Councillors will consider the report on
the planning application
REDEVELOPMENT OF ST CLEMENT’S
HOSPITAL SITE
At the meeting of the Council’s Development Committee
On Wednesday 11th December
In The Council Chamber
At Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, London
E14 2BQ
The meeting is open to the public
MERA will be representing the views of
local residents as one of the two
people selected to speak on the application at committee
The meeting starts at 7pm and finishes when all
business is done or 11pm
However The report on this planning application is the last one
of the agenda and
consideration may not start until as late as 10pm
The MERA Brokesley Street Representative will be there from 8.30pm
MAIN COMMENTS / OBJECTIONS:
Concerns about the impact on
local residents living in Brokesley Street with respect to:
· Noise from 4
years of construction in particular late night deliveries to the site and
impact on children’s sleep
· Overshadowing
and loss of light due to building new units up to the boundary wall separating Brokesley Street homes from the hospital
site. Omission of Brokesley Street housing from lighting assessment
· Adequacy of
local school provision to meet demand
from people coming to live in the new housing
· Impact of
construction traffic on safety of
entry/exit from Brokesley Street
EXTRACTS FROM THE FORMAL MERA RESPONSE TO THE PLANNING APPLICATION
Below you can read the summary of our detailed response which was submitted in August
Overall conclusions
In general, we are
broadly supportive of the proposed development.
·
It’s very important to increase the amount of
affordable social housing in the borough
·
It’s important to integrate social housing with
opportunities for shared ownership and private accommodation to promote better
communities
·
We welcome new initiatives involving the Land
Trust and the Ricardo Trust and see these both as positive new
initiatives. We trust they will grow and
develop to fulfil their aspirations.
·
We very much endorse the use of the building
fronting onto Mile End Road as a suitable place for community focused
activities.
·
We agree it’s very important to preserve the
character of our local heritage – particularly that within a recognised and
existing Conservation Area.
However we remain
concerned about a number of aspects of the planning application. Some of these can be dealt with under
delegated powers as part of the Construction Management Delivery Plan.
Others need a clear steer from the Committee as to what is
and is not acceptable in relation to assessing
·
The impact of the construction contract on local
residents
·
The assessment of the impact of the development
given some serious omissions of data and serious misunderstandings about the
nature of the neighbouring properties
Clearly, it’s inappropriate to build new quality homes while
having a serious impact on the quality standards of recently built new homes
and other neighbouring properties.
Our concerns – in summary
Matters that concern
us about the planning application for the proposed development on the St
Clements Hospital site include:
·
Noise
control: It’s expected this project
will be on site for up to 4 years. We are now much more aware than we used to
be about how intrusive and wearing noise can be when experienced on a daily
basis over a period of years. It’s vital to the wellbeing of the community to ensure
that the disruption to amenity and people’s quiet enjoyment of their homes is
minimised during the construction process.
We’re not yet convinced that the developer has thought through how this
can be as considerate a construction process as is possible.
·
Site traffic
management and site deliveries: In
our view it completely inappropriate and insensitive to ask for an extension in
normal working hours for site deliveries.
Some 30+ children live in Brokesley Street and the proposals means intrusive
levels of noise when parents should be able to reasonably expect that they can
get their children to bed and to sleep. There is no option appraisal presented
the planning application with respect to alternatives and it’s clear other
alternatives have either not been examined or need to be revisited.
·
Overshadowing
and impact on natural light and sunlight levels
o There are very serious inaccuracies and
omissions in the data used in the report with respect to the lighting
assessment. It excludes both residential units and back gardens which will
be seriously affected by the development.
o Adding
height and building up to the boundary wall has considerable implications for
light. Overshadowing has an impact on the wellbeing of families and their ability
to provide fresh vegetables for their families
o The
development also appears to place more priority on retaining a low level
building of extremely limited heritage value over the needs and wellbeing of
existing local residents.
·
Opening
up the site – and use of gates: we
need to recognise that this development proposes a change of use from long-term
incarceration to habitation. It’s
imperative that this site is also opened up to promote integration with the
rest of the local area. The use of gates in this context is inappropriate and
we would like to see the gates only retained as heritage features rather than
as ways to create a boundary around the site. We’d also like to see more reduction in the
height of the boundary wall next to the British Street estate and Hamlets Way.
·
Design
and usage of the buildings at the front (John Denham Building and Bungalow):
We think this aspect needs to be looked at again so that it better supports the
objectives of the core strategy for this area.
·
Adequacy
of local school provision: We’re
concerned that the development may aggravate the existing deficit in provision
of local primary school places for local children who are currently being
schooled all over the borough. We can
find nothing in the application that identifies the impact on demand for local
schools and we can see nothing from Education that identifies scope to meet
demand. The failure to make a connection
between creating homes for families and checking to see whether local
infrastructure can meet the demand it creates is irresponsible.
