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Brixton news, rumour and general chat - January 2016

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All computer systems down at the Rec. Not possible to book anything or pay by card.

Happy new year.
 
Travelled through Brixton on 1st Jan at 7am. It looked more like 10pm on a sat night - hordes of young people and the longest queue I've ever seen in McD's. All looking quite sober and well behaved. It felt very odd to be rushing though all the slightly faded party people on my way to work.

Anyway Happy New Year Brixton.
 
The Christmas funfair has left town for the year.

christmas-fair-ends-jan-2016-02.jpg


Wet scenes in Windrush Square – Brixton’s Christmas Fair leaves town for another year
 
Helen Hayes - MP for Dulwich and East Brixton currently speaking against some obscure clause of the Housing and Planning Bill.
It's past my bed time - so what the hell are the MPs still at it for? Is there a deadline on this bill?
Helen Hayes says this new bill is rolling back the localism agenda of the last (coalition) government.

She is also vigorously opposed to the outsourcing of planning. Quite right on this IMHO.

She worked as a town planner for 18 years she says.

She is opposed to central authorities offering "permission in principle" for building over the head of local council.

She also points out that local plans can be erroneous - e.g. zoning area for housing when it turns out there are subsidence issues.

Quire a good speech actually - although she was reading it, not extemporising.
 
CH1 said:
She worked as a town planner for 18 years she says.
Click to expand...

Sort of.

She was a senior partner at Allies & Morrison – the architectural firm that drew up the Brixton Supplementary Planning Document [pdf].

That document that her company drew up advised Lambeth Council:

"In conjunction with Network Rail, more railway arches should be brought into active use and the appearance of existing commercial arches improved."

The senior partner denies any knowledge of this part of the report.
 
CH1 said:
Helen Hayes - MP for Dulwich and East Brixton currently speaking against some obscure clause of the Housing and Planning Bill.
It's past my bed time - so what the hell are the MPs still at it for? Is there a deadline on this bill?
Helen Hayes says this new bill is rolling back the localism agenda of the last (coalition) government.

She is also vigorously opposed to the outsourcing of planning. Quite right on this IMHO.

She worked as a town planner for 18 years she says.

She is opposed to central authorities offering "permission in principle" for building over the head of local council.

She also points out that local plans can be erroneous - e.g. zoning area for housing when it turns out there are subsidence issues.

Quire a good speech actually - although she was reading it, not extemporising.
Click to expand...

That's interesting (clutching at any half- hopeful looking straws re Gordon Grove for instance).
 
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CH1 said:
Helen Hayes - MP for Dulwich and East Brixton currently speaking against some obscure clause of the Housing and Planning Bill.
It's past my bed time - so what the hell are the MPs still at it for? Is there a deadline on this bill?
Helen Hayes says this new bill is rolling back the localism agenda of the last (coalition) government.

She is also vigorously opposed to the outsourcing of planning. Quite right on this IMHO.

She worked as a town planner for 18 years she says.

She is opposed to central authorities offering "permission in principle" for building over the head of local council.

She also points out that local plans can be erroneous - e.g. zoning area for housing when it turns out there are subsidence issues.

Quire a good speech actually - although she was reading it, not extemporising.
Click to expand...

Found what she said in full here If you scroll down a bit what she says is in writing. You are correct in your summing up. This Bill is attack on planning. Noticed even some Tory MPs express concerns about loss of localism and the neighbourhood planning that the earlier Tory government promoted. This Housing and Planning bill really is all about making life easy for fat cat developers.

Another issue Helen raises is that the Government will centrally impose on Local Authorities the so called "starter homes" will be main form of "affordable" housing on large developments. As she says this is yet another attack on local democracy to decide on the form affordable housing can take.

Worth quoting this part of what she said in the debate. She points out there is a lot of land with planning permission to build houses that developers are just sitting on. Its not planning thats holding it up.Good interventions on her part in the debate. She knows her stuff.

Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab): I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about the planning clauses of the Bill, even at this late hour. The Bill represents a very significant rolling back of the policies of localism introduced by the last Government, who sought to give local communities more control over both planning policy and local planning decisions.

Planning is a progressive discipline. It is the mechanism we have for brokering the differences between individual interests and collective community needs, ensuring that those who profit from development contribute to meeting the needs of the communities in which they are building, and protecting the things that we hold dear—whether local heritage, natural habitats, special views or simply the character and diversity of our local high street or neighbourhood.

The Government like to blame the planning system for the failure to deliver new homes, but objective evidence suggests that it is not the right target. On planning, the Government show again and again that they have an inaccurate analysis and a long-term plan that does not work. The number of homes being granted planning permission each year is about 230,000. That does need to increase, but it is not too far off the 250,000 homes we need in order to begin to make inroads on the housing crisis.

