Coming to the eastern side of Barnet: Crossrail 2

Transport for London has just announced
new public consultation over Crossrail 2.

This is the Euston-St Pancras station, with two entrances:

Railway Gazette: "Thameslink Class 700 testing to begin soon [to Cricklewood, corrupt Brent Cross, Hendon and Mill Hill Broadway]"

Link to web site

"Siemens has now produced more than 380 of the 1 140 bodyshells for the Thameslink Class 700 Desiro City electric multiple-unit fleet at its Krefeld plant in Germany, with two eight-car Class 700/0 and 10 12-car Class 700/1 EMUs now completed.

"Two 12-car units have been delivered to the UK and are undergoing testing at the new depot in Three Bridges, which was officially opened on October 15.

"Siemens engineers are hoping to be able to undertake the first mainline test runs by the end of October, although the delivery programme does not actually require this until Christmas."

BRENT CROSS: Astonishing Pro-Cycling Turnabout by LB of Barnet and the Cuddly, Misunderstood People at Hammerson

"Here we present our final - and most informative - Streetfilm from Amsterdam. It provides a nice cross-section of commentary on life in the City of Bikes. If you'd like to skip directly to a certain section, use this table of contents:

0:17: Rejecting the Automobile
2:15: A bike system that works for everyone
4:05: There's a science to what looks like 'bicycle chaos'
5:55: Coming to The Netherlands from the United States
7:33: Dutch Bicycle Culture.

"Make sure you check out our other Streetfilms from Amsterdam: No Amsterdam is Not 'Swamped' By Bikes, Amsterdam Draws Bike Boxes to Organize Bike Parking, and Some Things You Might See While In Amsterdam.

"I still find it amazing that a five-year-old in Amsterdam can ride straighter and with more confidence than the average American adult!"

The Guardian: "Bike lane blues in Enfield: why don’t businesses want a £30m cycle-friendly upgrade?"

"A London borough plans to turn four traffic-filled roads into Dutch-style streets which are safer for bikes and pedestrians. Many shops and residents are up in arms, despite growing evidence the project will benefit the local economy. Why?"

Link to web site

"As cars stream past on both sides, a pedestrian perches on a tiny traffic island waiting for an opportunity to cross. A cyclist dodges round a 10-tonne lorry, held up by a driver trying to reverse into a tight parking space outside a high-street shop. Angry horns blare.

"It's intimidating to be on foot or a bike in a space dominated by motor vehicles. In that sense, this suburban street in north London is like many of the radial roads that flow in and out of cities the world over – not a particularly pleasant place to be.

"This road, though, has been given an opportunity to change. Transport for London has awarded the local authority, Enfield, £30 million from its 'Mini Holland' budget to transform four busy streets into routes with Dutch-inspired segregated bike lanes, where people feel safe to cycle and want to spend more time. Under the plans, Green Lanes is to get lightly segregated bike lanes running along both sides of the road; there will be six more zebra crossings for pedestrians; a bleak under-used public space will be remodelled with community involvement; pavements will be resurfaced; there will be more trees, more planters … Local residents and high street businesses must be thrilled?"

Independent Transport Commission: "On the Move: Exploring attitudes to road and rail travel in Britain"

"... On the issue of modal choice, the findings are striking in demonstrating that economic factors still remain a strong determinant of travel choice, with younger people especially concerned about the high cost of using a car relative to their income, including issues such as insurance, parking and learning to drive. The impact of concessionary and advance fares on public transport use is also an important driver, especially for younger people and pensioners. At the same time, location appears to be a key determinant for modal choice, due to the poor provision of public transport in rural areas. This is particularly the case with older people in rural areas who feel that they need to retain a car in order to preserve their independence.

"Modal choice also varies significantly across the different groups. The research demonstrates that young people are ‘falling out of love’ with the car, and place greater weight on alternative consumer products, while older people see the car as an important part of their lifestyle. At the same time, improvements in the accessibility of the public transport system are encouraging car owners to make more varied modal choices.

