Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Resident-led Neighbourhood Forums Take Hold in Haringey - What does it mean for Harringay?
A neighbourhood forum for Crouch End, the first in Haringey, was approved by the Council last December. Plans for forums in Highgate and Stroud Green are also in the offing. To the south Stamford Hill have been trying to get Hackney Council to approve one and following the Finsbury Park regeneration conference last year, a steering group has been formed to discuss founding a Finsbury Park Neighbourhood Forum.
So what might all this mean for Harringay? Does it mean we should be looking at this too?
First a quick brush-up on what a neighbourhood forum is.
Created by the 2011 Localism Act, designated neighbourhood forums are organisations or groups empowered to lead the neighbourhood planning process in a neighbourhood area where there is no town or parish council (ie. including parts all of London).
Neighbourhood planning enables communities to shape development in their areas through the production of Neighbourhood Development Plans, Neighbourhood Development Orders and Community Right to Build Orders.
Neighbourhood Development Plans become part of the Local Plan and the policies contained within them are then used in the determination of planning applications. Neighbourhood Development Orders and Community Right to Build Orders allow communities to grant planning permission either in full or in outline for the types of development they want to see in their areas.
The policies produced cannot block development that is already part of the Local Plan. What they can do is shape where that development will go and what it will look like.
The process starts with defining boundaries. Everything then has to be approved by the Council. I've heard that to our south those behind the nascent Stroud Green forum are likely to include Finsbury Park within their borders. What might this and any other influence these groups wield mean for Harringay if we don't have a champion?
Is it time for Harringay to think about a Harringay Neighbourhood Forum? (This question was also raised on the site four years back)
Here's a map drawn up current and possible forum boundaries drawn up by by Stroud Green resident and HoL member Arkady.
Tags for Forum Posts: neighbourhood forum, neighbourhood planning
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
-
The Harringay boundary drawn up by Arkady looks sensible. Suppose the next question is what would be the next step? An informal chat with the Stroud Green people to see how they got to where they are at the moment?
-
Permalink Reply by Hugh on
-
It does. As he says, it's taken from HoL's map.
As to a next step, I guess the first port of call would be to gauge if there are enough people interested in forming a group and organising the first stages and seeing if there's enough of a local appetite.
I suspect Arkady would be happy to chat.
-
Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
-
HoLs line on Harringay's borders has always been slightly too 'expansive' for my tastes.
Traditionally, and I'm talking about at least until the 1980s, 'Harringay' was really only a narrow wedge between Tottenham and Hornsey. It included all of Green Lanes from Endymion Road to Harringay Gardens and included all of what we now call the Gardens, south of St Ann's Road, but went no further west than Harringay Road. Turnpike Lane Station, Duckett's Common, Langham Road, Afloxton Avenue and West Green Road, were/are (in my opinion) not traditionally part of Harringay. Today's Chesnut's Park and school were also part of South Tottenham and not Harringay.
Residents of the Ladder always referred to themselves as being Hornsey residents and certainly not Harringay residents. This allegiance still continues today and can often be seen in comments on HoL.
It may be in the interests of property to owners to bump up the values of their properties by imagining that they live somewhere other than where they actually do, see the famous Kilburn/ West Hampstead border conflict. But I find it rather patronising, just to say that Harringay in 2016 has now moved from where it once was. I guess many Hale Village residents in Tottenham may also want to believe that they live in Walthamstow, but it just isn't the case. I could also give myself the name 'King of Siam', imagine that I am king, but I still wouldn't be.
Harringay West Station being another case in point. The suffix West or East, North or South was generally added to station names, when they weren't actually situated in the area they were supposed to serve. Enfield West tube station (now Oakwood) being another example. I see no reason, why people should want to pretend they live further away from Tottenham than they do and a Wikipedia article on Harringay that squeezes out as much area as possible for Harringay is incorrect. In fact, I resent it.
-
-
They started off smaller than they are today and got extended on the basis of resident request and historical research. Remember this was done 2007 - 2009, when no one was fighting over a Harringay epithet.
-
-
I think it about an area that shares similar issues Stephen, and in this area these seems to have a focus on the stretch of Green Lanes between the Park and Turnpike Lane.
