BREAKING NEWS: Tories finally drop Danebury demolition disaster

The Conservatives have finally bowed to the inevitable and are going to drop their dreadful plans to demolish the top end of Danebury Avenue.

A report going before councillors next Monday, 2nd November, will cite unfavourable economic conditions as the reason for the abandonment of the plans. I wonder whether that's really the reason - it seems to me far more likely that council elections next May would have become a referendum on their plans - and the Tories would certainly have lost.

I'm delighted that, for whatever reason, these calamitous plans have bitten the dust: I've been working hard with residents on the Alton for almost two years to stop these crazy plans and put forward new, affordable and sustainable ideas. We need new ideas that:

* Don't send thousands of cars and articulated lorries down Danebury Avenue
* Don't reduce the amount of affordable homes to rent in the area
* Don't reduce the number of family-sized homes in the area
* Don't concrete over the green in front of Roehampton Library
* Don't threaten Roehampton's local shops by opening a massive supermarket
* Don't close three youth clubs and open just one tiny one in their place

That's not really asking that much. It was only the dogmatic arrogance of Putney's Conservatives who were the ONLY ones supporting these devastating, flawed and deeply unpopular plans, that kept them alive for so long, blighting the lives of so many residents.

I'm delighted to have played my part in bringing this flight of foolishness crashing down.

The Conservatives have wasted years and years endlessly talking about their intention to regenerate Roehampton and they have delivered absolutely nothing. Consultations have been ignored, consultants hired at huge expense to taxpayers have accomplished nothing; not a single life has been transformed for the better; Roehampton remains the most deprived part of the constituency.

This is simply not good enough.

Roehampton has been run by the Conservatives for thirty years: and it's just got worse and worse. It's had Conservative councillors for nearly twelve: and they've achieved exactly nothing for the area - name one thing they've done for you that's made your life better.

If that isn't a more compelling case for change in Roehampton, I don't know what is.

Here's the report that consigns this disaster to the dustbin.