more phoney consultation
this time from the council
A number of letters of objection and concern have been received to this application and in these cases it is Council policy to hold an informal meeting or a drop in session with local residents to enable an assessmet to be made of the areas of concern before the application is considered by the Council’s Planning Committee
A drop in session has now been arranged between 4pm and 8pm on Monday 7 April 2008 in the First Floor Foyer of the Civic Suite at Lewisham Town Hall, Catford Road, London SE6 and you are invited to attend. Local Ward councilors will also be invited
The applicants will also be in attendance to answer any questions you may have on the proposed development
After attending the last consultation session i’m even more skeptical as to any good that can come out of these things, not that i’m against real consultation itself, but it’s clear that these sessions are not designed to support real consultation
my main gripe however is with the logic of the whole process - details of the planning applications were sent out in December last year and invited people to comment and/or write to the council with any concerns they had. Presumably now everyone has done this and the council has an assembled file of comments received. If they are honest in what they say about ‘making an assessment of the concerns’, why do they not take as a starting point the concerns that they already have and follow them up with those who made them, why start a completely separate exercise which starts the whole process over again
It’s clear to anyone how this consultation session will play out as, we have to raise the same concerns again from the start, and then go through a process of being fed incorrect answers from the various representatives or when finally tied down to a correct position, the attitude is pretty much like ‘that’s the way it is folks’
The last consultation i went to on this was a complete waste of time (and presumably tax payers money) and no doubt this one will be, it’s all about ticking the boxes in a tunnel vision type manner so an outwardly glossy presentation can be made of the whole affair
Hopefully if the same representatives of the applicants are in attendance for this session they will have learnt a bit more about their scheme compared to the last time
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
I have to say I found the policy of organising a meeting to be helpful (on most occasions) whenever I was involved as a councillor. And so did most of the people who attended them.
In my experience it allowed objectors to be sure that council officers and their elected representatives understood the nuance of their concerns so that they were accurately reported to the planning committee (important when you only have 5 minutes to make your case in committee). It helped people to understand the process. And it allowed applicants to try to meet the concerns of objectors where they felt the could.
Still you don’t have to go if you’re convinced its a waste of time…
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Andrew, i find it no great surprise that a labour councilor in a labour controlled borough would come to any other conclusion
I find your subsequent assertion slightly more harder to believe however, that everyone else who attended them found them helpful as well. Saying that the previous one i went to the representatives of the developers were more than happy to lie or give incorrect statements in relation to my concerns, responses at which if I had taken them at face value i too probably would have been happy with as they would have allievated my concerns as well - just a pity the responses given were diametrically opposed to a little thing called the truth, what’s more the arrogance (and ignorance of the facts) with which those untruths were dished out with was astonishing
In terms of making sure the nuances of the concerns were accurately reported to the planning committee - this doesn’t follow any kind of logic whatsoever. A substantial number of concerns have been forwarded to the council on this already. If, as i said on my original post, there was an doubts as to a proper interpretaion of those concerns and genuine desire to follow up on them why are those particular concernes not followed up directly, with the people who made them, i.e. continue the conversation. There’s no way of ensuring that everyone who has raised concerns are i) able to actually make the consultation session, being as it is arranged on a working day and at not particularly convenient hours for people to attend and ii) able to articulate said concerns any more clearer on a face to face basis, on the spot (whilst being bambazooled with PR smuck), than they are able to do so by putting pen to paper.
The whole thing also about allowing one objector 5 minutes to make their case to the committee is also a completely illogical process, it assumes that everyone who is opposed to a particular case are absolutely homogenouos in terms of their reasons for opposition, which in cases like this is an absolutely absurd assumption to make.
In terms of allowing applicants to meet the concerns of objectors, i only need to point you to my previous post on the last consultation to show how untrue that assertion is as well
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I think if you look more closely I said most, rather than all, found the meetings useful; I can certainly think of at least one person that was enraged when he came to the meeting and enraged throughout and left enraged, but that was more about his state of mind than the process.
However, that’s a long way from everyone coming away satisfied that the developers would do what they wanted or that the planning committee would go their way.
My experience didn’t have much to do with politics, more to do with being of service to my constituent and the professionalism of the planning staff. I’m sure that most councillors from across the political spectrum will have had broadly similar experiences.
As for the 5 minutes, I agree it’s inadequate and unfair that objectors are expected to club together what may be quite diverse objections into a single presentation.
My final point would be that you seem to be using one or two experiences to try and condemn the process of consultation, but deny other people’s experiences. Why’s that?
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
i’m not denying your personal experience of them, i’m doubting your ability to speak authoratively on behalf of what others thought of them
additionally, if the lies/untruths that were were told to me recently, are commonplace amongst such consultations i’m not surprised that people left happy because they would have been told whatever they wanted to hear, regardless of what little element of truth was in that - if your happy to class that as a successful consultation then fair enough
April 4th, 2008 at 5:50 am
I know that I’m not always precise in the way I phrase things, but on this occasion I think you’re continuing to misrepresent what I said. “Useful” and “helpful” are the words I used.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:23 am
ok, apologies
i’m not denying your personal experience of them, i’m doubting your ability to speak authoratively on behalf of what others thought of them
additionally, if the lies/untruths that were were told to me recently, are commonplace amongst such consultations i’m not surprised that people left thinking that the process had been useful & helpful because they would have been told whatever they wanted to hear, regardless of what little element of truth was in that - if your happy to class that as a successful consultation then fair enough
April 4th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
No. Lies aren’t part of a successful consultation. But the chance for objectors to be certain that the council officers have understood their objections (and their representative/s) has been described as useful to me.
April 5th, 2008 at 8:28 am
i’ve never really had any doubt about the ability of the council, and especially the developers, to understand the objections
June 29th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
I have just been on the LDA site and it mentions there will be 440 units on the Greyhound site not the 593 Lewisham are proposing - an interesting rise in the number of units….
July 1st, 2008 at 5:34 pm
interesting decrease surely?
presume the developers like all others at the moment are getting jittery about being able to offload them once built and are looking to cut back on their outlays (will be interesting also to see how much they end up being allowed to reduce the ‘affordable’ element of the development)
this is the problem with being dependent on the market to supply basic human necessities likes homes - certainty of supply goes out the window and is left to the whims of the market as opposed to the needs of human beings
July 6th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
These figures wee before the credit crunch so I guess? the 593 units will still go up….It justs seems a bit cheeky that the optimum density for this site forumulated by the LDA was 440 but Lewisham agreed to 593.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
i’d never seen that LDA density thing before
in the planning documentation it says that the mayor’s london plan guidance says for development of this kind the optimum density is 450 to 700 habitable room per hectare, and this development apparently comes in at 392 (1,666 habitable rooms in total divided by the site space of 4.26 hectares)
lewisham’s own policy on density (HSG16) however says that new residential developments should normally have a density range of 180-210 habitable rooms per hectacre, however then goes on to list a whole load of exceptions which makes the policy appear pointless in the first place