Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere July Newsletter (# 39)

1. In June it became official that the British economy was in what is known as a “double-dip recession”. This was, and is, really bad news for everyone in the country and for many of us locally. For instance, it should be noted that unemployment in Latchmere rose yet again in May to 575, which at 7.9% is the highest in the Borough (it is 7.8% in Roehampton). This compares with the average of 5.5% in England & Wales. As for the double-dip recession, I don’t particularly want to claim credit for it, but I have been virtually alone in forecasting this in the Council for the best part of a year. The real calamity is that in these hard times the Council, admittedly hard pushed by the Government, is cutting jobs and services at an increasing rate of knots. Just when is the Government going to make a U-turn on this just as it has with so many other issues recently. It really is time for a Plan B, a plan for economic growth.

2. I went to see the river pageant to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in Battersea Park but I am afraid it was not, for me, a wild success. As you know it rained and it was almost impossible to see anything. Unfortunately the weather took the gloss off most of the street parties as well – great shame but couldn’t be helped. Did you have better luck or did you go out of London and get away from it all? Here is a picture of many of the audience trying to get a view from atop the mobile loos!

3. For the first time in ears I was not one of the Labour members on the Finance & Corporate Resources, where the major item under discussion was Elliott School, Putney, where I know a number of Latchmere youngsters have gone. I wouldn’t mention it except for this crucial discussion about Elliott School, where the argument was whether the Council should pay for the very considerable and expensive refurbishment required for the school out of its own reserves or from the receipts for selling much of the school playing fields. The final decision on this matter is to be made, probably in August, but the Council is likely to sell some 40% of the playing fields. Here is a picture of the so-called Ark Academy closing the door on LEA secondary schools in the Borough!

4. The June 14th Big Local meeting in York Gardens was a great success and facilitator, Helen Garforth, will have found it useful in helping to frame a vision for Latchmere before the Big Lottery starts releasing the £1 million it is making available to Latchmere over the next ten years.

5. The 21st July Planning Applications Committee had no Latchmere applications but did have 3 very large and important developments for Battersea. The one of most direct interest to Latchmere was an application for 116 residential units, plus ancillary shopping and some industrial units, rising to some six storeys on York Road. The development would be almost opposite the York Gardens Library, where currently there is a car-show room and a fair amount of parking. (The site is pictured here at the corner of Lombard and York Roads).The Committee unanimously refused the application as being too high and out of scale for the site. However, my own view is that the Tory councillors, who represent the other side of York Road, are being pressurised by local residents into voting against the application but that the Council’s planning policies incline towards it : the end result of such a mess could be that the Secretary of State will grant permission after appeal.

The other two massive applications were for the reconstruction of Covent Garden Market and of the adjacent but now unconnected Market Towers at the end of Nine Elms. These are two really gigantic applications, both of which were approved.

Covent Garden Market will be completely demolished and re-constructed but more intensively. The redevelopment will include, or so it is planned, 2,500 residential units, a 500 bed hotel, a gymnasium and a 2,000 square metre (that’s very large) food super-store. Covent Garden Market is probably the third largest employer in the Borough (after the Council and the NHS) and therefore its future is very important to the Council. So, it was perhaps not surprising that it got support from all councillors and hopefully the end result will be good for us all. But I have a couple of reservations, one about the limited amount of “affordable” housing that will be built there and the other about the size of the retail unit. And it’s not because of my dislike of shopping but because at the same time the very large Sainsbury’s in Wandsworth Road is also being re-developed and I just can’t see that the area needs two megastores right next door to each other. PS Government definitions of affordable housing at least in Battersea require people to have something like £60,000 take-home pay so you can see it is affordable only to people earning more than twice the national average wage!

