Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
WCC Launch Legal Fight To Save Wards Corner
We have formally notified Haringey Council of our plans to bring a legal challenge to its July 2012 decision to grant planning permission to Grainger's proposal to demolish Wards Corner.
We are presenting a range of arguments to the Council challenging both their disregard for their own policy documents and their failure to carry out adequate analyses and assessments of the site that would enable them to make an informed decision about the impacts of Grainger's proposals.
This is the second legal challenge we've made to Haringey's decision making. Back in 2010 the High Court of Appeal quashed the permission granted to Grainger's previous scheme as a result of our judicial review of Haringey Council's failure to comply with their equalities duties.
This is not just about Wards Corner. Our last challenge set a legal precedent ensuring that the equalities impact of all major developments have to be assessed. That process should have been common sense but actually it had to be fought for.
We are not undertaking this legal challenge lightly but sadly this is the only recourse left to the local community is to challenge the Council’s decision through Judicial Review. Given the extent of the Council's regeneration agenda it is imperative that we hold them to account when they take shortcuts in decision making and work against the wishes of local people to force through damaging developments.
This stage of the legal challenge has been funded by the WCC through fund raising activities and the generosity of local people, but we will still need to raise a significant amount to fund the full cost of the Judicial Review, even with support from legal aid. Details of how to donate to our legal fund will follow shortly.
You can read our full press release and the letter to Haringey Council detailing our challenge.
Don't forget to check our website to keep up to date or come to our weekly Monday meeting to get involved. Monday Meetings – 6:30pm Seven Sisters Market, Tottenham (above Seven Sisters Undergroud Station)
Tags for Forum Posts: grainger, judicial review, planning, ward's corner
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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It is sad that it has come to this. Once again, the community is at odds with an arrogant council.
It's sad that we have a council so deaf to those whom it serves, that it bulldozes ahead with its own choices, regardless of what is wanted by most residents.
Sadly again, the council has previous form in this.
Time and again, one sees the council engaging in a policy of deliberately running down a public building over a period in order to justify sale, disposal or demolition. Later, the community is told there is no alternative to a particular course of action - a policy the council settled upon, privately, sometimes years earlier.
The council is cynical. And by their cynical actions, helps to promote contempt for authority.
Sometimes the council sees the error of its ways through public protest and sometimes it only sees the light when it is shone by a Judge.
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Incidentally, the links on the WCC Coalition page ("Judicial Review 2012") may need editing.
While the press release is current, the "Here is the letter to Haringey Council detailing our challenge" is out of date. While it is a link to a letter to the council before claim, its the one of more than three years ago.
Is it possible to post a link to the latest letter before claim on this matter of public interest?
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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Thanks, Clive, I've pointed this out so someone from The Team should get it fixed ASAP, they will be in the weekly meeting at the mo.
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The council too often appears to represent developer interests and not public interest.
The deliberate running down of buildings owned or controlled by the council, to my knowledge, includes: branch libraries (indeed at one point, all branch libraries were threatened); a former town hall (Grade 2 STAR listed, exquisite Art Deco); a charitable trust's internationally important main asset.
Wards Corner is the latest site to have received the run-it-down and present only-one-alternative - and other readers may know further examples.
Haringey Council currently has 18 building on English Heritage's At Risk Register (here). Two of the building I allude to above, are on this list.
When the council has complete control of a building project (Design, Build, Approval), we can see what it is capable of: Wood Green Shopping City, which is not admired universally as a paradigm of town planning. Or of the promises made for it.
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The Wards Corner building, the part above the tube station, is owned by Transport for London. The market traders have repaired and improved the interior market space at their own expense; the upper floors and corner store are illegally neglected by TfL - there must be damage to the roof as there is evidence that some ceilings are damaged. As it is a building in a conservation area, TfL is mandated to keep the building in good repair - they have made token repairs in the past but now need to get in urgently before more of the roof is compromised.
Other buildings on the larger site - and note it's not just the market, it is the whole block of four streets - are owned by various individuals, housing associations, and Grainger.
Neglect of the Wards Corner complex is laid clearly at that inner core of Haringey Council, which has systematically blocked all attempts to do anything other than raze the area. Since the store was closed 40 years ago, there have been hundreds of requests to use it. TfL have turned them down, and certainly recently this has been at the behest of LBH which dug itself into a hole when it did the deal with Grainger in 2007.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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So the owners of Wards Corner, Transport for London have for 40 years "turned down". . . hundreds of requests to use it". Are there any documents which show this is the case?
Recently [since 2007] "this has been at the behest of LBH". Again are there documents which show this?
From what you say, it was presumably Transport for London who gave a lease/licence(?) to the person/company which has licensed the traders? How does this fit with Haringey's "inner core" systematically blocking all such attempts?
Just to be completely clear, I'm not denying what you say, Pam. You may be right; you may not. I just have a perhaps old-fashioned view that facts and evidence matter.
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Jill who has the lease for the market has two thick folders of requests to use the store. I'm not at home so can't look up the history of LBH's interventions, but it's all there on the WCCC website. I'll see if i can get someone to look up references for you.