"... At the core of this research has been the desire to understand whether these attitudes are temporary or permanent features affecting travel behaviour. By comparing different age groups, it has been possible to see that there remain ‘tipping points’ in peoples’ lives at which point modal choice shifts. Such tipping points include starting a family, now more common in one’s 30s, at which point car ownership becomes more desirable; and also retirement, which often results in downsizing from a two to one car household.

"In spite of these factors, it is evident that across all groups we are seeing a rise in utilitarian attitudes towards car travel, which indicates that car ownership is likely to increasingly shift towards new forms of car access, such as car hire and car clubs. An equally significant factor pointing towards more permanent changes in attitudes is the way in which use of public transport modes when young increases the likelihood of continuing to use these later in life."

ITC ORR Road Rail Attitudinal Report Final[1]

Cricklewood Green Space: Barnet wasn't going to concrete it over, it was just the start of a debate. Apparently.

Link to Barnet Times

"This is [Hammerson's] Brent Cross" (sneer, sneer)

Sat 3 Oct: The Clitterhouse Farm Project: FILMS AT THE FARM

Link to web site

"THE CLITTERHOUSE FARM PROJECT are holding our second night of FREE cinema outside the front of Clitterhouse Farm in Clitterhouse Playing Fields, Cricklewood, NW2 on the 3rd October 2015.

"Many thanks to everyone who came to our first night on the 26th September for the screening of the Blues Brothers. It was a wonderful event and we hope you all enjoyed it."

COMING UP...

Saturday 3rd October - 7pm

Grow Your Own (2007)

Navin Shah AM: "Outer London: Understanding ‘The Doughnut’"

"Boris Johnson's refusal to face up to the housing crisis has allowed it to spill into the outer boroughs"

Link to web site

"It is now received wisdom that Outer London won Boris Johnson the mayoralty in 2008, and also comfortably delivered his second term.

"As a result, the issues facing Outer London are on the agenda in a way they were not previously with policies to win over the Outer London 'doughnut' sure to form a growing battleground.

"Yet despite his pledge to be a mayor for all zones, many of the changes promised to Outer London remain undelivered. There is no doubt that Outer London has been let down by Boris Johnson, who quickly fell into a 'central London first' focus.

"... The proposed Opportunity and Intensification Areas designed in Outer London to accommodate future economic growth are also doomed to fail if there is no strategic plan. The next mayor will need to have vision and focus to make regeneration projects like Brent Cross and Old Oak Common successful and relevant to Outer London Boroughs."

Sat 26 Nov and 3 Oct: Clitterhouse Farm at the Movies

Channel Four News: "Sweets Way, Barnet: life inside the occupied estate"

Brent & Kilburn Times: Cricklewood Festival and Green Space

Barnet Times: "Cricklewood Festival highlights 'threat' to green space"

Link to web site

"MUSIC and dancing entertained the crowds at the annual Cricklewood Festival.

"Thousands of people turned out to enjoy all that the town has to offer last Sunday (September 20), which included a wide range of food stalls and musical performances from nearby schools.

"Campaigners also spent the day collecting signatures opposing development on the Cricklewood green space.

"Barnet council recently shelved plans to sell off the space for housing, after a furious backlash from residents and councillors."

Brent & Kilburn Times: "Developers unveil plans for multi-million pound business district in Wembley Park" (relying much more on public transport than Barnet's corrupt Brent Cross planning consent)

Link to web site

"Developers leading the multi-million pound transformation of land around Wembley stadium have unveiled plans for a series of high-rise office blocks aimed at drawing City workers and tech start-ups to the area.

"At a glitzy reception at the Hilton Sky Bar in Lakeside Way, developer Quintain revealed it is releasing 750,000 square feet of land to make way for four eight to nine storey blocks of dedicated office space.

"... Sarah O’Connell, Director of National Offices at Colliers International said:

"Wembley really does have everything in place to be the next King's Cross.

With everything already here, employees would have access to three stations, 76 shops and 20 restaurants, as well as a 9-screen cinema and the world famous sports stadium."

The Guardian: "London residents to bid for Mount Pleasant site to stop £1-billion development" (but then, they didn't suffer the corrupt Brent Cross planning consent, did they?)

