100 Avenue Road – The Belsize Society says: We are extremely disappointed by the decision on June 5th to give the go ahead to this damaging scheme. Though we represented the society’s objections, it was clear the committee decision was a foregone conclusion. Sadly it will cause lasting harm and considerable danger to the Eton Avenue pedestrian piazza, result in a giant red finger stuck up in the face to the local conservation areas whilst barely scratching the surface of local housing need.
Pretty much anything that promises more housing in the current climate would get the go ahead and Camden is under great pressure to increase housing provision. With a 29% uplift in units (total now 237 properties) and arguably, a better mix of affordability – for those in the lower building – it does address the need to a small degree. It is possible, however, that many of the marketed flats in the tower may go to overseas investors and could remain empty or used as short lets. The developers have got away with a commercially viable scheme with few concessions – they get their full pound of flesh without compromise.
Though it was inevitable it would be approved, we see a great opportunity to protect and enhance the local environment has been missed and we feel seriously let down by both parts of the planning process – the planners and the planning committee on whom we rely to make the best of our planned environment.
Camden’s planning committee opposed the original flawed plans in 2016 and sadly lost the appeal to a government inspector. When it was clear it was not viable to build and Essential Living pulled out, Camden should have expected a revised application would surface at some point. Surely, in the meantime, the planners could have worked up a contingency plan to guide any new developers towards a better design, to mitigate some of the harms and correct the defects of the original?
It was clear, for instance, that the ‘Delivery and Service Management Plan’ was a major defect in the original scheme and should have been a fundamental negotiation with the new developers from the start. Instead, the same plan was lifted from the previous scheme, although already totally unfit for servicing a development of what was then 184 homes.
Now grown to 237 homes , three commercial premises and big changes in the way we now live, this should have been looked at afresh.
It appears totally missed by the planning officer that the narrow service tunnel already built to the basement is only around 2m high. Though this is the proposed primary delivery route it will not accommodate the vast majority of delivery vans which are mostly 2.4m and above, let alone any larger HGVs. It can allow only one vehicle at a time to use it to only a single service bay in the basement: completely impractical. This should have been recognised and dealt with seriously before it came back to the committee.
So now we have the prospect of almost all the delivery and servicing traffic traversing the current Eton Avenue ‘piazza’. This has become a popular local amenity full of children playing, pedestrians, cyclists, theatre-goers, drama students, daily food stalls and the weekly Farmers’ market.
The pedestrian ‘piazza’ will become a vehicular free-for-all with multiple vehicles vying to access the one small service area at the base of the tower, turning, parking and backing-up. And presumably space will also be needed for emergency vehicles?
The developers propose somehow limiting deliveries and waste collections during market hours – though that will push them into pedestrian and cyclist commuting times, school runs and theatre hours. However, the chances of ensuring all 237 households residents arrange tightly timed and coordinated Amazon, DPD, Ocado, Tesco, furniture and appliance deliveries, contractors, removals, Ubers, moped take-away deliveries and so on seems laughable.
Since the original scheme, the world has changed and the pandemic has driven up online ordering to around 26% of all shopping. This completely overturns all the traditional concepts of service and delivery provision and we have been most surprised by the response of the traffic experts who quote unbelievably low traffic flows. Even these underestimates should have been doubled as the vehicles enter and then leave by the same route – two movements, not one. The planning committee has to rely on these experts and were blissfully unaware of the reality of this situation.
The single ground level delivery bay and waste collection point is accessed by a shared surface along the side of Hampstead Theatre which also happens to be the pedestrian entrance to the Swiss Cottage Open Space, fancifully called ‘Park Avenue’. The lorries and vans will then perform a reverse manoeuvre to turn and leave the same way. This will be a huge risk to pedestrians, especially children accessing the Open Space who currently play safely in the piazza.
The inevitable hostile environment created for pedestrians with frequent vehicle movements presents not only great risk, particularly to children and the mobility impaired but will destroy the current enjoyment of this vibrant and safe mixed-use space with its popular markets, theatres and rest places away from the busy A41.