-
-
With regards to Harringay's historical roots, Stephen, in its north eastern parts, take for example Harringay Fire Station in Conway Road. As for bang up to date, Geoff Amabalino from the Woodlands Park RA thinks that the borders are pretty much right, The are countless references to Harringay being the commonly used name for the Warehouse District right up to the eighties, which I can dig up if you like.
So what I'm saying Stephen is there was no invention. In as much as its possible to pin this sort of thing down, there was a genuine attempt to find where people in history and people today think Harringay is. By the time we'd finished there seemed to be a broad sense of the map being about right. But I accept that these things aren't set in stone and people do have different views. Your construct of Harringay is always going to different to mine. Mine was changed significantly by drawing the map. As I said, my first effort was pretty much like yours, but when I stated digging around in eh history and talking to people from Vale/Hermitage and from around Woodlands Park, my view changed.
-
-
My brother lived nearly twenty years on Conway Road. No way was it ever part of Harringay..
But I'm glad you feel the need to justify..
-
Permalink Reply by WightmanPaul on
-
We often have mail referring to Wightman Road as 'Stroud Green'. I don't know about the history but reality puts us in Harringay.
-
-
Yes, I get stuff addressed to me as being in Finsbury Park because of the N4 postcode.
-
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
-
I think there's a bit more to the Stamford Hill one than meets the eye. It's all to do with relaxing planning law up there.
-
Permalink Reply by Arkady on
-
To be clear, the steering group is for the creation of a Finsbury Park Neighbourhood Forum which might or might not include Stroud Green. I'll report back after the next meeting.
-
Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
-
Careful what you wish for.
The Labour Party's approach (the Sustainable Communities Act 2007) to devolving power seemed very popular among councils yet Labour lost the 2010 election. The Tories then foisted on us the lie of the 'big society' embodied by the Localism Act 2011, which guaranteed big extra profits for developers and destroyed much of the community's power over development, causing the free-for-all and arguably paving the way for the overheated property market, housing crisis, social cleansing, 'poor doors' etc
From my experience most people seem to think a Neighbourhood Forum is what is sounds like but it isn't. It's an unpaid section of the Council's planning department - that's what Cameron meant by the big society - you do it for free so we can reduce the amount of cash we have to give Councils.
It does not mean networking with neighbours in order to do good stuff to increase the quality of our lives and help us get to know each other better. It's a three year journey of drawing up planning policy so only attracts people who like reading planning policy documents, of which there are quite a few that open to reveal more like Russian Dolls.
The proof of the pudding can be sampled in the Neighbourhood Forums that surround us - look at the websites - anything going on that excites you or earns your respect? Didn't think so.
The new Mayor of Harringay
A big possibility that has been missed I think is that, in the 2007 act, for the first time in London, the same 'Parish' approach can be adopted. That means a local council that can appoint a Mayor - my vote goes to Hugh :)
Here's a 1920's photo of a previous Mayor of Hornsey in Crouch End:
Another provision in Labour's law was granting the Neighbourhood Forum the power to levy a precept (could be around £50/yr for a Band D property).
Local people, having innocently thought that a Neighbourhood Forum is what is sounds like might very well think well of it in their ignorance, but how about if it was costing them each £50/year on top of their Council Tax? Add that to the fact that only a minority of local people even bother to vote for their own local cllrs, what are the chances of them expressing a view?
As local people don't seem to want to get involved locally in any sort of numbers, what we'll end up with is the same old suspects who are active in local affairs (and on this website). They'll end up creating paperwork that rubber-stamps the Tories wish to allow developers free rein and spend a lot of time doing it, whilst letting people think that it's somehow a social network - it isn't and can't do anything not directly planning-law related.
We have enough of a platform for local democracy - there are enough laws and methods for people to get involved and change things for the better - the real problem is that people don't want to. Change that and Harringay will realise more of it's potential. It's why I like this website - it shows more of the 'real' Harringay than any other avenue, a Harringay worth getting to know.
Let this website earn democratic control over Harringay and we'll have a Neighbourhood Forum worthy of the name...
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