Link to web site

"Local residents who were branded 'bourgeois nimbys' by London mayor Boris Johnson for opposing a £1-billion luxury apartment complex are set to try to seize control of the development and build their own community-approved housing.

A group of people living near the Royal Mail's Mount Pleasant sorting office have secured the backing of one of Britain’s biggest investors, Legal and General, and a major housing association to launch a joint bid for the land.

"The group is angry at the lack of affordable housing and 'fortress-like' design of the current proposal and is poised to battle against some of the world’s biggest property developers for control of the prime site, which is expected to fetch around £300m.

"... 'Too many schemes in recent years have focused on purely short-term profit,' said Nicholas Boys Smith, director of Create Streets, a social enterprise that has helped broker the bid. 'This is meant to redress that imbalance and better embed what people like and want in the built environment'."

BBC: "Why is the UK's housing benefit bill so high?"

Link to web site

"The UK currently spends billions of pounds a year on housing benefit. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, explains the history of the payments and how government funding for house-building has gradually moved into subsidies for rents, especially to private landlords.

What is housing benefit?

"It's a means-tested benefit paid to people on low incomes. For tenants in council or housing association properties it will usually cover their whole rent if they have no other income. For many of those in the private sector it will not pay the whole rent even if they have no other income. Housing benefit is withdrawn as income rises, but an increasing number of people in work claim at least some housing benefit.

Why do we have it?

"We don't have benefits explicitly to pay for any other item of spending - a clothes benefit, or a food benefit for example. But the level of rents is so variable around the country and between households that a special benefit to help pay rents has been in place since at least the 1930s. A form of housing benefit was part of Beveridge's prescription in his famous report. He referred to 'the problem of rent'."

Sat 19 Sept: Cricklewood Festival

Barnet Press, Ham & High, and Brent & Kilburn Times letters: Hammerson's Brent Cross cycling provision is rubbish (but not going to the shopping centre, so doesn't care)

Barnet Times: "Parking charges to be introduced at Brent Cross Shopping Centre under redevelopment plans" (which were passed last night, but not without three contributors accusing Barnet of corruption)

Link to web site
[The shopping centre planning application
itself will not be submitted until 2016]

"SHOPPERS could start having to shell out money to pay to park at a shopping centre for the first time in nearly 40 years.

"Brent Cross Shopping Centre, in Prince Charles Drive, Hendon, has always proudly advertised the fact that it offers free parking for all customers.

"But under new plans, it will cost people £1 for up to two hours, £2 for three to four hours, £2.50 for four hours and £3.50 for five hours."

The Guardian: "Metroland, 100 years on: what's become of England’s original vision of suburbia?"

"In 1915, the Metropolitan Railway coined the term Metroland to describe a band of countryside just north-west of London, marketed as a land of idyllic cottages and wild flowers. But amid claims of overcrowding and a sea of ubiquitous semis, how does Metroland’s 21st-century reality compare with the original dream?"

Link to web site

"Planners, architects and builders are not the only ones who create cities. The suburban landscape of north-west London owes its existence, largely, to the imagination of the Metropolitan Railway's marketing department.

"One hundred years ago, in the summer of 1915, the railway’s publicity people devised the term 'Metroland' to describe the catchment area of villages stretching from Neasden into the Chiltern Hills. The railway had bought up huge tracts of farmland along this corridor in the decades before the first world war, and it was ripe for development. All they needed was a sales pitch.

"The first Metroland booklets were filled with illustrations of idyllic cottages and dainty verses about 'a land where the wild flowers grow'. A semi-rural arcadia was offered to Londoners sick of crowded conditions in the city. The campaign proved a roaring success. After the war, the white-collar workers who sought space and greenery flocked to the north-west of the city."

[Reposted] "Brent Cross: London's Newest Town Centre" (assuming long-term and freehold Whitefields Estate residents can be kicked out)

BRENT CROSS logo, for after Hammerson leaves
('CROSS'? It's absolutely LIVID!)

The Dysfunctional Brent Cross Dystopia (from Barnet's corrupt 2009 planning permission, and Hammerson...