It is likely the markets will cease as they simply will not be able to co-exist in this tight space and shoppers will not feel comfortable to use them.
This destruction could and should have been prevented by a redesign of this ‘Delivery and Service Management Plan’ to follow the ‘Construction Management Plan’ which requires construction traffic to access the site from the Avenue Road/ A41 side instead.
The developers were minded to approach TFL to discuss this and the idea was apparently dismissed due to the Red Route. Why were the planners not involved to broker an imaginative solution to prevent this disaster? TFL was certainly able to redesign the Red Route at the time of the Cycle Superhighway plans, so it is clearly not immutable. There is, indeed, a huge amount of road-space to play with and we believe this should have been investigated more thoroughly and openly.
Additional cost was almost certainly the driver but developers do tend to find ways to make large schemes like this viable. At least a redesign should have been more thoroughly investigated. It is what we might have expected of the expert planning professionals our council tax provides.
Similarly – but less critically perhaps – is the bizarre change of cladding from a neutral grey in the previous scheme to reddish brick, supposedly, the developers state, to respect the local context and integrate and fit better with the local vernacular.
The developers mention some unspecified consultation with local residents gained approval for the change but without any data to back this up. We cannot find any local resident supporting the reddish brick and most of the objections to the plans cite disapproval of this element.
Again, this appears to have been accepted by the planning officer without serious examination and the report to the committee counters any arguments against this finish with strange assertions that it is “more contextual”.
This is incorrect. There are many other colours of brick in the vicinity– buff, brown, orange and stucco are the more common type of finish and the modern tall buildings surrounding the site are predominantly whitish or grey.
The Chalcots estate towers were recently reclad in white and merge nicely into the sky like many tall buildings. 100 Avenue Road will instead be unnecessarily obtrusive and offensive to residents of the five conservation areas affected – a giant red, rude middle finger stuck up in our faces.
The recently approved extension to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama right next to the tower, ironically, was required by the planners to change from a rusty façade treatment to a pale grey, explicitly to fit the local context. We need consistency here.
Many of our members are also concerned that the private sales of the tower will end up in the hands of overseas investors and be left either empty or let as short-term rentals thereby fracturing further the local community.
Turning to the function of the committee, planning decisions often appear to become party political matters with block voting. Councillors are of course busy people wearing many hats and may not be expert in complex planning matters they are required to vote on and we think they need far more guidance on contentious schemes like this. They will not have had time to absorb all the 82 dense technical documents well over 1500 pages. The brief consideration at the committee meeting appeared superficial and insufficient.
The councillors are unlikely to have read all the many objections (out of 120 response documents) and largely coming from other wards, will not have had a chance to be lobbied by constituents, so are largely in a position to judge only on what the planners tell them.
Objectors – in our case three- are given, between them, a farcical total 5 minutes to put their case, backed with a 2 page statement which was not looked at. We included photographs (below) to illustrate the points to the committee but these were not shown, as was promised. This is totally inadequate for a major development such as this, especially where the committee might be misled by inadequate guidance from the planning officer.
In this case there was clearly misinformation about the delivery and servicing arrangement and so the committee got quite the wrong idea and were blissfully unaware of the damage the scheme would do.
We therefore felt we did not have the opportunity to adequately appraise the committee of our concerns.
As a local residents’ association, we end up feeling disempowered. Schemes like this go ahead without adequately examining and balancing the needs of the local community and protections of the local environment against the developer’s objectives.
We feel the consultations, led by the developers, are simply tick-box exercises and are not examined and reflected properly in the final planners’ report. We understand bigger issues are at play but clearly there needs to be a better level of scrutiny.
We would now like to try to mitigate the major harm of this development and save the wonderful amenity that the Eton Avenue piazza has become by investigating if a more more realistic ‘Delivery and Service Management Plan’ is possible now.