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Thanks, Pam. A link to the website page would be helpful. Especially if Jill had all the previous documentation going back over many years. Alternatively, a contact address for Jill would be useful.
I'm not going to make comments before I read it. But I will do my best to read it with an open mind!
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You claim, Clive, that: "Time and again, one sees the council engaging in a policy of deliberately running down a public building over a period in order to justify sale, disposal or demolition".
I wondered which buildings you had in mind, as you initially only mentioned Wards Corner - which the Council didn't own. So it's helpful that you've now listed: all branch libraries, Tottenham Town Hall, and Alexandra Palace.
I know a little about about each of these. And I'm aware that the Council had and still has serious problems in finding capital funding - the money to maintain its buildings.
As you also know, I have no problem whatever in questioning or criticising - privately and publicly - Council decisions which I doubt or disagree with. But I have never seen or heard the slightest piece of evidence to support the conspiracy theory you now put forward: that there has been a deliberate policy of running down buildings.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Alan I'm interested you added Tottenham Town Hall to the list (I had in mind the 1930s masterpiece of Hornsey Town Hall, where the roof was allowed to leak, letting water drip for a long time onto a grand piano). I'd be interested to know how you suspect the council may have neglected Tottenham Town Hall.
A deliberate policy of running down buildings, means not a formal policy, but an informal policy.
My interest in local affairs began when I and other residents noted the deliberate running down of the then Stroud Green Library, with reduction in stock, cuts in opening days and opening hours and always the last in line for benefit or improvements. This happened over a 10 year period. It was common knowledge that the council wanted to flog both Highgate and SG libraries - and then St Anns and then the rest of branch libraries. The impending closure of SG was the last straw for local councillor and deputy council leader at the time (Josie Irwin), who resigned, I believe, in some disgust. I think Josie was one of the more able councillors.
I am pleased to say that the council has reversed all the above in respect of Stroud Green & Harringay library and I have nothing but praise for the whole library service, now.
The council might experience fewer problems in finding capital funding for building maintenance, if it stopped wasting money in other areas, such as PR, over-inflated salaries, various high-overhead funds for disbursement, and unwise misguided legal defences.
Here, in respect of the WC case, the council leader has issued a defiant statement, which suggests the next stop is the court room. I hope that there will be a thorough examination of the circumstances of the passing of a huge sum of tax money to a listed property company.
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You're right, Clive, I should have realised you meant Hornsey Town Hall. Apologies for not reading your post more carefully.
There is a huge difference between not having enough money to maintain and renew buildings, and having a "deliberate policy" to run them down. But now you say what you called a "deliberate policy" is really an "informal policy" - whatever that means.
If you or I plan to replace say, a garden shed, it's unlikely we would pour money into doing it up. But we would make sure it was weatherproof. So if the Council have decided to replace a building they will do the same. But deliberately running down a building - and reducing its sale value - is the last thing a property owner does.
I have no idea about a roof leak in Hornsey Town Hall. I can tell you about lots of other leaking roofs - none of them due to deliberate policies formal or informal.
Currently I can't tell you what goes in the Kobunker, but I can tell you that in my fourteen years on the Council, I have heard nothing to support your conspiracy theory. And that includes conversations with other councillors; attending Labour Group meetings - and at one time being on the Property Committee. (Now abolished.)
I know Josie Irwin. As I recall, the Iraq War was the major factor in her decision. Now that did involve a conspiracy.
(Tottenham Hale Ward Councillor till 2014)
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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The story has hit Planning magazine today (the trade jouirnal for Town Planners). You need a subscription to read the article but an extract below.
"In June, the London Borough of Haringey gave permission for a scheme by developer Grainger to demolish and replace existing buildings at the Wards Corner site with an indoor market, restaurant, shops and 196 new homes.
Now a coalition of community activists is taking the first steps to challenge the decision on the grounds that it conflicts with the council's own planning policy and that inadequate assessments were carried out.James Skinner from the Wards Corner Community Coalition said: "If we want to build upon our unique, independent business-led town centre here in Tottenham, we have no choice but to oppose Grainger's current proposals, whatever the financial strain, until the right plan is developed for the site."
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Michael I noted that, after the planning committee meeting, there was no crowing by the developer lobby - one sensed that they knew they had got away with that battle by the skin of their teeth.
There has long been unlimited monies available to defend what the council would doubtless call matters of principal. The same matters might called by the public, as poor leadership, poor judgement, poor processes and poor decisions.
The council's unlikely to back down. (For the Victoria Climbie enquiry I was told that they spent £3,000,000 on lawyers to avoid responsibility.)
I hope that the (ridiculous) Memory Boxes come up in court - these substitute for the Council Conservation area. Memory Boxes (AKA Memory Panels) are the planning service's way of raising two fingers to the public. A judge may come up with a more elegant description.
Including the last Court of Appeal Hearing, this will be the third time council planning has been in court on this issue.
The Letter before Claim is attached and it makes interesting reading.
- Attachments:
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Letter+before+claim+2012.pdf, 239 KB
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