MERA is now watching Site 12 in English Street

EastendHomes propose to create four affordable homes (3 beds x 5 persons) on the land adjacent to Beckley House and 2-26 English Street.  This is known as Site 12 within the Eric and Treby Street Estate redevelopment.

Yesterday Telford Homes plc were busy erecting the posts for the site hoarding - see the photo below.  As you can see they clearly come to the edge of the pavement which means that there are obviously plans to STOP residents from walking along that part of the pavement.

Now to have hoarding which disrupts pedestrian flows you need to have a Hoarding Licence. The Site Manager asserts that they have one and will be displaying it in full view when the hoarding has been erected

Our priority is to have a safe neighbourhood for the duration of the redevelopment contract.  In particular to make sure that the site is SUPER-SAFE for children during the upcoming school holidays.  

Consequently MERA is:

• checking with Tower Hamlets Council what plans have been submitted for compliance with the conditions for having site hoarding and the movement of pedestrians including children
• checking with the Highways department whether there have been any proposals to suspend the parking bays immediately outside the site to create a pedestrian walkway for those people
• expecting that ALL provision for the separation of site traffic from pedestrian traffic complies with requirements to make the public highway accessible for disabled persons who need carriageway crossovers to get up and down pavements.

The Council's website clearly states the following

Scaffolding and hoarding licence

When carrying out any building work, maintenance, or removing part of a property next to a public road, pavement or rear lane, the safety of people on the road is paramount.

You must provide safe areas at ground level or a platform at high levels. When it is necessary to place hoardings on the road/pavement around the place of work or scaffolding, you need to obtain permission from the council by completing a form together with a sketch. If you get permission, please read it carefully and make sure you adhere to all the conditions of the licence.

Basic requirements

Hoardings:

• Must be a minimum of 2.5 metres high and able to withstand high winds
• Must have illumination
• Must have a smooth finish with no protruding parts
• Must have pedestrian walkways of satisfactory width maintained or provided, and regularly inspected by the contractor

Lighting:

• Baulk timbers must be illuminated along their upper surfaces by red lights set at intervals no greater than 3 metres.
• A hoarding that is on the carriageway – or is 45cm or less from the kerb face – shall be illuminated by red lights set at intervals no greater than 3 metres. The lights shall be positioned at a height of approximately 1.8 metres.
• A hoarding which forms one side of a temporary walkway or one side of a stretch of unenclosed footway shall be illuminated by white lights set at intervals no greater than 3 metres.

We note that all work stopped after we pointed out the requirements for lighting.......

The critical issue of course is that there SHOULD be NO CONSTRUCTION OR DEVELOPMENT on this site UNTIL  the Construction Management Plan and ALL other pre-commencement planning conditions have been formally approved by the Council.

We've received professional advice that to do otherwise would invalidate the Planning Permission which would, of course, mean it would have to be applied for all over again.

The fact that the Construction Management Plan was REFUSED (see Decision Notice - REFUSED (8 June 2010) Delegated Report on reasons for refusal) means that it has to be formally resubmitted and consulted upon again.

• We have some very scathing remarks to make about the inadequacies of the Construction Management Traffic Plan which was submitted AFTER the consultation period started for the last application.
• We've also been talking with managers in the Health and Safety Executive's London Office this week and will be elaborating on the deficits in site traffic management on this construction site on a blog post next week.

To date, there has been no resubmission of a Construction Management Plan.

So nothing is going to be happening in terms of building of in Site 12 (or any of the other sites on the Eric & Treby Estate) any time soon.