London Borough of Brent demands action from London Borough of Barnet (The response? Feck off.)

2015-08 Brent Cross Cricklewood Consultation

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Link to Quintain web site

Barnet Times (Cricklewood Lane and Planning Consent Corruption by Barnet) and Brent & Kilburn Times (the same thing)

[Reposted from March 2010 - it's happened again in March 2014!] Coalition Pleased that Government Stalls Plans

Press release:

The Coalition for a Sustainable Brent Cross Cricklewood Plan are celebrating their biggest victory since they formed in September 2009.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government issued a ‘stop notice’ under Article 14 of the Town and Country Planning Order 1995, saying:

The SoS hereby directs Barnet Council not to grant planning permission on this application without specific authorisation.

Boris Johnson had passed the plans on Friday, and the stop notice means that John Denham now has more time to decide whether to call in the development for a public inquiry. The Coalition believes the development fulfils every criterion for a call-in.

Coalition Co-ordinator Lia Colacicco was excited:

Hopefully the Secretary of State’s next move is to call a public inquiry immediately so that these disastrous plans can undergo full public scrutiny.

We were hoping that John Denham would stop this dinosaur of a development. He has much broader powers than the Mayor: it could be called in on several criteria, but in particular because its effects go far beyond the immediate area, local people don’t want it in this form, and because it is completely unsustainable in terms of traffic, housing, and the environment.

We are not surprised that John Denham has issued a ‘stop notice’. How would it look if this out-of-town development is allowed to go through with its incinerator and sub-standard housing, when by 2016 all other new housing will have to be carbon zero? We want an exciting and innovative place, built around people and public transport – including a local railway like the Docklands Light Railway. We need to use the latest green technology.

Darren Johnson, London Assembly member said:

There are better ways to spend £4.8bn if we want to revitalise this area. Londoners want less traffic, good local shops and more affordable homes, but the Mayor has rubberstamped a development that will bring the exact opposite to the area: another 29,000 cars, a threat to other neighbourhood shopping areas and one of the lowest affordable homes targets in London.

David Howard, Federation of Residents Associations in Barnet added:

The timing is interesting. The scheme may now struggle. Its greatest advocate in Barnet, Mike ‘easy council’ Freer is hoping to move away from the Council into Parliament. Westfield's White City shopping centre is under-performing. Brent Cross developer Hammerson is getting cold feet about doubling the size of the shopping area, and is moving its attention to France. The housing market has collapsed and the Brent Cross model is out of date. No wonder the developers have only committed to phase one. We await with interest what happens next.

Notes to Editors

1. The “Coalition for a Sustainable Brent Cross Cricklewood Plan” comprises twelve residents’ associations plus the Federation of Residents’ Associations in Barnet (representing the 12 largest residents’ associations in Barnet), Brent Cyclists, the North West London Light Railway (NWLLR) group, Brent Friends of the Earth (FoE), Barnet & Enfield FoE, Camden FoE, Sarah Teather (MP for Brent East), Dawn Butler (MP for Brent South), Labour and LibDem Councillors from Brent and Camden, Navin Shah (London Assembly Member for Brent and Harrow), Darren Johnson (London Assembly Member), Jean Lambert (London MEP), Brent Green Party, Barnet Green Party, Cllr Alexis Rowell (Chair of Camden Sustainability Taskforce), Barnet Trades Council (TUC) and Bestway Group.

2. The petition to call the development in for a public inquiry is available at: http://www.petition.co.uk/campaign_for_a_sustainable_brent_cross_cricklewood_development

3. The Coalition blog is at http://www.brentcrosscoalition.blogspot.com/

4. Facts about Brent Cross and the Coalition are at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Cross and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_for_a_Sustainable_Brent_Cross_Cricklewood

[Reposted from Mar 2014] Barnet Press (Brent Cross Cricklewood green spaces), and Barnet Times (Green Party Brent Cross letter)

Instead of attempting Consultation, Workshops and Debate, the LB of Barnet at Brent Cross went for Arrogance, Incompetence and Corruption

DRAFT OPDC SCI Aug 2015 for Consultation[1]

Source

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Fastcoexist: "A city known for some of the world's worst traffic jams is getting a radical pedestrian makeover"

Link to web site

"Dublin ranks just under Los Angeles for having some of the worst traffic jams in the world. The problem is predicted to get worse as the city quickly grows—somehow, it will have to squeeze in 20% more commuters over the next decade. That's why the city is now deciding to make a radical shift: It wants to ban cars from several major downtown streets.

