Local Guardian reports on Putney Place

The Wandsworth Guardian was at the Putney Place meeting last Thursday, and you can read their report of the meeting here.



Local residents have also set up a blog to help people keep in touch with what's happening:
http://saveputneyfromthetowers.blogspot.com

Tonight's Putney Place meeting

I'm just back from the Putney Society-organised meeting between residents and the developers at St Mary's Church which I was able to address briefly.

Over 300 people turned up - as you can see from the photo below the hall was packed - as was the upstairs gallery. It's really pleasing that so many turned up over what is such an important issue; though I'm a little surprised at how few Putney councillors bothered to attend.

I'll write more about my thoughts on the meeting in the next few days but I don't think the developers' team had a good night. In all likelihood they were never going to - this is a massively unpopular plan and deservedly so. But they did themselves no favours by arguing that white was black: that the plans were not intrusive, that they would not overshadow, that public transport capacity could accommodate them, that the towers were just what Putney needed.

I think one resident summed the scheme up perfectly when they said that this was a plan to win architecture prizes for daring, not a plan for the people. And the presentation was pitched at architects rather than local residents: it was a very, very poor show and I wonder why the public relations person present hadn't sat them down and gone through it with them before they spoke.

I've had almost 300 surveys back so far, and I can tell you that just 9 have been in favour of the plans. Those nine I don't think were present tonight!

Anyway, a good night for Putney, a good night for local democracy and a bad night for Oracle.

Another part of the borough, another overdevelopment nightmare

Tower blocks are in the local news again; this time plans to build twin 39-storey tower blocks above Clapham Junction station. The towers will contain 556 homes, NONE of which will be affordable on the extraordinary basis that the developers would rather spend the money improving the station beneath it. Another false choice - affordable housing, a more human scale development AND an upgraded Clapham Junction - if you don't mind, developers.

I highlight this issue, which is actually in the neighbouring Battersea constituency, simply because the Battersea Society is making exactly the same, entirely justified criticism of the Conservative council as our Putney Society is.

The Batersea Society say that the Council lacks a "coherent vision" for Clapham Junction. "Without an overall plan we fear the proposed new shops may damage, rather than benefit, the existing shopping centres in St Johns Road and Northcote Road" they say.

And in the letter notifying residents of tomorrow's Putney Society meeting with Putney Place developer Oracle, Chairman John Ewing says "The Council appears to have no overall town plan for Putney". I agree.

Be under no illusion: it's this void; this lack of leadership from Wandsworth's Conservative council that is holding the door wide open to any stack-em-up, pile-em-high developer to come up with these ludicrous tower block notions.

We urgently need leadership on this vital issue - and if the Conservatives cannot or will not provide it, then it's down to you to vote in those of us who are leading.

Don't forget the Putney Society meeting this Thursday

Just a quick reminder that the Putney Society meeting with the developers of Putney Place, Oracle Ltd. takes place at 7.30pm at St Mary's Church, Putney Bridge.

Everyone is welcome regardless of whether or not you're a member of the Society.

I've now sent out almost 2,000 copies of my Putney Place survey - thank you if you've already returned one either by post or online. And if you haven't yet had your say, you can do so by visiting the special Putney Place page on this website: www.stuartking.net/putneyplace.

There's also plenty of time to submit any thoughts you may have on Putney Place - for or against - to the Council and you can find out where to send them to by visiting my Putney Place page. The deadline is 17 October.

I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

My Putney Place page

I've now set up a special page on this website dedicated to the Putney Place planning application. From it, you can:

• Complete my online survey - whether you're for or against the plans
• Read my submission to the council's consultation on the planning application
• Download the Council's planning news briefing on the application
• Visit my news archive on this and other overdevelopment stories
• Sign up for my fortnightly email news bulletin to keep in touch with this and other stories.

This is a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the Putney Place planning application, so please take advantage of it. The address?

stuartking.net/putneyplace

Putney Place: when a picture speaks a thousand words

This is a "section" drawn by architects of the Putney Place developers of Upper Richmond Road from Putney High Street (on the left) along to Oakhill Road on the right.

It shows the scale of the two Putney Wharf Towers and the overbearing, oppressive impact these two ugly skyscrapers will have, dwarfing the surrounding streetscene.

As someone who opposes this gross overdevelopment, I'd actually like to thank the applicants for this drawing, because - as I say in the headline - this artist's impression makes the case against this scheme better than 1,000 words ever could.

You can click on the image to get a full-size version.

Putney Place plans now out for consultation

The owners of Putney Place, the site opposite East Putney tube where they want to build two massive tower blocks, have at last submitted all the documentation to enable Council officers to begin deciding whether to recommend that councillors grant planning permission.

