Brentford Near Miss?

I took this photo over Otho Court on Brentford Dock at 1.00pm today. The helicopter was hovering and the aeroplane was descending on the flightpath to London Heathrow.

In actual fact they were at least a thousand feet apart, the chopper being much closer to the ground. So whoever said the camera never lies wasn't quite correct. Scary though eh?

Ballymore's "Anytown" Design for Brentford Waved Through by LBH's Planning Committee

Despite the meeting having inexplicably drifted on for several hours when Ballymore's bland design for Brentford High Street was discussed, the application was waved through as expected by majority party councillors on the London Borough of Hounslow's Planning Committee acting dutifully upon officers' recommendations. Few if any meaningful concessions were made to the Community Vision which had been painstakingly drawn up by residents and councillors. Typically the assumption was that the officers and planners understood the complexities of the planning process, whilst members of the Brentford community didn't.

Of them, only Councillor Mel Collins (Brentford) had the courage to break ranks, expressing the view that more could be done towards making the application acceptable to local people and proposing deferral pending more work on the design. Sadly he received no backers and was destined to remain the lone abstention amongst the majority party (Labour) councillors.

DISAPPOINTMENT

Some 200 local people in the public gallery made their disappointment known, with comments such as "Shame on you!" being directed at the unrepentant Committee members.

Although this outcome is a setback for the people of Brentford, there is still much to play for. Only approximately 40% of the design was approved outright with the remainder being outline approval, with full approval still to be given. With a concerted effort residents and traders still have a chance to limit the damage.

It is worth noting that very recently a former Hounslow Conservative councillor who had been a party to approving the infamous 2009 Mogden planning application by Thames Water, which resulted in a predictable (to us) increase in odour rather than the claimed reduction, made an unsolicited intervention on a local community Internet forum to scoff about the fact that he and his family had now moved away from the area and therefore no longer had to live with the consequences of his decision. One wonders whether the Labour councillors who so nonchalantly imposed this appalling eyesore on the people of Brentford will in a few years be similarly in a position to taunt their victims from a faraway country retreat.

A New Direction?

It's taken me until a fortnight after the local elections to update this blog again and there has been a simple reason for that - I wanted to get away and spend a couple of weeks doing the things that normal people do who are not involved in local politics and election campaigning.

The results of the local elections in Hounslow can be found here. It was a Labour landslide, with the party winning 49 seats on the local authority to the Conservatives' 11.

The Labour bandwagon proved far too much for the ICG on this occasion. We maintained our status as the second "party" in both Isleworth and Syon wards and beat two Liberal Democrat candidates in Brentford at the first time of asking (astounding when one considers that the Lib Dems actually held a seat in the ward until just over four years ago), however we were a long way behind all round. A simple analysis of the voting patterns tells us that we held onto the votes that we had won from the Conservatives over recent elections but that those traditional Labour voters who had also flocked to the ICG in recent contests largely returned "home". There are a number of likely reasons for this, and I will rehearse some of them at a slightly later stage.

For the ICG for now it remains only to take stock, and perhaps to consider more seriously the option of adopting a new approach on a non-electoral model. There is no reason for us to wait around pining for the approval of our hitherto political "opponents" - if it suits us we should just do it, unilaterally, and see where it leads us.

On a personal note I want to get away from the quarrels and bickerings of the past, but before I can even try to do this there are some matters arising from the election which need to be consigned to record just in case they ever need to be revisited and there will be more of that anon.

Please watch this site for further details, as well as for some post-election analysis and general soul searching.

Watch this Space

Well it's been over two months, but there is a good reason for that. The ICG will be contesting seven seats - three each in Syon and Isleworth and one in Brentford - at the local elections on May 22nd and the logistical work involved in making all that happen is horrendous for a small group such as ours without the backing of a sleek national organisation that candidates representing the big parties can depend upon.