"Right now, pedestrians don’t have it easy. 'Dublin has a compact city center, but we don't give enough priority to pedestrians or cyclists,' says Ciarán Cuffe, chair of the city council's transport committee. 'All too often those who walk are left waiting at crossings while cars whizz past for minutes on end.'

"In the proposed plan, the city wants to route cars around the city center, and turn major streets into car-free plazas and passages for buses, bikes, pedestrians, and a new tram line. Along the banks of the River Liffey, polluted roads will become promenades. On Grafton Street, a former car lane will turn into a tree-shaded terrace with cafe tables, while the other lane has tram tracks. New bike lanes and wider sidewalks will be added as well."

Change.org: "Save Cricklewood's only green space from five-storey development"

Link to web site   (pic: Anne Clarke)

"We are opposed to plans to build on the green space on Cricklewood Lane (outside B&Q) as part of the Brent Cross development BXC.

"We call for this ‘green island’ to be secured in perpetuity for residents of Cricklewood/NW2 area.

"It is outrageous that building on this green space has been quietly wrapped into a planning application for Brent Cross shopping centre more than a mile away, in order to get planning permission by stealth."

Mon 7 Sept: Attempted sell-off of Cricklewood Lane Green Space by LB of Barnet

(pics: Thomas Ball Photos)

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Pocket Development Land Fronting B Q Cricklewood Lane[1]

Source

[Reposted] Wembley Matters: "Dinosaur and developer join protest against loss of Cricklewood green space"

Link to web site

"Demonstrators protesting against the possible loss of the green space outside B&Q in Cricklewood Lane in a deal between Barnet Council and the Brent Cross developers, coped quite well when they were joined by a dinosaur."

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Barnet Times

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[Reposted from Aug 2012] Paul Winter & Co.

Paul Winter & Co - Specialist Planning Lawyers

"Whether you are looking for a standalone planning lawyer to work on a project or a specialist expert planning lawyer to bolt into your wider project team (including other lawyers), we have a track record for success in major and complex developments and we promise to add value to your project."

Brent Cross and Cricklewood Regeneration

[What were we up to?] 

"Advising and acting for the London Borough of Barnet, in relation to the determination of what was probably the largest single planning application in north-west London, and certainly the largest in Barnet."

"The site involves the regeneration and redevelopment of a 218 hectare site which straddles the A407 North Circular Road [sic] and includes the southern junction of the M1 Motorway at Staples Corner. The development includes a large-scale extension of Brent Cross Shopping Centre as well as approximately 7500 dwellings, 4 million square feet of offices, major transport improvements (including new railway and bus stations) and a Combined Heating and Cooling Plant producing on-site renewable energy based on refuse derived fuel or other renewable technologies.

Work has included complex Environmental Impact Assessment and Transport Assessment issues to ensure that the planning permission was robust and the development could evolve over the 20-25 years anticipated development period.

Planning permission was granted in October 2010 on the basis of a very large and complex section 106 agreement containing some innovative solutions. The Mayor and the Secretary of State declined to exercise their statutory powers of direction and/or call-in in relation to this application and work on detailed design and delivery the project continues.

The importance of the BXC project merited a special strategic policy in the Core Strategy and I have also advised on that policy and the related monitoring and review criteria. I also appeared alongside officers of the Council at the Core Strategy Examination Hearing."

Martin Cowie, Assistant Director of Planning and Development Management at the London Borough of Barnet:

"Paul has successfully supported the planning department on a number of high profile and complex cases, demonstrating an ability to resolve issues quickly and collaboratively. As a first rate planning lawyer, he is an asset to any project team.