This includes a 52-page "planning statement" which is produced by contractors of the applicants rather than an independent and impartial agent, but which is supposed to represent an objective assessment of the impact the development will have on the area and a justification or mitigation for that impact.

The EIA is a detailed document and I haven't yet had the time to plough through it, but the basic application is as follows:

• Two blocks: one 26 storeys (84 metres high) and one of 21 storeys (67.5 metres high)
• 300 residential units, approximately a third of which will be what the developers call "affordable" housing
• 3,439 square metres of office space
• 114 square metres of retail space
• 443 square metres of restaurant, retail or office space
• 84 square metres of space for a cafe
• 2,862 square metres of what they call "public amenity space"
• and "New public art"

You can find all the relevant documents about this application - the reference number for which is 2008/3321 here

The high rise signal from Boris that should worry Putney

Today's Evening Standard reports that London Tory Mayor Boris Johnson just can't be bothered to submit an objection to a 43-storey tower block on the South Bank, the Doon Street Tower.

This is a complete reverse of his campaign pledge to block tower blocks across the capital and should be a major concern in our neck of the woods where, of course, we are under threat from several tower block plans - some of similar height to this one.

I am someone who isn't opposed to high buildings on principle: they can be appropriate in the City of London and central London. Putney isn't such a location. But that's not Boris's position. He ran for election and, I suspect, won quite a few votes, for his blanket opposition to tower blocks.

Yet today he couldn't even muster the interest to jot down a few words of opposition and submit them to the Secretary of State for Communities, Hazel Blears, who has to rule on this application following a Public Inquiry earlier this year.

If Boris can't be bothered to object to a tower block plan that was backed by a Labour Mayor, was reviewed before he was even elected and which no one will hold him accountable for, the prospects of him standing up to his Conservative allies in Wandsworth over their planning mistakes aren't high, to say the least.

We need Boris to honour his election pledges - not sell out at the first test of them.

Don't forget about 16-storey Cockpen House!

I've written a lot about the hugely significant and damaging plans for Putney Place and Carlton Tower recently - and rightly so. But the biggest over-development plan, and the furthest advanced, is that for the Ram Brewery site in central Wandsworth.

Although I oppose this plan as wholeheartedly as I do the Putney Place and Carlton Tower tower blocks, because the Ram Brewery is not within our constituency I have left it to the local Labour MP: Battersea's Martin Linton, to make the running on this application.

That said, the plans for the brewery site will have a massive impact on Putney. Standing on Putney Bridge the four Arndale towers (plus the latest tower block imposed upon us by the Tory council - Parkside, currently under construction) are clearly visible, despite being almost two miles away. The two Ram Brewery towers will dwarf Sudbury, Albon, Edwyn and Knowles Houses - the Arndale towers.

But aside from the fact that we neighbour this site and it will have a huge impact on our local infrastructure and quality of environment there is, in fact, a legitimate constituency concern for us. Part of the Brewery site does fall within the constituency boundaries: the Cockpen House site at 20-30 Buckhold Road, right next to the Royal Military Police Building.

This specific part of Wandsworth town has already been subject to huge construction in recent years - I've already mentioned the Parkside block at the end of Neville Gill Close, but just behind Buckhold Road is Hardwick's Way which has become a huge housing development with another block on the edge of Buckhold Road nearing completion.

To add to the gross over-development of this area, the Council is currently considering plans for a 16-storey tower, a 10-storey block on Buckhold Road (where currently the buildings are no more than two storeys and are mainly small inter-war cottages) and what they call a five storey "element" to the rear.

To put a 16 storey block in context, the tallest block on Roehampton's Alton estate is eleven storeys high. And worryingly, even the artists' impressions of the buildings - pictures that are supposed to make us look more favourably on these plans - make me cringe in horror at the ugliness of the architecture.

The Council has produced a handy guide to the plans for both the Ram Brewery and the Cockpen House site which you can download here. Although the deadline for submissions in respect of these plans closed last month, it's still worthwhile to see just how seriously our community is under threat from these carbuncles.

Out and about in Carlton Drive

On Saturday my campaign team and I were out talking to residents in the Carlton Drive area between Putney Hill and East Putney station.

This area is one of the most at threat from the monstrous plans to build two 25 and 19 storey tower blocks on the Putney Place site opposite East Putney tube, and the "Carlton Towers" plan for the Capsticks building on the corner of Carlton Drive and Upper Richmond Road.

I've written a lot about my opposition to these plans both in this news section and the current edition of The Putney Paper, but too often planners get overly absorbed with the - important - minutaie of such proposals and forget the real people who will have to live in the shadow of such monstrosities for decades to come. That's why I chose to spend my time on Saturday talking to residents in this part of Putney.

We have to turn back these high-rise applications or else Putney will become a free-for-all for developers competing to build the biggest tower block since the last one.