Yet if we look at the number of homes being delivered, either by starts or completions, we see that both stand at about 130,000. Recent research by The Guardian has revealed that the nine house builders in the FTSE 100 are sitting on enough land to build 600,000 homes. Against a backdrop of increased planning consents and continued deregulation, house building starts fell by 14% between April and June of last year.

The Government’s response is to seek to deregulate the planning system further, curiously through a series of centralising measures that will take control away from local communities and make it harder—not easier—to deliver new development. At a Communities and Local Government Committee meeting before the Christmas recess, the Minister for Housing and Planning mentioned a development in his own constituency of 900 homes that is being built out over 15 years. That frustratingly slow speed of delivery has nothing to do with the local planning system and much to do with a Government who simply lack the political will to increase the rate of home building to deliver what is necessary.
Click to expand...
 
Something else Helen Hayes was critical of is the outsourcing of planning. Read this and it means our friends the property developer can take agreeing planning application out of hands of the annoying Local Authority and all those whinging locals.


Lack of debate seems to characterise the entire bill, which saw several crucial amendments slipped in under the radar just before Christmas. In a change that opens the door for the privatisation of the planning system, communities secretary Greg Clark added a clause in December to allow the “processing of planning applications by alternative providers”. Rather than submitting a planning application to the local authority, it suggests that developers could assign a “designated person” to process the application for them instead.
Click to expand...

Dr Bob Colenutt, planning expert at the University of Northampton, describes the move as “iniquitous”. “It will replace a public-sector ethos with a developer-led ethos,” he says. “The ‘designated persons’ are likely to be consultants who also work for the private sector, which introduces probable bias and reduces the public scrutiny trail. And it is very likely to reduce the right that the public has to make comments on planning applications".
Click to expand...

One of those in the article asked to comment says the bill is a panic measure to get more housing built. It think not. Its class war by the Tories. I agree with the writer of the article summing up:

Instead, this bill represents a wholesale power grab, transferring both housing assets and planning powers from public to private hands in a drunken festival of deregulation.
Click to expand...
 
Gramsci said:
One of those in the article asked to comment says the bill is a panic measure to get more housing built. It think not. Its class war by the Tories. I agree with the writer of the article summing up:
Click to expand...
I don't think it is class war. It is more another absurd extension of worship of "the market" in my view.

Of course the market no longer exists. The Chinese government is now intervening to prop up its financial markets in exactly the same way as the US, UK and Europe.

Unless prices are allowed to fall to their natural level - which involves negative equity, bank failures and so on we will be living in a micromanaged goldfish bowl where asset ownership is rationed and all policy will be driven by the needs of large corporations - including ATOS, Maximus, Crapita, Greenwich Leisure and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all.

Interestingly the US economy is still showing signs of growth, so a gap is opening up between US policy and that of Europe, UK and Japan - all of whom are still on the QE drip.

The idea of outsourcing planning applications is akin to employing private contractors to run hospitals - which of course dates back to Tony Blair.

Dr David Owen warned about the current collapse of GP services 18 months ago:
http://www.lorddavidowen.co.uk/wp-c...ew_-Rallying-support-for-the-NHS-GPonline.pdf

Frankly I find it nauseating that we have a media system which complacently ignores the complete dismantling of the welfare state whilst obsessing about the fate of a few misguided individuals in the Labour Party.
 
CH1 said:
I don't think it is class war. It is more another absurd extension of worship of "the market" in my view.

Of course the market no longer exists. The Chinese government is now intervening to prop up its financial markets in exactly the same way as the US, UK and Europe.

Unless prices are allowed to fall to their natural level - which involves negative equity, bank failures and so on we will be living in a micromanaged goldfish bowl where asset ownership is rationed and all policy will be driven by the needs of large corporations - including ATOS, Maximus, Crapita, Greenwich Leisure and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all.

Interestingly the US economy is still showing signs of growth, so a gap is opening up between US policy and that of Europe, UK and Japan - all of whom are still on the QE drip.
Click to expand...

I heard a property developer on the radio a while back contrasting the difference between China and here.

He said it was much better in China. To get planning permission all one had to do was take the local party bosses out for lunch and decide it all there and then. Unlike this country where people can object to a planning application. All that democracy gets in the way.
 
Well, it was livelier than might be expected for a Weds night in the Albert tonight. Good to be reminded what a great pub it is and that Brixton hasn't completely turned into a bland and predictable playground for posh people, tourists and those with more money than sense. I wish we had more actual pubs left.
 
Gramsci said:
I heard a property developer on the radio a while back contrasting the difference between China and here.

He said it was much better in China. To get planning permission all one had to do was take the local party bosses out for lunch and decide it all there and then. Unlike this country where people can object to a planning application. All that democracy gets in the way.
Click to expand...
Didn't Tescos in effect take Ted Knight out to lunch in order to get planning permission for the Acre Lane store back in the 1980s?
 
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