[Updated from Dec 2010; reposted from Dec 2013] Reminder of Brent Terrace Residents - "Barnet Council ignores us"

Verbal submission by ALISTAIR LAMBERT (BRENT TERRACE RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION) to Barnet Planning Committee last November:

These triangles wouldn't get built on in Hampstead or Totteridge, would they?

 

"Brent Terrace is a row of 105 railway cottages sandwiched in the middle of the development. I am here to state that the developers have not proved that the scheme is of sufficient quality to be approved. To do so, I will outline one specific local issue to illustrate our wider concerns.

As they say, “The devil is in the detail.”

Brent Terrace is not a damaged community. In fact, we are lucky enough to enjoy a real sense of community. Children play in our street, and also on two green spaces that adjoin it.

· To read from the council’s report on the application (p178):

“The application proposes the removal of the existing two triangles of open space on Brent Terrace. These are not formally designated as open space although they are used by local people.”

[2010/11 UPDATE: one of those triangles IS a designated playground.]
It goes on to say:

“The development of these spaces is supported as they represent one of the few areas where it is proposed to build family houses”

Not units… or homes: houses. So it is intended to remove trees and green play space to make houses – despite Barnet’s UDP H20 policy aiming to ensure all new housing provides children’s play spaces.

This is our concern: “They want to have their cake and eat it.” The scheme is an impossible fantasy.

In 2001, Jonathan Joseph wrote to us and agreed to restoring and improving the green spaces for play on Brent Terrace… Now they are to be dug up. Mr Joseph will say that we will have a new park provided – and with a slight of hand it is to be called ‘Brent Terrace Park’…

However, this space does not and cannot, provide families with the essential overlooking needed for the ‘doorstep play’ that is rightly promoted as an integral element of the social infrastructure that the scheme claims to promote elsewhere.

So on the one hand the council recognises that people want to live in houses – yet to the west of Brent Terrace, overlooking us, they intend to build high rise blocks up to 13 storeys high!

Why does this matter?

· This matters because what you should all be planning for are genuinely sustainable communities.

· Places where people actually want to live.

· You should be building for a changed future:

· The context of this scheme has changed.

· The standards are set too low.

· We have seen the mistakes of the past being demolished all over the country. What makes you think that this massive scheme will really be any different?

· The developers have not proved that the scheme has sufficient Quality or Vision

· Or that they have the necessary humility or integrity for these plans to be accepted."

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