10 December (Part 1) - Be afraid. Be very afraid if you live near Old Farm Avenue
For some reason the headlong rush towards selling Old Farm Park reminds me of the similar stampede to sell Hill View in Welling.
It’s
not quite the same, one open space is a park and the other was not totally
green, there was a council office in the middle of Hill View surrounded by
greenery but a council office is quiet by day and silent at night and weekends.
However the need to ignore public opinion by selling Hill View in order to shore up Bexley’s
spending plans were not much different to what is going on now with Old Farm Park.
In the case of Hill View, councillors wanted the money to finance their own apology for a Town Hall
in Watling Street so the planning rules were thrown out of the window too.
Local residents, just like those in Sidcup, formed a campaign group long before
the sale of Hill View went through, it’s nine years old now. They engaged
consulting engineers, solicitors, went to court and formed a Neighbourhood Forum
under the Localism Act. Bexley council initially resisted their plans to do so but the residents'
determination was all to no avail. The council marched on regardless. To stop,
listen or in any way hesitate may have delayed Teresa O’Neill OBE (Obstacles
Banished Emphatically) from becoming the Queen of Watling Street.
The
planning meeting was a farce. The site suffered from serious flooding and
councillor James Hunt related how “mushrooms are growing up walls”. Councillor
Michael Slaughter also said he was very unhappy with the drainage situation. He
objected to the fact that two storey houses had bedrooms in the roof space which
he didn’t think warranted the two storey designation.
The
major problem with the planning application was that it breached Bexley
council’s proximity rules. 16 metres between blank walls and 22 metres between
windowed walls. To circumvent the 22 metre rule conservatories and even kitchens
in existing houses were redesignated as not being habitable rooms and so their
windows didn’t count. That subterfuge came undone when a council officer
conceded that the discounted windows broke the 16 metre rule too.
Five of the ten planning committee members were critical of the application,
four said nothing and only the obnoxious councillor Val Clark spoke in favour.
However it was approved unanimously. The OBE (Owns Backpassage Exclusively) who
must be obeyed rules supreme.
By the beginning of this year,
Hill View
was a mud bath and this week I decided to go and take another look. Access is not easy
but there is a passage between some houses that leads to a couple of bungalows
which provide a better view. I knocked on the door of one of them because I had spoken
to Ron Brewster who lives at No. 9 before as a member of the campaign group.
His garden is not adjacent to the Hill View plot so his neighbours are perhaps
more affected than he is but this is the view that greeted me from his back garden
I asked Ron if the block nearest him was three storeys but he said their extreme height was due to them
being built on raised ground and the roofs were very steep - to accommodate the
bedrooms mentioned at the planning meeting presumably. There were subterranean drainage systems
including water tanks beneath.
He let me have a map of the area.
The remarkable thing about that map is that the tall block pictured above is adjacent to the
‘Avoid overlooking’ planning condition. I asked Ron how Bellway Homes could have got away with that
and the answer, apart from the obvious, that they could do what they like once
planning permission was granted, was that he believed Bexley’s Planning Control
only dealt with minor house extensions and the like, and the larger schemes are
handed over to the developer to ‘police’ his own project.
The following pictures were all taken from areas where overlooking was supposed
to be avoided, instead ugly blocks dominate the skyline and the small space that
separates them from their established neighbours is to become a children’s play
area. The tallest block is the so called affordable housing. Prices range from
£429,995 to £599,995.
Photographs not taken from nearest overlooked garden.
My opinion of Bexley council and predictions for Old Farm Park must have made
depressing reading for many Sidcup residents, these pictures will not improve
matters. Neither will Ron Brewster’s report that the wrecking of outlooks,
not to mention the serious effect on house values, has caused the whole area to
go downhill. In some cases, tensions have arisen between residents as a direct consequence.
Once again Bexley council has put its own needs above those of residents. What
do you call a council where only one voice out of ten backs a planning application but
votes it through unanimously? Certainly not honest, more probably corrupt.
I’d love to find any aspect of Bexley’s infrastructure that has improved since
2006 but every single action taken by this council is either an attack on
residents individually, bin taxes, residents’ parking charges, rebanding of
parking penalty areas in order to extort more money, failing
vulnerable children etc., or on whole areas, silly roundabouts, restricted junctions, parks
neglected and public toilets shut. Can it be true that most people still haven’t noticed
because the erosion is gradual? I suspect it is.