Lambeth Council approves Daylight Robbery! – December 2019
Last Tuesday, Lambeth Council’s planning committee voted – by a narrow margin of 4 to 3 – to ignore 3,000 petition signatures, hundreds of objections on the council planning website, Labour ward councillors and dozens of us gathered in the committee room, to approve the 8 Albert Embankment application.
This is a massive disappointment, to say the least. After hearing moving testimonies from the residents, the councillors were split 3 for/3 against, and committee chair Clare Wilcox chose to exercise her casting vote in favour of the development, seemingly for little reason other than that it had been several years since the last proposal to redevelop the site. Major issues of daylight loss, damage to local heritage, reduced levels of affordable housing and over-density, were cast aside, for a museum that could have been build through other means, a high-end hotel and hundreds of luxury investment flats that may well sit empty. Clearly this system isn’t working for local people.
The planning committee offers no appeal for the community, but the Mayor of London can ‘call in’ the decision to refuse it.
The Mayor needs to hear from all of us IMMEDIATELY as he only has 14 days to call it in! Information on writing to Sadiq Khan can be found here.
There is also the potential for a Judicial Review of the planning committee decision. A Judicial Review is a legal challenge to the decision making process and would mean a reassessment of the application. It would require a fighting fund of roughly £20-25,000. That’s a lot of money, but if we set up a funding group and many people chipped in, we could do this.
We need to take some time to assess our legal position, but if you know already that you are up for the next fight please get in touch. (lambethvillage@gmail.com)
We also want to host another campaign meeting for those who want to build pressure outside the halls of power in Lambeth. We will send another update around shortly with a date in the New Year, but in the meantime, get in touch if you’d like to be involved.
Please write to the Mayor now and ask him to call in the decision and REFUSE the 8 Albert Embankment application.
Write to Sadiq Khan! ….Call in the 8 Albert Embankment Planning Committee Decision NOW
The decision by Lambeth Council’s Planning Committee to approve the U+I/LFB planning application (19/01304/FUL) for 8 Albert Embankment is hugely disappointing.
It can still be STOPPED as the application can now be called in by the Mayor of London to REFUSE .
Please write to Sadiq Khan IMMEDIATELY as he will need to make a decision SOON and ask him to ‘call in’ the application and refuse it. (Email address and details to include in your message given below).
A couple of important London Plan reasons why he might REFUSE:
Loss of the KIBA (Key Industrial Business Area) sites which despite having the highest Lambeth Plan protection are being lost to corporate office space.
Lambeth had no Strategic Industrial Land (SIL) whatsoever
- KIBA is the only land that Lambeth has for industry and this KIBA is very successful, but the 8 Albert Embankment sites have been deliberately kept empty, with no marketing.
- The LFB has behaved like the worst kind of private sector developer to get a change of use and build residential towers in a conservation area.
- Lambeth has lost more than 25% of all it’s KIBA in a decade
- Lambeth has only one 1/3 of the average amount of industrial land of any London borough
Underprovision of Affordable Housing on land the LFB have owned since 1937………. this site should be able to support 50% if the LFB where not greedily taking so many benefits out of it, including a capital receipt of @£42m as well as profit for their developer partner @£96m.
- Only 8 social housing units will be built and more social housing will be blighted through losses of daylight than delivered
- Profit of 6% is being taken on the affordable housing by the developer
- Social housing tenants, will be paying the price for the LFB greed with levels of light that are so inadequate they are BRE ‘major adverse’, at only 15-17% VSC
Write in your own words and include the other issues that matter to you.
Contact details: mayor@london.gov.uk Greater London Authority, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA
CC the Assembly Members:
tony.arbour@london.gov.uk; jennette.arnold@london.gov.uk; andrew.boff@london.gov.uk; gareth.bacon@london.gov.uk; shaun.bailey@london.gov.uk; sian.berry@london.gov.uk; tom.copley@london.gov.uk; unmesh.desai@london.gov.uk; tony.devenish@london.gov.uk; andrew.dismore@london.gov.uk; len.duvall@london.gov.uk; nicky.gavron@london.gov.uk; susan.hall@london.gov.uk; david.kurten@london.gov.uk; joanne.mccartney@london.gov.uk; steve.o’connell@london.gov.uk; caroline.pidgeon@london.gov.uk; keith.prince@london.gov.uk; caroline.russell@london.gov.uk; onkar.sahota@london.gov.uk; navin.shah@london.gov.uk; fiona.twycross@london.gov.uk; peter.whittle@london.gov.uk; leonie.cooper@london.gov.uk
Please write immediately (cc lambethvillage@gmail.com) as Sadiq will make a decision in SOON and he must REFUSE.
Who is Ros Kerslake? – November 2019
Over the months we have met Dany Cotton, Richard Upton, Fiona Twycross and others …………but who is Ros Kerslake?
