{"id":345,"date":"2018-12-05T18:16:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T18:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/?p=345"},"modified":"2018-12-05T22:39:28","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T22:39:28","slug":"changes-at-the-opdc-and-a-new-community-review-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Changes at the OPDC and a new Community Review Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

New members for the OPDC Board and Planning Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Development Corporation has ‘refreshed’ the membership of its Board and Planning Committee.\u00a0 A press release at this link<\/a> gives the details.<\/p>\n

When Liz Peace took on the role of chair of the Board, she made clear that she wanted more people on the Board with experience of London’s development industry.<\/p>\n

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The OPDC press release starts by saying The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has appointed nine leading industry experts to join the Board and Planning Committee.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mini biographies of those newly appointed can be seen at a separate page on the OPDC website at this link<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0We local residents and businesses can form our own conclusions on whether these individuals are the right people to be progressing the next stages of regeneration and development at Old Oak.<\/p>\n

The Board membership continues to include the Leaders of the three councils from the area where the Development Corporation has been the planning authority since April 2015 (the Boroughs of Brent, Ealing and Hammersmith & Fulham).\u00a0 This is the sole element of democratic accountability on the Board.\u00a0 All other members (the majority) are appointed by the Mayor.<\/p>\n

Members of the Board who have served a three year term, and who have not been re-appointed, include Eric Sorensen and Amanda Souter.<\/p>\n

Amanda is the longstanding chair of the Wells House Residents Association.\u00a0\u00a0 She has been active for several years in trying to extract information from HS2 on the details of their plans.\u00a0 Since 2015 she has been one of several people active locally in representing to the OPDC the views of those who live and work in and around the OPDC area.<\/p>\n

Amanda applied to join the OPDC Board back in 2015, and was appointed with a clear brief as the \u2018community representative\u2019 on the Board.\u00a0\u00a0 In the recent appointment process for Board members, she re-applied but her candidacy was rejected.\u00a0\u00a0 It appears from the interview process that her knowledge and experience of the development and property world was not sufficient to qualify her as a \u2018leading industry expert\u2019.<\/p>\n

The new board has no designated community representative.\u00a0 Two of the new Board members have a connection with the local area (one living within it and another working within it).\u00a0\u00a0 It remains to be seen to what extent they feel they should be feeding into the Board the views and ideas of those whose lives will be most affected by the next two decades of development at Old Oak.<\/p>\n

This change in the Board’s composition is striking, given that the 2016 Review of the OPDC<\/a> commissioned by Sadiq Khan specifically recommended that Support for business and community Board members must be provided to enable them to\u00a0<\/em>properly represent their constituent groups<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0Two years on, the OPDC’s response has been to abolish the community representative position altogether.<\/p>\n

Changes on the OPDC Planning Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n

Membership of the OPDC Planning Committee has also changed.\u00a0\u00a0 Four councillors from the three Boroughs remain as members (with two from Hammersmith, this being the area most affected by new development).\u00a0 Will McKee remains as chair, with three independent members (Gordon Adams continuing, and Karen Cooksley and Sandra Fryer as new members).\u00a0\u00a0 Mini biographies are at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The chair of the Planning Committee has a casting vote on the Planning Committee.\u00a0 So even if all four elected councillors vote against a specific planning application, this is no guarantee of refusal.<\/p>\n

Past efforts to achieve more local input on planning decisions<\/strong><\/p>\n

During two years of discussion and negotiation with OPDC officers (including a presentation to the Planning Committee) our \u2018interim\u2019 neighbourhood forum made the case for the eastern part of the OPDC area to be designated as a \u2018neighbourhood area\u2019 under the 2011 Localism Act.\u00a0 The boundary that we proposed, after many meetings of the forum, included the residential areas of College Park and the Old Oak Estate, in north Hammersmith, along with the site of the Linford Christie Stadium on Wormwood Scrubs.<\/p>\n

The decisions made on our application, by the OPDC Planning Committee and Board and by Hammersmith & Fulham Council, shrunk the proposed neighbourhood area from 190 hectares an area of 22 hectares in East Acton ward of LB Ealing.\u00a0 This was despite a 6 week public consultation in which a sizable majority supported our original proposals.<\/p>\n

The Old Oak Neighbourhood Forum was formally designated by the OPDC in February 2018.\u00a0 Our efforts since then have focused on responding to further consultation on the OPDC Draft Local Plan (see below and previous posts).<\/p>\n

