obligations were waived.
To let somebody out of a deal because it has become commercially uncomfortable for them is eccentric. Yet, at no time did the Council ever take the line, “You gambled on the property market, you lost. Sell up at current value so that someone else can buy it for what it’s now worth, make his money and still pay the Borough its due.” Instead, time after time, the Borough gave way and practised “socialism for the rich.”
Second, Ward’s Corner. The Council’s leadership has always been keen on the policy “flatten and build high.” We, having no axe to grind, looked at the merits of what was proposed and found them wanting. In 2011 4 Lib Dems and 1 Lab Councillor threw out a version of the scheme.
Yet in 2012, the planning committee approved a scheme which was virtually identical to the one that had just been rejected.
The new application had the same objections as before – the loss of a locally listed building in a conservation area, the loss of the homes and livelihoods of the people affected and damage to the Latin American community who use the market there.
And in opposing an appeal by the developers against the 2011 refusal, Council officers had said that the development “would result in an overbearing and dominant building which would detract from the character of the … Conservation Area.” Yet the new application was approved on officers’ advice.
Now, there was a difference between the 2011 and 2012 committees. A few weeks before the 2012 meeting, the composition of the committee was changed from 5 Lab and 4 LDs, which it had been for years, to 6 Lab and 4LDs. The change was made unheralded in papers given to us just minutes before the Council’s AGM, a meeting which the Chief Whip is fond of describing as “a ceremonial occasion.”
Now it can be said that the decision has survived judicial challenge. But Courts are tolerant of questionable practice, and it takes a great deal for them to interfere. A decision can easily be “Lousy but Legal” and that’s what this one was.
Last example. Spurs, and in particular, affordable housing. There were two Spurs applications. In September 2010, they promised that half the housing at the southern end of the site should be affordable – not just social but a mixture including key worker, rents of 80% market value and mixed ownership.
Yet, in February 2012, the Council’s leadership agreed that there should be no affordable housing at all. They swallowed whole the argument that any affordable housing of any type and any amount would make this huge scheme unviable; they also said that anyway, a development of purely market rents was necessary to raise the tone of the area. As if somehow the people who live in Tottenham aren’t good enough for it.
This is dangerous, as we can now see from what is proposed across the High Road, where a council housing block and rows of shops with people living above may be knocked down to create a walkway for Spurs fans, as if the people there were mediaeval peasants and the Council were the local hunt.
Tottenham badly needs regeneration. But the welfare of the people who are inconveniently in the way of it has to be given pride of place.
This Borough must cease its uncritical acceptance developers’ special pleading and it must remember that its primary duty is to the people who live here, rather than to those whom it wishes to attract.
Otherwise, this will be a Borough which is strong when standing up to the weak, but weak when standing up to the strong.
Haringey can do better than that.
David Schmitz
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Harringay Ward
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Who was the Labour Councillor added to the committee in 2012?
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The sketch of the people arguing about whether they are really having an argument is possibly the most apposite one, though sadly the sketch of the Yorkshiremen saying how lucky one of them was to have a cardboard box to live in may prove to be even more so.
P.S. Thanks for the compliment!
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The current Liberal Democrat members are David Beacham, Errol Reid, Paul Strang and Juliet Soloman. The Labour members are Ali Demirci, Stuart McNamara, Dhiren Basu, Toni Mallett, Reg Rice and Lorna Reith.
The identity of the particular councillors involved is not significant to the Wards Corner application because at the hearing, there were a number of substitutes, this being made necessary firstly by the (correct) desire of the Council to avoid having people sitting on the panel who had considered the matter before and secondly, in my case, (I was a member of the committee at the time) by the fact that I had a declared position on the matter, as I was working in opposition to the application and with the people who were trying to save the market and heritage buildings.
The point is that the Labour leadership were very sympathetic to the application, and therefore anyone from that group would have naturally felt under an obligation to support it. To give an example of the council's involvement, it had spent large amounts of grant money to facilitate feasibility studies, it had granted options at low prices for the purchase of council-owned land and at one point it had offered its site at Apex House as a site for the affordable housing which a developer of such projects is normally expected to provide.
The natural consequence of altering the committee in this way was therefore to increase the chances of approval being granted.
Perhaps more strikingly, the application was rushed through in just over 9 weeks and was done without prior consultation with the design panel, this being a normal practice for large developments in order to raise the quality of the architectural design before it goes through the approval process. This omission led one member of the design panel to say “we were all critical of the design – I think the words I used were ‘abysmal’ and ‘unworthy of a conservation area.'”
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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The re-jigged numbers were to reflect the changed makeup of the council post the last election, so they claimed. They neatly included the councillor who had voted against Grainger at the previous meeting, and surprise!!! she changed her mind, and voted for the 'new' plan. The only difference was that they had lopped off the penthouse, made no change to the hugeness of the bloody thing.
The regular planning ctte make-up gets dropped for our 'special' meetings as previous members may not stand. Will be interesting to see who they have left for when the Community Plan goes before the committee.
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WHO WAS IT!?
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The video has disappeared from the website archive so I cant look it up, I remember Reg Rice was chairing the latest one. Six Labour inc Cllr Rice, 4 LIbdems. All fresh to the Grainger plan, except the necessary revisit from the reformed Cllr Christophides. Cllr Basu (Seven Sisters) IIRC, who spoke not one word. The rest of the Enclave were shimmering away quietly in the back row.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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"The re-jigged numbers were to reflect the changed makeup of the council post the last election, so they claimed."
"So they claimed"? Another of your previously raised points, Pam. Where you seem to suggest once again that the two political groups were not following the law on proportionality in the allocation of places in Council decision-making committees.
I may be wrong, but I don't recall any such claim. The LibDem Chief Whip at the time was, I think, Cllr Monica Whyte - nobody's fool and someone ready and able to argue her corner with toughness and persistence.
Please bear in mind as well that during the current council term the LibDem representation fell by two - Cllrs Lynn Weber and Matt Davies became independents. Committee proportions had to change to reflect that fact.
Can I propose HoL recognition of "Pam's Law" - like Godwin's Law. The new adage states that in any HoL online thread —regardless of topic — someone inevitably brings up Wards Corner.
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Because there is a huge pool of anger that doesn't take much to stir up. It's not over yet.
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But Pam, I'm not asking people to stop raising the issues. Nor that they forget; and even less insisting that they forgive. (Personally, I rarely do either.)
But focusing anger and attention on Wards Corner allows the Tories "Labour" councillors running Haringey to continue with their social cleansing programme in North Tottenham. It also lets them avoid effective criticism and opposition to their "regeneration" plans elsewhere in Tottenham. Currently with what looks to me like a fake Janet and John consultation enabling them to pretend it's what residents want.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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