Caroline Andrews, Shirley Fisher and Ian Speed standing in Syon. Phil Andrews, Patricia Doran and Paul Fisher are our candidates in Isleworth. And our lone candidate in Brentford ward, where we are standing for the first time, is Dave Cox (pictured), formerly the Chair of the now-defunct Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA), which provided a voice for 24,000 tenants and leaseholders in local authority dwellings throughout the borough before being killed off in a council-sponsored coup.

For the next few weeks this blog will be used to update its readers on the progress of the campaign, and to focus on some of the issues deriving from it. To begin this process we will have a real blockbuster going up later, either this evening or tomorrow. So as they say, watch this space.

A Celebration of Community

As I think I said in a previous post I am not a flag-waving type nor a particularly fervent monarchist.

Nevertheless I did venture out to the Jubilee celebration party in Isleworth's Chestnut Grove, partly I guess to support my father who had been involved in helping to organise it and partly because it was the road I grew up in.

I'm glad I went along. For a little street of some 40 or so dwellings the turnout was incredible, fortified as it was by the participation of some neighbours from Cleveland Road and Twickenham Road and some moved-out former dwellers.

Back in the 1960s and early 1970s Chestnut Grove had been a typical suburban, owner-occupied, semi-detatched residential neighbourhood. Typical at that time, of course, meant Sunday roast-eating, Crossroads-watching, "respectable" - and white. It won't have been the only street in England, nor even in Isleworth, in which the news that an Asian family would be moving in was met with a certain amount of fear and trepidation. Not hatred nor even hostility per se, but an intangible feeling that this development would be in some indefinable way "bad" for the neighbourhood and that things would somehow never quite be the same again.

Fast forward to 2012 and the moral triumph of the integrated society was as evident in Chestnut Grove as it could ever possibly be. The well-intentioned but ignorant fears of yesteryear had well and truly given way to a new, inclusive sense of community, the bonds that join it every bit as united and as powerful as they had been back in the sixties and seventies but with the old concerns - what I have called "the fear of difference" - replaced by a new and very real sense of togetherness.

This was not "tolerance", a word that suggests putting up reluctantly with others for the sake of a quiet life, but a real unity that pervaded the whole street. I chuckled inwardly as I watched some quite elderly people, those very residents who had been so concerned by the prospect of demographic change all those years ago, dancing to the bhangra bearing expressions of real celebration and joy.

The other emotion induced within me by the occasion, and not a little by the sangria, was one of real anger at the knowledge that communities such as this are still not trusted to determine their own destinies. Still considered in constant need of steering and guidance by self-appointed political elites who for some undefined reason believe that only they know what is best for them.

Those local politicos would have been welcome at the Chestnut Grove street party, but as individuals wanting to join us not as politicians wanting to direct us.

I recall a street party in Orchard Road, Brentford back in 2006, shortly after the local elections of that year which had seen six ICG councillors elected. If I recall correctly we all attended, but as members of the public going along to support an initiative by fellow residents. We didn't have our impending presence announced with a fanfare of trumpets. It was their activity - the residents'. Not ours.

Whatever the occasion may have been about officially I like to think the Chestnut Grove street party was above all a celebration of community. An audacious flaunting of our unbroken and unbreakable spirit. Communities such as Chestnut Grove need no controlling or directing. We are free spirits, and that is the way it will always remain.

Brentford is a "home town" according to new survey

Reproduced with acknowledgements to BrentfordTW8.com


Brentford is a 'Home Town' according to the widest ever Clone Town survey results released this week by leading independent think-tank NEF (new economics foundation).

The Clone Town Britain Index measures both the identity and diversity of outlets on the core of the high street. It weights more for identity because ownership is critical to the health of the local economy and community. But diversity is important, and so is also included.

Towns scoring below 50 on the scale – like neighbouring Chiswick - are classified as Clone Towns. Over half of the stores counted are chains, and there is little diversity. Towns scoring over 65 – like Brentford - are classified as Home Towns, where almost two thirds or more of the stores are independent, and there is a wide range of outlets. In between are ‘Border Towns,’ which are neither highly homogenised, nor strongly independent and diverse.

