While Towers are going up in City of London ( check out the Principal Tower ), it was good to see RBKC overturn an application for two Towers to replace the Forum Holiday Inn on the Cromwell Road last Thursday night in a marathon session that lasted over 6 hours!!! 

Forum Holiday Inn hotel hangs over South Kensington

It is one of the Towers that sticks out like a sore thump in the West Central London skyline for many years and had a planning application (PP/18/03461) to replaced it by a taller and bigger set of two Towers. On massing and height grounds alone it was objectionable. It would have been a 100 per cent increase in volume of the hotel building as it hang over the neighbourhood of six storey Victorian houses with wide streets, quite out of character from the rest of the neighbourhood.  Lets also not forget the loss of light and air as well to adjoining neighbours. Not surprisingly the council received hundreds of objections to the proposed scheme on these grounds alone. 

The developers made a big deal of the Garden Square being retained but this is a legal requirement for them anyway and the proposed footprint of their scheme would have taken over 50 per cent of the overall plot from the 30 odd per cent presently. So plenty was being packed into the site to retain the square by the developers.  

So while l congratulate the councillors for throwing out the application after it was given an Officers recommendation to approval, l suspect this one will come back again. If only because the developers think it complies with the requirements of the London Plan as the constant reference to the GLA during their presentation made clear. 

This while the report to the Councillors stated quite clearly  ” ..the scheme doesn’t comply with the London Plan and draft London Plan but possible remedies could address these deficiencies” from the stage 1 response from the GLA. I suspect we will see a lot of focus on those remedies right now during the 14 days when the Mayor can take over the case.  So watch this space, quite literally. 

When the Bakerloo tube line was extended North of Paddington over a century ago, tube stations like Maida Vale were in fact designed for “over station development” by local architect Leslie Green. Some were developed later like above the old tube station at Hyde Park corner. So developing above the tube station is not new. Incredibly we stop doing housing developments above tubes since those days till now!  

Miles Buildings plaque, NW1 in 1968

Penfold Place, NW1 in 1968

Looking North between the blocks of Miles Building, NW1 in 1968

Recently the BBC broadcasted  Contract – Marble Arch to Edgware where the “poet & hack” John Betjeman ( Poet Laureate of the UK 1972-1984 ) goes down the Edgware Rd during the late sixties, highlighting the dismal damp squalor of Miles Buildings, with clearly a slum landlord running it all. Incredibly things have not much changed 50 years after he first pointed out the buildings in his broadcast. It shows some of the worst housing in Central London if not least in the City of Westminster, in 1968 and l am sorry to say it is much the same fifty years afterwards.  

Like myself he had picked up on the despairing sight of these tenement blocks. What caught my eye was how little had changed since 1968 to Miles Building and its clear it has been largely ignored in the interim years by the authorities, the local council the GLC and all other housing authorities.  I understand one family owns much of this overcrowded slump housing. 

Along Penfold Place, NW1, just off Edgware Rd and opposite Paddington Green Police Station these old tenement blocks date back over a hundred years ago and were built by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company.  They were clearly trying to improve housing locally in the squalor of Marylebone. But something clearly happened to change the ownership of the blocks and down hill it went very quickly by the looks of it. At that point it appears the buildings were left to rot into their damp squalor. 

So l ask can anyone else point to any worse housing in Central London?  I certainly can not. As for regeneration in Church Street Ward where these blocks find themselves in – Miles Buildings does not get a look in!!!!! And have not done for over fifty years now.  It must be time to redress this particularly when it will soon live under the shadow of the West End Gate development on the other side of the Edgware Rd.  These blocks should at least be upgraded to building standards of today. 

Miles Building plaque, NW1 in 2018

Penfold Place, NW1 in 2018

Between the Miles Building blocks looking North in 2018

Last week we saw two pet rescues in London – one of a terrier in Maida Vale and a parrot in Edmonton – much to the relief of their pet owners.  Which makes we wonder how many times the London Fire Brigade is asked to help out in these cases annually.  At two a week, it could be over a hundred times a year! 

In the first instance, worried owners or members of the public should call the RSPCA on 03001234 999. They can then make some sort of assessment whether the Fire Services are need to help at all. 

But let us be clear, long may these pert rescues continue with the RSPCA working with the London Fire Brigade in London though it would be useful to know the extent of it. 

I bet you Boris Johnson did not raise burka concerns when Foreign Secretary at the Foreign Office when kowtowing with the Saudi’s! Certainly not while he was Mayor of London.  So it is clear he has only taken this position to help become the leader the of the Tories and become the PM. What humbug from him.

With the Indian states attempt to exclude 4 million in Assam, it makes you wonder about how the ghost of the Radcliffe line still hangs over the area. The line was drawn and subsequently become the boundaries in the North-East of Indian sub-continent based on religion in 1947 between East Bengal (Pakistan) and India which are clearly still been contested over 70 years after the events.

In the map above Karimganj would be the blue portion of Sylhet after the red line on the border of Assam.

So if we are going to get four millions residents crossing the border, l say in jest we want Karimganj back as well!  This was the part of Sylhet which opted out of India into East Bengal yet had not been transferred to East Bengal ( Pakistan ) after independence and has been a bone of contention ever since for some in Sylhet and Bangladesh. After all the residents of Karimganj did vote to go into East Bengal in the Sylhet referendum of 1947 but found themselves in India after independence & partition. Now that would be something indeed.  This botched handover was also highlighted by the number of enclaves we had both within India and East Bengal of Pakistan which has only recently been sorted out by the Bangladesh and Indian respective governments in 2015 and has referred to as the the world’s craziest border. 

Given we only recently got the enclaves of Bangladesh in India and visa versa sorted out, maybe this should be the next thing to sort out is Karimganj as it may well come to light in the present circumstances.  

Enclaves swaps only done in 2015 on Indian & Bangladesh border

Thank you Westminster Extra for highlighting on your front page the case of workers sleeping on site in NW8 where the Heath & Safety Executive issued prohibition notices after checking up on the site.

Londoners should feel safe and secure when walking the streets of London from anything happening from under their feet but alas this is not the case with an increase in pavement explosions. 

From a FOI request l made to the HSE it was been established that since 2015 the incidents of pavement explosions have increased. We have had just over 50 incidents in London over the two years since August 2015 while we had just over 80 between 2010-2015! A clear increase of incidences.

The Local Election 2018 in Little Venice Ward of the City of Westminster was certainly one to watch on the night of the count, as had we taken all 3 seats there, we would have in all certainty taken control of the Council.  So we made a huge effort in the ward which helped us cover very blade of grass since the beginning of the year but unfortunately it was not enough in Little Venice to see myself, Sue Wolff and Iman Less elected as councillors. We increased the Labour vote from 2014 by around 60 per cent but it was not enough. Not really surprising as l  saw Tory voters turn up in their Rolls Royce at Lanark Rd polling station very early in the morning! 

​What you won’t hear is that the result across the whole of the City of Westminster were better than the 4 new seats we have gained in Maida Vale (2); West End (1) & Bayswater (1) would suggest. As Britain Elects shows clearly below the Labour vote went up by 7 per cent and there was only a few percentage points between us and the Tories. We reckon across the whole borough there was 21,837 Tory voters while we had 20,803 Labour voters. Thats just over a thousand voters! And also suggests we need to look at the electoral college of councillors, as its quite clear it is easier to elect councillors in a ward like Knightsbridge & Belgravia in comparison to wards in the very North of the City. Almost suggesting we have a rigged electoral college of councillors because of the boundaries of the ward. So bring on a boundary review as soon as possible. 

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