planning+-+Bits+and+Pieces+-+Backlands+(12.6.09)



Haringey Federation of Residents Associations ** 42 Falmer Rd, N15 5BA 8211 0916  www.haringeyresidents.org 12.6.09 Appeal refs: **APP/Y5420/E/08/2088980** and **APP/Y5420/E/08/2089057**

Land rear of 60-88 Cecile Park, London N8 9AU
The Federation is the umbrella organisation for Haringey’s 169 local residents associations. In order to fulfil our duty to speak up for the residents and communities of Haringey we have contributed to many public consultations and Inquiries over planning policies and applications, including the examination in public of the London Plan. We support the long-running and extensive efforts of the local residents of the GLC-RAG to protect their local community from over-development and inappropriate development. We support the GLC-RAG’s submissions. On behalf of the Federation I would like to emphasise the following brief points to the Inquiry: 1. The proposals are an example of why there is a borough-wide need to prevent inappropriate development of unsuitable sites in already densely populated areas. This is particularly true of sites in conservation areas - the application site is now one of the last few remaining traditional backlands left in the Crouch End Conservation Area. Developers have scoured the whole of the Borough, not just the West, for opportunities to build on every available scrap of land, regardless of the consequences for the surrounding communities and environment. 2. There is an urgent need to preserve for the common use spaces inappropriate for housing (such as terrace housing backlands) or for the privatisation of community space. 3. There is a desperate need to preserve community facilities (in this case 37 lock-up garages, plus the potential for bicycle store, car club, etc) for which a real need and demand has been clearly demonstrated 4. Residents elsewhere in the area have successfully saved some local backlands for community use. However all too many such sites have already been lost around Haringey because residents have been unable to mount effective objection/opposition in the face of the seemingly unlimited resources and determination of private developers motivated by the profits they can make at the expense of local communities. 5. GLC-RAG, backed by the local community, has fought an exhausting but exemplary, well-informed and successful campaign for the last 8 or 9 years against a series of applications over this site by private developer Paul Simon Ltd. We believe that the needs of the community should now be fully recognised and protected by all those who care about the need for strong and sustainable communities. The key factors and preconditions for the attainment of sustainable communities is the protection of the genuine and reasonable interests of local communities, and the availability of the kind of social infrastructure which enables community life to exist.
 * Appeals against refusal of Planning Permission & Conservation Area Consent for demolition of existing garages & erection of two houses with associated parking (LPA refs HGY/2007/1866 & 1867) **

6. The reality all over Haringey is that all kinds of social infrastructure and local community facilities are being wiped out by developers (pocket green spaces, backlands, corner shops, local community pubs, post offices, small workshops, affordable offices for voluntary organisations, local health facilities, nurseries, safe areas to play, community centres etc) when the true need is not just the protection but the expansion of such facilities. If this is allowed to continue it will make the over-riding goal of sustainable communities impossible to achieve. 7. The applicant has claimed that there are only 2 options for the site: their proposed luxury villas or its dereliction. But, in fact, the existing consent (for 38 lockup garages) remains a viable and sustainable alternative, providing for an ongoing community need. 8. We believe that local residents are willing to join together and acquire the land if it can be protected through planning policy. They have expressed a wish to put the garages back into use (rebuilding them if necessary) and to consider further, appropriate environmentally-sustainable community facilities: eg a car club and secure bicycle store to help reduce car usage, and in the future other sustainable facilities like an electric vehicle charging point, renewable energy source (eg. anaerobic digestion of garden and household waste) etc, as well as replanting the tree screening which I have been advised was a condition of the original 1966 consent for the garages but which the site owner has failed, in violation of those conditions, to properly maintain. 9. Given the ongoing and indeed increasing and augmentable demand for lockup garages by local residents, the only real reason this site could become derelict is if it were deliberately made so by a site owner hoping thereby to blackmail the Council or the Planning Inspectorate into granting consent for an otherwise inappropriate development and make a travesty of planning as a process in the public interest.

Yours sincerely,

Dave Morris, Secretary, Haringey Federation of Residents Associations