Always a safe pair of hands, but Paul also brings with him a clear focus and ability to drive solutions forward. [sic] As a skilled negotiator, he is relentless in his pursuit to deliver, and his advice is consistently reliable, timely and robust.

Without a doubt, one of the most effective operators in his field."

[Reposted from Sept 2010] F.O.R.A.B. critique of whole Brent Cross planning application

Federation of Residents Associations in Barnet

19th September 2010

Open letter to all councillors on Barnet Planning and Environment Committee

Dear Councillor,

Brent Cross and Cricklewood Application number C/17559/08

You have been given one more chance at the Planning and Environment Committee on Monday night for sanity to prevail, and to prevent the council incurring large sums in defending an expensive Judicial Review, then paying out costs to the winning plaintiff.

[Reposted. Again.] Hammerson: "Cripes! How do we get out of this mess?"

Glossary of Terms Attached to BXC Outline Planning Permission 

"Phase 1" [of the Brent Cross Cricklewood scheme] shall have the precisely same meaning as the Primary Development Package and PDP (and for the avoidance of doubt, any reference to 'Phase 1' in this Agreement shall include the whole of Phase 1, including Phases 1A, 1B and 1C, unless stated otherwise).

Rarely-seen Hammerson board meeting

The Guardian: "The quiet revolution in British housing"

"Architects are fighting back. After their cause was hampered by the ill-conceived high-rises of the 60s and 70s, followed by the dire 'traditional' building of the Thatcher era, imaginative and sustainable housing is in the ascendant"

Link to web site

"Once upon a time new housing in Britain was terrible. Engendered by the fearful coupling of utopian architectural fanatics and of bureaucratic automata in local authorities, it was soulless, alienating, malfunctioning and often damp. Such at least is the conventional narrative which, if it overlooks many beautiful and conscientious works now being rediscovered, still contains a portion of truth.

"This was in the time loosely known as the 60s and 70s, an era of state-led homebuilding that would be terminated by Margaret Thatcher, such that another kind of housing could flourish, terrible in a different way: Noddy houses, faux-traditional executive homes, could-be-anywhere progeny of developers’ calculations and planners’ vague strictures on being “in keeping”, brick boxes packed with miniature bedrooms and bathrooms that would look better in estate agents’ particulars than in real life. This story might be oversimplified too, although I can’t immediately see in what way.

"Now, if you look carefully and avert your gaze from large quantities of obvious junk, it is possible to see that some new housing is, finally, not terrible."

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"Architect Walter Segal had a long and influential career. In his later years he focused on a series of self-built council housing developments which made use of innovative organising principles. 

"This is the story of Walter’s Way, a little-known street of two-storey houses in Lewisham, which may hold part of the solution to London's housing crisis."

Wembley Matters: "Monster emerges through the trees at Welsh Harp Reservoir (West Hendon)"

Link to web site

"Readers will remember that there was a broad-based campaign opposing the Barratt Home development on the banks of the Welsh Harp Reservoir at West Hendon. Mainly low-rise social housing was to be replaced by luxury private tower blocks close to a nature reserve and SSSI.

"Unfortunately the campaign did not succeed and Barnet Council went ahead with the scheme. West Hendon Estate residents through their Our West Hendon campaign are fighting what they see as social cleansing of a community and working with Sweets Way residents to challenge Barnet Council.

"Walking the Kingsbury side of the Welsh Harp on Sunday it became clear what an intrusive eyesore these blocks will be. Sold on the basis of the wonderful green view of the Kingsbury bank that the new residents will see, on our side we will see tower blocks the tallest of which is 24 storeys."

London Housing Crisis: "Nine Elms 'sky pool': Luxury London flat owners will be able to swim while literally looking down on everyone else"

Link to The Independent

"The Nine Elms development on the south bank of the Thames has become a symbol for the growing divide in the London housing market.

"And the huge project, which Boris Johnson pledged would help regenerate the area, looks set to get even more divisive after architects added a glass pool suspended 10 storeys above street level for the exclusive use of the block's residents.

"Prices at Ballymore's 2,000-home complex Embassy Gardens are far above the reach of ordinary Londoners - the tiniest flats come with a price tag of more than £600,000."