The new OPDC Community Review Group<\/strong><\/p>\n

The OPDC has taken a new tack in recent months, by setting up a ‘Community Review Group’<\/a> which will review proposed developments at pre-application stage.<\/p>\n

This is welcome step towards greater involvement of local people in the design of new developments.\u00a0 The new group will operate alongside to the Place Review Group which OPDC already uses to seek views on planning applications from selected planning and architectural professionals.<\/p>\n

The Community Review Group is made up of 12 people who responded to an OPDC advertisement this summer.\u00a0 This\u00a0Handbook<\/a>\u00a0explains how the Group will work and lists its membership.<\/p>\n

This is a novel form of public involvement in the planning process, and there are questions to be asked about the relative weight to be given to the views of the Group, as compared with representations on applications submitted by individuals or community organisations such as this Forum.<\/p>\n

Latest on the OPDC Draft Local Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n

This Draft Local Plan has yet to be \u2018examined in public\u2019 by a Planning Inspector. \u00a0No date has yet been fixed for this public hearing.\u00a0 \u00a0This is the last stage in the process of plan preparation, after which the final version (as modified by the Inspector) will be adopted by the Development Corporation.\u00a0 The Plan\u2019s policies and site allocations will then be applied when planning applications are decided.<\/p>\n

The Forum continues to believe that the OPDC Draft Local Plan has many flaws.\u00a0 The most fundamental of these flow from the over-ambitious and unrealistic targets for housing and jobs that have remained fixed in the Plan since the publication of a first version in February 2016.<\/p>\n

These targets were first set in a 2015 review of the London Plan.\u00a0 Very little evidence to support them was provided at that stage, but the OPDC has treated them as set in stone.<\/p>\n

Much else changed in the second ‘Regulation 19’ Local Plan submitted by the OPDC to the Secretary of State.\u00a0 \u00a0It has become clear that development of a ‘Canary Wharf of the West’ and a major commercial office and retail hub above and around the HS2\/Queen Elizabeth Line station is not feasible with the ‘plan period’ of 2018-2038<\/p>\n

So forget large parts of the glossy videos and inter-active maps of the original ‘vision’ for ‘Old Oak South’ and ‘Old Oak High Street’ which we were shown over the past two years.\u00a0 The focus now is on the Cargiant land as the first phase of likely significant development, and a new ‘Park Road’ between Scrubs Lane and the Oaklands housing development being built by Genesis\/QPR on Old Oak Lane.<\/p>\n

This image below is the latest that has become available of the OPDC ‘masterplan’ as seen looking eastwards from above North Acton.<\/p>\n

\"OPDC<\/a>
OPDC masterplan 2018 showing revised proposals for Old Oak South<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The target of a minimum<\/em> of 25,500 new homes\u00a0 at Old Oak\/Park Royal remains set in the new Draft London Plan, prepared by London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the past 18 months.\u00a0 This new Plan will undergo an Examination in Public with public hearings in January – May 2019.\u00a0 There are many London-wide bodies which will be questioning these targets at the hearings, and OONF is liaising with these.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the number of planning applications for major schemes on sites within the OPDC area has diminished over the past year, reflecting the current weak state of the London property market (commercial and residential).\u00a0 There are no new applications to be considered by the OPDC Planning Committee at its 10th December meeting.<\/p>\n

Proposed schemes in Scrubs Lane (\u2018North Kensington Gate\u2019 and \u2018Mitre Yard\u2019) now have full planning permission granted.\u00a0 Both are listed as \u2018not commenced\u2019 in the Planning Committee agenda, along with Imperial College\u2019s scheme for student housing at the former Perfume Factory.\u00a0 The scheme at 2 Scrubs Lane, previously approved, is back in pre-application discussions.<\/p>\n

For the very major scheme for 6,500 new homes at Old Oak Park (the Cargiant\/London & Regional Properties landholding) the status update as reported to the Planning Committee is Pre-application discussions expected to recommence shortly.\u00a0 <\/em>This has been the case for the past year.<\/p>\n

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New members for the OPDC Board and Planning Committee The Development Corporation has ‘refreshed’ the membership of its Board and Planning Committee.\u00a0 A press release at this link gives the details. When Liz Peace took on the role of chair of the Board, she made clear that she wanted more people on the Board with … Continue reading “Changes at the OPDC and a new Community Review Group”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakneighbourhoodforum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}