Save Danebury Green

I thought I'd publish some photos of the green space at the top of Danebury Avenue that the Conservatives want to concrete over in their misguided plans to redevelop Roehampton.

Under their plans, all the green space you see here will be destroyed to be replaced with new buildings and a "town square". Sure, it will have patches of grass between the concrete and maybe even the occasional flowerbed, but compared to what is there now it is pitifully inadequate.

Could this particular green space be improved? Yes. Could the heart of Roehampton be improved? Yes. Is the way to do that to concrete over this precious and strategically important piece of greenery? Absolutely not.

The Conservatives' bizarre argument - that they seem to think trumps overwhelming local opposition to concreting over the green space - is that they don't think this space is used enough. Well I don't agree, but even if that were true, why does an open space have to be heavily used? Why can't it just be enjoyed for what it is: a tranquil buffer between Roehampton Lane and the Alton estate?

And just as importantly, who do the Tories imagine their town square will suddenly be used by? A completely different set of people to those who already cause plenty of nuisance in Danebury Avenue and drive away many who might otherwise use it? Come off it!

This green continues further up Roehampton Lane past Allbrook House up to Kingsclere Close. The Conservatives also want to tear out this verge and build what can only imaginably be poor quality homes right on top of Roehampton Lane blighted by noise, pollution and congestion. This is redevelopment for the sake of it; redevelopment at any price - and the price is too high.

Have your say on Putney Place

The long-awaited, much-dreaded plan to build two high-rise blocks across the road from East Putney tube station has finally been submitted to the council.

I am 100% opposed to this application which you can read up on here.

It is this planning development that I made the front page story of the latest edition of The Putney Paper - because while the existing Putney Place carbuncle is an absolute eyesore, my solution is to replace it with a better building of similar or smaller scale that complements the area and which our infrastructure can cope with. Instead the site's owners, Oracle, want to cram two ugly 25 and 19 towers onto this tiny triangle of land.

The planning application that has been submitted is incomplete and incredibly vague:

* It doesn't assess the impact on the environment or on local services

* It doesn't address the grotesque overdevelopment this plan amounts to, or the precedent it will set for the middle of Putney.

* It doesn't explain why surrounding residents should have to be overlooked and overshadowed, or why they think they have the right to transform Putney's skyline for decades to come.

* It doesn't talk about what proportion of the housing will be affordable

The Council must extract satisfactory, detailed and practical answers to each of these questions from the developer and tell us what it believes is a satisfactory development on this site. If it cannot or will not, this application must be refused.

Please register your views - and hopefully your objections - to this scheme. A groundswell of local protest will make it far harder for the Conservatives to cave in to the developers and blight our environment further.

You can comment online here, or email planningapplications@wandsworth.gov.uk, referencing planning application No. 2008/3321.

Help me stop this concrete canyon

The Conservatives have just announced they're tearing up carefully consulted-upon plans to regenerate Roehampton.

After more than a year and a half of surveys and public meetings, the Council brought in new consultants who, without any evidence, have said the old plans for the top end of Danebury Avenue are unworkable. What they propose in their place is:

• Three times as many flats as there are at the moment in what is already the most densely populated part of the borough.


• Not a single one of the *additional* flats will be affordable; and overwhelmingly they're likely to be one-bedroom properties rather than the family homes the area desperately needs. Many of them will also be low quality, over noisy, congested, polluted Roehampton Lane


• Doubling the height of the Danebury Avenue buildings - we are supposed to be impressed that no building will rise "more than six storeys"


• Closing the Alton Youth Club in Dilton Gardens - the "best option" according to the Conservatives


• Concreting over the precious green at the entrance to Danebury Avenue, which the vast majority of residents wanted retained; green open space in this new plan is reduced by three quarters


• Demolishing Allbrook House, despite Allbrook House residents not wanting their homes flattened


• Worsening congestion in Roehampton Lane even further - it's already on the verge of getting dramatically more congested when the huge 400+ home Queen Mary's Place opens soon

The plans as they stand do not have my support and, nor do I believe, will they have the support of Roehampton residents.

As I wrote in my recent post about getting the derelict King's Head pub back into use, I want Roehampton regenerated as much as anyone else, but not at any price. Any ideas for Roehampton must put the existing community first and foremost. The Conservative plans just want to drive Roehampton residents out and bring even more temporary, transient newcomers to the area.

Just imagine how doubling the height of the Danebury Avenue shops, where it can already feel gloomy with just a three-storey block, will feel. It will turn the centre of the area into a dark windswept, canyon. The superstore they propose will massively increase traffic down Danebury Avenue, which can already get pretty congested.

The new community hall and Boys Club will both be crammed into what is now the Right Plaice chip shop: a tiny space and one the chippie doesn't want to leave anyway.