Market Towers, or as the developers want to call it One Nine Elms Lane is, to my mind, a very different proposition. Here the proposal is to build two giant towers; one of them up to 200 metres high, that is higher than the giant tower currently being built on the other side of Nine Elms Lane and the other slightly lower. These towers would have nearly 500 flats, a hotel and no doubt ancillary shops plus some offices. I voted against this application because there is very little “affordable” housing and that in my view these developments will make no contribution to the housing problems of most Battersea residents.

6. On 26th June, I was at the Housing Committee. Many years ago I was the Chair of the Housing Committee but this was the first I have attended for some time and very interesting, and worrying, it was too. There was masses of boring detail but two new Council policies I want to pick out in particular. The first is about Council-house rents. As from now all new tenancies will be let at 80% market rents and not on the traditional Council base. That means that new tenants will be expected to pay rents about 30-40% higher than their neighbours. Given that at the same time the Government is making draconian cuts to Housing Benefits I think we can see a concerted Conservative Party move to put an end to Council housing.

This slightly alarmist statement is supported by the other policy, which is to end the traditional policy of granting tenancies for “life”. As from now Council tenancies will be granted on a short-term basis, 5 years, and only renewed depending upon whether the tenant passes various tests. These include behaving well, not earning too much, doing what the Council expects you to do in terms of getting a job, etc. OK, so I put that case rather emotively but it is quite something coming from a Tory party that has complained about the “Nanny State” for so long! I just wonder how long it will be before this one becomes another U-turn.

7. On the very next day I was also at the Strategic Planning & Transportation Committee. Funnily enough I was also Chair of this Committee, many years ago, however, there was very little to report of interest unless one happens to live on the streets that were being discussed and as it happens none of these were in Latchmere.

My Programme for July

1. I will be attending the Passenger Transport Liaison on 2nd July. After my many years as a councillor this will be the first time I have ever attended this committee, where all kinds of public transport are discussed including even river passenger traffic.

2. On 7th July I will be attending the Poyntz Road/Knowsley Road Triangle Party from about 8pm on. This street party is, as far as I am concerned, the best in the Borough and I am really looking forward to it.

3. The Council Meeting is on 11th July; I have the Planning Applications Committee on the 18th, where a major application could be the plans for rebuilding Clapham Junction’s Peabody Estate; there is the Latchmere Report Back Meeting on 19th July at York Gardens Library, which is your chance to come and grill me and my fellow councillors, Wendy and Simon, and indeed the Leader of the Council, Ravi Govindia; and that is all followed by the  Olympics, for which I was lucky and got quite a few tickets!

Did you know?

That the Falcons used to be Wandsworth Council’s Livingstone Estate. In the early 80s the Council discovered that the 1960s estate was built using a great deal of asbestos and considered spending millions to rip out the asbestos and then re-furbish the estate. But it decided that this was too expensive and so decided instead to sell the estate to private developers.

After getting rid of the blue asbestos and in the course of “re-branding” the private developers decided to name all the blocks on the estate after birds of prey, presumably because of the address on Falcon Road, and hence we have Hawk, Harrier, Peregrine, Eagle, Osprey, Kite, Lanner, Griffon and Kestrel Houses, Courts and Heights. Let’s just talk about one: Peregrine House. The Peregrine is the fastest animal of all reaching 200 mph in its hunting dive; the vast majority of its prey is smaller birds, though the peregrine itself is only the size of a crow. Typically it has lived in cliffs and mountains but in recent times they have moved into cities – there is a pair at Battersea Power Station. Life in high towers obviously seems to be similar enough to cliffs for the Peregrine.

But Peregrine House used to be called Burne-Jones Court, after the painter Edward Burne-Jones, 1833-98. Burne-Jones, who was born in Birmingham, was a major artist of the very British pre-Raphaelite movement along with William Morris, John Ruskin and Dante Rosetti amongst others. They “loved” the middle Ages and were very concerned with design, which is perhaps obvious from a quick glance at the painting on the right.

Why the Council named the Livingstone blocks after artists like Burne-Jones, will be the subject of a later Newsletter.