CityMetric: "Naked streets, floating bus stops – and how cycling infrastructure can endanger the blind"

Link to web site

"This week one of the 3,500 blind and partially sighted people who live around Whitechapel High Street in London will step outside and attempt to reach their bus stop. To get there, they’ll find that they have to cross a lane of fast moving cyclists, over whom they have no formal priority and whose silent approach they are unable to detect. According to Transport for London’s (TfL) own research, only 15 per cent of cyclists will stop for them.

"For these people, the disappearance of some plastic roadworks-barriers and the sudden, permanent separation of bus stop from pavement, will be the first indication that any such change had been mooted, discussed, planned, designed, or consulted on.

"According to TfL, the government body responsible for the changes, 'consultation' had indeed taken place for a month in late 2014. Obviously the blind and partially sighted people who are actually affected by the scheme were not asked directly: indeed, scheme designs were never even converted into a form they could access."

The Independent: "Bovis, doing exactly as it should, shows why we have a housing crisis"

"Outlook: The paradox highlights one of the many problems of leaving the housing demands of a growing and varied population to the cold logic of the free market"

Link to web site

"If ever we needed telling, Bovis has confirmed it in black and white: Britain doesn’t have a hope of hitting the Government’s 200,000 annual housebuilding target. Ever.

"The reasons are legion. We don’t have enough brickies and plumbers, planning permission is hard to get, and the more we build, the more prohibitively pricey the materials become.

"Tutting and shaking its head like all good builders, Bovis cited all these usual factors. But it also raised another: the lack of available finance for its smaller peers to get new homes started.

"While the City is funding the likes of Bovis and Persimmon, banks, and even the government-funded schemes, are still demanding high rates of interest and onerous terms for the smaller independent players. And without them, we’ll never build the homes we need."

House of Lords Select Committee: Perhaps someone can explain LB of Barnet's corrupt Brent Cross Cricklewood planning consent to their lordships...

Link to web site

"The House of Lords Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment has published its Call for Evidence. Interested parties are invited to submit written evidence to the Committee by 6 October 2015."

"The new House of Lords Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment has today issued its call for written evidence, setting out the scope of its inquiry and asking for evidence submissions.

"Issues around housing and the built environment are a pressing concern in England with parts of the country facing acute housing shortages and an affordability crisis, while the legacy of poorly planned and designed developments can blight communities.

"The Committee will seek to establish what steps can be taken to ensure better planning and design and whether we have the right balance between national policy and local accountability for planning decisions. It will also examine the pressing national need for appropriate homes for a changing population, bearing in mind that decisions taken today will have continuing effects in the years to come.

Chairman's comment

"Commenting Baroness O’Cathain, Chairman of the Committee, said:

"We live, travel and work in the built environment and it affects us all in numerous ways, from our health and happiness to the strength of our communities and the prevalence of crime and anti-social behaviour. It is increasingly clear that the design and quality of our places, and therefore our lives, could be improved.

"We need to plan our built environment to meet future demographic, environmental, economic and social challenges. Design and architecture, public and green spaces, the sustainability and resilience of buildings and the provision of vital infrastructure are all essential parts of this process. To achieve this, we need the right priorities, policies and incentives from national Government and the sufficient skills and resources for local government to deliver on an ambitious vision for the future. In this country we have a wonderful heritage of excellent housing in lovely settings; we must ensure that future generations can be proud of the legacy resulting from the decisions and actions of this generation.

"The supply of housing is a long-standing problem; delivery has neither kept up with public need nor politicians' targets. We need to look at new ways of tackling the obstacles that have prevented progress being made and we need an appropriate planning regime to ensure a balance between giving local residents a voice and meeting our urgent needs.

"Improving our built environment is likely to be a key area for Government policy over the next decade and our inquiry gives people the chance to make their voice heard. When it comes to the built environment, all of us have views on the places we live, and I would therefore encourage as many people as possible to send us written evidence before our deadline on 6 October."

"The call for written evidence contains thirteen questions that the Committee wish to receive responses to."

Call for Written Evidence NPBE[1] by scribdstorage