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
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Hugh .. no, I'm not grumpy - honest.I've had my say now and that's good. But if you look back over my comments, you'll see that I was saying the same way back. I recently saw one from 2007 that came up in a discussion.
Just a last thought, do you consider Ashfield, Oakdale, and Hermitage Roads (Vale & Eade) part of Harringay? I certainly don't ! But hey, then as you say, I'm old-fashioned!
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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At first I didn't consider Vale, Hermitage and the Warehouse District part of Harringay. As you may remember back in 2007/08 they weren't in my first shape of Harringay. But, when I published that first shape a good number of people wrote and said, hey what about us!
As a result of those comments I dug around and every reference I could find up to the seventies/eighties (and there were very many) referred to those areas as Harringay. So I did a gallic shrug, mumbled to myself, "Huh, well what do you know" and revised my personal construct of Harringay.
I think the borders in the north east, south east and north, in particular are more vague than east and west. Whenever I speak or write about this, I always make the point that I don't seek to be the arbiter of Harringay's borders and I recognise that in London, areas will always be defined to some extent by personal constructs, particularly at their extremities. I have a clear and very well thought through and soundly-based opinion on where the borders should be, but I recognise that they're my construct. Whilst I want people to agree with me, I recognise their right to disagree and accept that their borders are for them, as valid as mine are (well almost!
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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But how does that work in reality Stephen? I'm in Warham Road N4. The next road along is Seymour Road N8. A matter of a few metres away with back gardens adjoining Would someone living in Seymour claiming to live in Hornsey seem a bit odd? Postcodes were invented to help get the post delivered more efficiently. That's all.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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A good range of people will probably turn up to the first few NF meetings but as they gradually realise it's a talking shop they fade away and leave it to the vested interests, planning wonks, 'civic'-minded and those (like me) who like the sound of their own voice.
A Neighbourhood Forum 'steering group' can consist of just a few people (usually mortgage-payers, rarely renters). They can decide where Harringay is, get a total of 21 signatures from local people (including theirs) and require the Council to endorse them.
So, in effect, four or five people can decide the extent of Harringay. The boundary decision is subject to vociferous single interests - shout loud enough during the meeting and they accommodate. It's the Forum's first taste of 'authority' and is relished. The unelected, self-appointed authoritative decision of unaccountable people, usually for undocumented reasons and with no comeback from the tiny minority of participants who provided 'input' to a groundless decision that divides a silent majority ignorant of what happened 'behind their backs'.
Once the Council files the application, the borders of Harringay get set in concrete, as it were - another 'consultation' checkbox ticked.
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This 'big society' right-wing ideology pits us against each other. NFs inevitably 'annexe' part of another area. The encroached act to protect the rest of their bounds. Hence suspicion and disunity, xenophobia mutating and self-defeat - works every time.
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I share your concerns, but from what I understand that's not a fair representation of what happened in Crouch End......is it?
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Could you please spell out Neighbourhood Forums in full ?
My heart skipped a beat when I saw " NF meetings "
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No quite Michael. They designated the postal office where letters to a particular street were processed. They also replicated, albeit with slight differences, the 1917 borough boundaries.
The N4 postal district, was quite unusual in that it wasn't 'borough based'.
@Hugh I'm referring to things like the removal of the link of 'St Ann's' from the Tottenham page on wikipedia, as well as statements like this: West: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham#West .
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A quick spin around the interwebs brings up something like the following from Wikipedia to explain the pots code numbering system. I read that as meaning that it's largely irrelevant for all purpose but the postal one:
In 1917, as a wartime measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district. This was achieved by designating a sub-area served most conveniently by the head office in each district "1" and then allocating the rest alphabetically by the name of the location of each delivery office.
The boundaries of each sub-district rarely correspond to any units of civil administration: the parishes and hamlets/chapelries with chapels that traditionally define settlement names everywhere in England and Wales or the generally larger broughs; despite this, postal sub-districts have developed over time into a primary reference frame. The numbered sub-districts became the "outward code" (first half) of the postcode system as expanded into longer codes during the 1970s.
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Is exactly what I wrote, except 'rarely' is used, which suits your argument. But which isn't really correct.
N9 (Lower) and N18 (Upper) correspond pretty nigh on with Edmonton, as do E17 (Walthamstow) E10 & E11 (Leyton and Leytonstone), N15 (South) and N17(North) Tottenham or N22(Wood Green)
It's really only N4, as well as the creation of 'Haringey' that causes problems and allows the meaning of the location of Harringay to be twisted. The Harringay you promote is Estate Agent's lingo innit?
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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on
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Haven't different people always referred to different areas in different ways. I was brought up in what I used to refer to as Portobello (because I thought that was trendy). My brother said we lived in Notting Hill (until the film came out and he wanted to dissociate from that). My mother would say we lived in North Kensington. Nowadays the "North" part has been dropped. These things are very fluid. Does it actually matter? The local estate agents now refer to the "desirable Ladbroke estate"...probably the most historically accurate but no one has ever called it that until now....
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Atoinette, it does have some importance and I've explained why I think that elsewhere, but it's certainly not where I think the meat of this particular discussion should be.
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Because the discussion isn't going where you want it to Hugh? I think it's totally on theme and all to do with this naming of particular areas i.e. labelling them. Some for the better, some for the worse.
@Antionette My paternal grandmother was born and grew up in North Kensington and her mother in Notting Hill, so I understand exactly what you mean.
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