After 7 years of battling with LBWF and C&R (Capital and Regional) The Mayor/GLA has given permission for an outdated, inappropriate development of Walthamstow Town Centre conceived 10 years ago.. The only success the public campaign had was to save the avenue of lime trees. Below is what we can now expect in the Town centre.
1. C&R's plans were evolved over 10 years ago and are out of date and certainly not fit for purpose post Covid or the fundamental change in retail which is ongoing. Protests were ignored.
2. The Grenfell Inquiry is still underway so it is not yet known whether the current building regulations are fit for purpose, so to risk the lives of our residents who will occupy the 34 and 26 storey tower blocks is irresponsible. Hounslow has already had to evacuate a new development called the Paragon in Brentford due to major fire risks and recently there was a major fire in a block in Poplar. There has already been a fire in the Mall so the regulations are clearly not achieving their purpose which is to protect lives.
3. Affordable Housing - Twice C&R have had to be forced to concede Affordable Housing so what guarantee will there be that any of the flats will be affordable? These flats will not be available to any of the 9,000 residents on the council's Housing Waiting list. All the flats will be for rent so the tenants will have no long term financial gain, but at least C&R will have to foot the build if there are major construction problems with the blocks. They have to pay LBWF £7.3m as compensation which the council has to spend on Social Housing somewhere.
4. Town Square - The open space of the Town Square is to be reduced by 32% because of the expansion of the Mall. Why is it necessary to expand the Mall when shoppers are moving online? In reality there will be no open space for sitting as the children's playground and water feature will take up much of the land by the extended shopping centre. The only space left is between the avenue of lime trees and the bus station, and that has a range of landscape features leaving very little space for just sitting on the grass.
6. The Victoria line is already at capacity (pre Covid) so building another 538 flats in the Town Centre will only increase the congestion. The new entrance to the station, which will be adjacent to the existing Mall entrance, will increase the number of passengers walking across the Town Square to get into the congested station. TfL has no money to build the entrance so will it ever be built?
7. The Street Scene of Walthamstow will be severely damaged by a 34 and 26 storey block alongside Selborne Road, over twice the height of any other nearby building, looming over the local streets. This is no way to build a cohesive community.
8. The Construction Work is planned to take at least 5 years. This is a huge scheme so why would shoppers want to come to a massive building site with all the noise, pollution and traffic congestion when they have now learnt to rely on online shopping? There are also plenty of other more attractive places to go shopping than a building site. This very long construction period will have a major detrimental impact on Walthamstow's economy.
9. C&R were taken over by the South African company Growthpoint . Why do they want to invest £200m in Walthamstow?
10. Open Space Reduced
Existing
Proposed
Now
Proposed
Simply unforgiveable. And planning objections outnumbered supporters by over a hundred to one. So they aren't working for us. (Phil H.)
ReplyDeleteIs there anything we can do to stop it?
ReplyDeleteI don't think there is. I don't think there ever was. Local opposition to this was *massive* - I for one have never met a local who wanted to see this go ahead. But they don't care what we think. They know best, you see. We're just children really. The Chair of the planning meeting which gave this the go-ahead said she couldn't understand why anyone would value that patch of open space.
ReplyDeleteyou are right to call attention to the fact that this is an outdated concept now the world appears to have changed after Covid and peoples priorities for shopping and living have changed, possibly for ever. in the meantime we are left with this soaring inappropiate eyesore that devalues so much of the surrounding area , did it really need to be so tall ?
ReplyDeleteThere still appears to be this one dimensional thinking with developers that everywhere has to be turned into a far eastern style megalopolis .
I think direct action is the only way lefdt to get through nto them. Try to find ways to make it expensive for them, and enlist the help of Extinction Rebellion or any other environmental groups when the men with chainsaws arrive to butcher the trees.
ReplyDeleteHere are my comments on this dreadful development from a few years ago. How wrong I was in regards to them reducing the monster blocks:
ReplyDeleteI am very concerned about this development.
I think the developers know very well they won't get this number of storeys approved
I feel the 'monster tower' is a tactic to draw the attention away from what is a poor proposal.
We all protest and the developer kindly drops this part and we all feel like we reached a compromise and the (majority of the) development goes ahead.
We have dwindling green space so the telly tubby land should not be built on either.
Why is it always developers that take the lead on any housing developments?
We have historically low interest rates and the council should be able to raise finance without developers being involved.
The rents from these planned properties would be the security on the finance.
No matter how you tosh up the St. James end of the market, it clearly needs re-development more than the top end of the market.
Developing the Mall further will make the market even more top heavy.
The Mall has always struggled to have full occupancy and will never be able to compete with Westfield, nor should it.
More affordable and council housing at the bottom of the market is a much more sensible proposal.
Imho this Mall proposal should be rejected out of hand and the council need to think about or ask their constituents what they really want.