What I think Roehampton needs is a more diverse number of homes to allow generations-old local families to stay local. More affordable homes to replace the hundreds that the Conservatives have sold off. Fewer one-bedroom flats. And much better public transport.

How could the Conservatives have got this so wrong?! These plans are damaging. They'll make Roehampton worse. And they're unworkable. Help me defeat them.

Putney is not Manhattan

This post is an extract of my editorial in the new edition of The Putney Paper.

Nor is it Dubai, Hong Kong or Tokyo. That may sound self-evident and in itself it's not a criticism: they are all vibrant, successful cities if you like that sort of thing.

But Putney has no tradition of high rise buildings. Those we have been saddled with have - with one notable exception - been to our area's detriment.

The ugly post-war office buildings along Upper Richmond Road; the neglected, claustrophobic Arndale estate above the Southside shopping centre and the monotonous, unconstrained riverside apartment blocks that I feel blight our riverside; all these can hardly be called local success stories.

Ironically the one recent success which has transformed part of our town centre - the Brewhouse Lane development by Putney Bridge - the Conservatives fought tooth and nail against. It's clear the Tories lack sound judgement when it comes to planning. So I'm glad that our amenity groups, including the Putney and Wandsworth Societies, are rightly campaigning on this issue.

You can read the rest of this editorial by downloading the Summer 2008 edition of the Putney Paper.

Summer's Putney Paper: out now

The latest edition of The Putney Paperhas begun hitting the streets. This edition sets out my concerns about the threat to the character of our community from plans to build high rise tower blocks all around the constituency.

I also continue exposing the Conservatives' neglect of Putney's roads and there's a major feature on tackling dangerous dogs.

I think Conservative plans to introduce a Dog Tax: a £500 license for any dog their bureaucrats consider "menacing" is just milking public fear over dangerous dogs to fleece responsible dog owners. Instead, I set out how I think the minority of irresponsible dog owners should be tackled and seek your views.

Plus, next month the NHS is 60 years old. Launched by Labour Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan in 1948 we celebrate one of Britain's greatest institutions.

There's also the usual news roundup from across the constituency, more on our Safer Neighbourhood Police teams' successes and su doku makes a comeback!

Redevelopment in Putney

We're facing an increasing wave of plans to build huge tower blocks in our patch. Rising land prices and the general lack of space in London is prompting developers to build up rather than out.

A couple of years ago, the first of these applications, for the site at the top of East Hill above the Wandsworth Bridge roundabout, was rightly rejected by the Council; a slightly less tall block is now almost complete.

Today we have three "landmark" buildings proposed for the area:

• Putney Place, opposite East Putney tube in the triangle between the two railway viaducts plans for two tower blocks: one of 25 storeys and one of 19.
• On the corner of Carlton Drive and Upper Richmond Road a 20-storey building is being proposed to replace the Capsticks building - I wrote last year about loopholes in the council's planning rules that enable developers to leave office buildings derelict and then convert them into windfall residential blocks
• And in Wandsworth town on the Ram brewery site, another set of twin towers are being planned that, hard to believe, will actually dwarf the blocks on the Arndale Estate, which currently hold the record for the highest towers in the constituency

My views on these so-called "landmark" building are the subject of my latest Putney SW15 parliamentary report, which you can read here.

Council office-block loophole causing problems

Like other councils, Wandsworth has rules to stop radical changes of use of buildings - so houses can't usually be converted into shops, shops into nightclubs and so on. Such policies are important to preserve the identity of our area, keep residential areas residential and shopping areas vibrant.

Last week I met with a local solicitor, whose firm leases quite a large amount of office space in Upper Richmond Road. He told me that the owners of his building had indicated that they will not be extending the lease when it expires so that they can exploit a loophole in council planning policy that, if not dealt with soon will have major impact on Putney's economy. The same has occurred elsewhere in Putney and we will soon lose local lawyers Capsticks from Upper Richmond Road.

This is because a loophole in Wandsworth's planning rules says that if a property is left derelict for long enough, planning regulations relating to a change of use can be waived. The consequence - and this is another side-effect of the local housing crisis - is that land for housing is at such a premium in Putney that it is now in the interests of landowners who hold purpose-built office blocks to keep them empty and then, once they qualify, change the use to housing, then sell up at a huge profit.

At first glance, no-one - least of all me - is going to weep at the demolition of the ugly post war blocks along Upper Richmond Road between East Putney tube and Putney Hill. But think about the number of people that work in those ugly blocks: the business they bring to local shops, cafes and restaurants - and the impact their loss will have on our economy. It's not just shops and bars that are the measure of a vibrant Putney town centre; it's the less visible office economy too.

I hope that the current council consultation on its new Local Development Framework (its planning Bible) will address this problem and offer better protection to the local office buioding stock.