Ros Kerslake is the Chief Executive of The National Heritage Lottery Fund, the body that has given £200,000 to develop the plans for the potential new Fire Brigade Museum at 8 Albert Embankment and have made a conditional allocation of £1.7 million for internal fit out and delivery activities.
According to the public accounts for The National Heritage Lottery Fund in 2018-19 her salary and benefits were £195-£200,000.
Ros Kerslake is also a Non-Executive Director of U+I (the developer for 8 Albert Embankment which will contain the Fire Brigade Museum) and according to the accounts of U+I was paid £56,000 in salary and fees for 13 months prior to March 2019.
https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/about/our-people/executive-team/ros-kerslake-obe
Will the Council share all the consultee statements – November 2019
The Council’s sun & daylight assessment was finally made available for public scrutiny on 14th November, but we are still waiting to see all the consultee responses. Without access to seeing these, we can not understand the Council’s logic in being ‘minded to Grant Permission’.
It is shocking that the Council who will have had these for months is not making these public.
Requests have been made by our Local Councillor Jon Davies.
You can see the Council’s sun and daylight assesssment here: https://planning.lambeth.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=PPN0WTBO09600
This document argues that the residents around the 8 Albert Embankment site have unusual levels of light and that levels that are below the BRE standard are acceptable. This is not Lambeth’s planning policy position.
Is the assessment being written to suit a particular answer? – November 2019
We have been asking to see the sun & daylight study assessment by the Council for months. Twice we have submitted FOIs to have this document, once in May and again in August 2019 – both times because we were getting no answers.
More recently we have been emailing Jack Hopkins the leader of the Council, starting on 4th November and still not even an acknowledgement!
Sun and daylight on neighbouring properties and in particular Whitgift House and 2 Whitgift Street were key in the planning appeal that ended the previous application for planning in May 2013.
Each time we ask for it – we are told the assessment is still in draft.
Is the assessment being written to suit a particular answer?
Fire Brigade Museum not the issue …it’s ethics again – October 2019
London Fire Brigade Museum appears to be used by LFB & U+I as a promotional tool for their £450m commercial redevelopment of 8 Albert Embankment. We question the ethics of directing museum visitors in this way.
People visiting the temporary museum have the option of reading the planning portal 638 documents (on a stall in reception) or a short 2 sides of A4 flyer that gives only positives, encouraging the reader to support the entire redevelopment, not just the museum – leading to comments like:
‘I would like to add my wholehearted support to this planning application. I have taken my grandson there several times and i feel that as he gets older and can understand History of the Fire Service he will enjoy it even more.’
The comment card comes ready ticked with the statement ‘I support this planning application’.
This is not open consultation of the public and consolidates the view of local community groups that the so called community consultation for this development was a sham – that there was never any intention to involve local people in the design, but instead to push through a massive capital generating over development of the site with scant regard to local impacts.
The inclusion of the Fire Brigade Museum is not the issue!
Lambeth Mayor receives our petition with over 2000+ signatures – October 2019
On Wednesday 16th October, Councillor Jon Davies handed in our petition to the Mayor of Lambeth, calling on the Leader of Lambeth Council and the Lambeth Council Planning Committee to reject the U+I/LFB planning application for 8 Albert Embankment (19/01304/FUL).
Our petition has over 2000+ signatures, demonstrating widespread support for the campaign.
Will the GLA now examine the U+I consultation? – October 2019
Thanks to Florence Eshamoli, Assembly Member for Lambeth and Southwark we finally got to meet Commissioner Dany Cotton in a meeting on Monday 14th October. We were pleased that Fiona Twycross also made the meeting despite her very busy schedule as Deputy Mayor of London (Fire & Resilience).
We asked why a public body like the London Fire Brigade does not follow public policy. In particular why is it not following the Lambeth Local Plan 2015, which clearly states that this site is not suitable for tall buildings.
We asked why the quality of the community consultation conducted by U+I appeared to be so exceptionally poor, was it a deliberate strategy to ignore the local community or was it U+I not performing?
The question now is will the GLA examine the planning strategy and U+I consultation?
Migration museum ethics called into question – September 2019
The migration museum, one of the temporary uses of the London Fire Brigade Workshop on Whitgift Street/Lambeth High Street, made a supporting statement on the Lambeth Planning Portal for the proposed re-development by U+I.
It appears they have allowed themselves to be used by U+I as a tool in the company’s strategy to obtain planning permission for a £450m redevelopment. A proposal which will result in tenants at Whitgift House, directly across the road, losing 40% of their light.
Is it ethically correct? …………………we ask the Museum Association ethics committee to investigate.
Save the date – 16th October 2019 to hand in the petition to Lambeth Council Meeting
Yes save the date we will be handing in our amazing petition of over 2000 signatures to a full meeting of Lambeth Councillors on 16th October 2019, 6.30pm at Brixton Town Hall.
Join us, meet on the steps of the Old Town Hall and make a splash – wear yellow!