The key to success, according to Andrew Dakers, ward councillor (2006-10) and a guiding light behind the group, is the community identifying a vision of a future that it wants for itself. Constantly in sight is “world-class sustainable development that is also financially deliverable”. The group is supported on a cross-party basis.

Chief among issues addressed by Brentford’s community problem-solving has been restoring economic viability, especially in retail. Late in 2005 Jersey-based company Geronimo Ltd purchased freeholds along one side of the high street, later completing more acquisitions to emerge as the centre’s major landowner. Soon afterwards developer Ballymore Ltd’s option to buy the site was revealed, once Geronimo had obtained planning permission for a major mixed use housing and retail development.

Other community groups may have chosen to confront the developers. Brentford’s Steering Group sought dialogue instead. Representatives of Ballymore and Geronimo responded to invitations to attend all the workshops in 2007. In consequence the landowners reviewed the group’s recommendations and provided written feedback on aspects of the proposed urban design approach. In a further effort to support the community, the landowners removed boards on some empty high street shops. With the economic downturn delaying redevelopment in 2009 they started making the units available again on short leases to help bring additional vitality back to the town centre, and by May 2010 they were nearly all reoccupied.

Three years on and the Steering Group has made a number of key interventions: introducing Christmas lights to the town centre, securing funding for a small car park to capture more passing trade, launching the Wedge Card loyalty card scheme, a town centre website and the town’s first ever public event – a celebration of St George’s Day – in the historic Market Place.

Unfortunately, due to a combination of the economic downturn and the developers standing down their development team, dialogue largely stalled, giving campaigners their one serious setback. In autumn 2009 however, a new collaborative approach emerged. With funding secured from Ballymore and the local area committee S106 fund, Ballymore and the High Street Steering Group commissioned a joint workshop and report from The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. The process worked through the complex urban design required for the site and provides the basis of a brief for the urban planner that will be hired to work up a planning application for the site.

In the current economic downturn, upwards-only rent reviews are a major concern for the 50 or so independent high street traders who remain tenants of Hounslow borough. Responding to the local councillors approaches, borough officers are seeking flexible solutions and discussions are now progressing on redefining the rent frameworks. This would substitute lower turnover of tenants and reduced volatility of income in the medium-long term as a goal in place of maximising short term revenue. The proposed framework would consider the type of businesses that are missing from the retail mix when evaluating rental income potential and the marketing of vacant retail units.

Nine of the 13 West London villages were registered as clone towns. Richmond tops the table with just five independents counted on its high street, suggesting Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith will have his work cut out in his campaign to create a retail association to save local independents.

At the other end of the scale only Shepherd’s Bush in addition to Brentford registered as a home town from West London. How long Shepherd’s Bush’s ethnically diverse Goldhawk Road, with 48 out of 52 shops classified as independent by our survey, can survive remains to be seen. The recession has neatly coincided with the opening of the largest urban area indoor shopping centre in Europe – ‘Westfield London’ – right next door, complete with over 250 chains stores.

Of the 18 London villages that were resurveyed from 2005, three worsened. Hampstead, Camden and Brixton all moved from border to clone status. There was better news on nearby ‘hills’, with Streatham Hill improving from a border to a home town and Muswell Hill from a clone to a border town.

Burst water main in Brentford High Street

Statement issued by the London Borough of Hounslow, Wednesday 8th September 2010:

"A major water main has burst in the Brentford area – which has resulted in the part closure of London Road.

"Traffic entering Brentford at Syon Lane or Half Acre is being diverted away from the area.

"The burst water main has been switched off. We are aware that many people will be experiencing low water pressure or have no water. Thames Water will be bringing bottled water to the site. We will provide location information once we receive it.

"If you or your property have been affected by this incident, Thames Water loss adjustors are on site and can be contacted on 0845 72 000 890.

"Traffic diversions are still in place and people should check Tfl.gov.uk before starting their journey.

"Brentford High Street is likely to be closed for at least 10 days as repairs need to be undertaken to the road and footway."

Photograph reproduced with acknowledgements to Quilliam Property Services

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