God save the Queen

Happy Jubilee!

Greenhalgh's grilling today

Stephen Greenhalgh is in the hot seat today as members of the London Assembly decide whether or not to approve his appointment to the post of Deputy Mayor for Policing. The post was offered to Mr Greenhalgh by Boris Johnson almost immediately following his election, but was then followed by farcical scenes as H&F's sitting Leader tried to cling on to his council seat in our borough. The law did not permit this and after days of confusion he eventually agreed to stand down from H&F politics altogether.

I would quite like Assembly Members to ask Mr Greenhalgh about his listening skills. Listening and responding to communities is a key element of any policing role, but our Council Leader has exhibited a consistent willingness to ignore communities every time they tell him something he doesn't want to hear. 

On Shepherd's Bush Market and the Goldhawk Road this landed our Council in court in a case which they then lost, costing tens of thousands of pounds. Yet on the same day they issued a breezy press release claiming that they would go ahead anyway.

And on the West Ken Estate this extraordinary letter from the community organiser describes in depth how residents who disagree with the Council's plans to demolish their estate are not only ignored but willfully obstructed under spurious "data protection" grounds. 

This is likely to be the last time Mr Greenhalgh ever has to publicly account for his actions on both of these situations, and I hope members of the Assembly take them up with him directly.

In the meantime, even the Evening Boris' City Hall correspondent is sounding the alarm bells..

 

1255 UPDATE: Well, the issues did crop up. Caroline Pidgeon, of the Lib Dems on the Assembly, quoted Greenhalgh’s behaviour over the Market & Goldhawk Road scheme and asked “how on earth” would he perform his listening role when he had manifestly divided communities? 

Greenhalgh said that the Council had to “learn from” their Court defeat and expected Nick Botterill, his successor, to do so. 

So I’ll be in touch with Mr Botterill to understand how he intends to learn from it…

FRIDAY UPDATE - I'm delighted to publish the CV that former H&F Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh supplied to his hearing yesterday, at which he was confirmed as the Deputy Mayor for Policing. It makes interesting reading for H&F residents, so I am sure he and our Council will be pleased that it is now publicly available:

(click bottom right box - "view in full screen")

Greenhalgh CV

Blog readers nab Wee Man of the Bush

Congratulations Bushers - we got the man I christened wee man of the Bush. H&F Council have credited readers of this blog with the nabbing of Abdul Sobuor Tanin who was caught on video peeing in the lift at Bush Court (above)

And Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council is again asking residents to help track down another man who appears to have a similar problem. Last month, H&F Council launched a publicity blitz to catch the Bush Court culprit after the incident was captured on the council’s CCTV system.

The disgusting episode was viewed more than 15,000 times on You Tube, and photographs were printed in local media and the council’s magazine for tenants and leaseholders.

In the weeks that followed, the council received numerous tip-offs from local residents, with Tanin’s name put forward by readers of the council’s magazine and this blog.

The council’s estate-based concierge staff have a close knowledge of the areas they work in and also received information that suggested Tanin was the culprit.

Council officers visited Shepherds Bush resident, Tanin, 18, and the lout admitted that it was him. He stated that he was very sorry for his actions and that he was very drunk at the time. He also said that he was hugely embarrassed by his actions and was upset that so many people had seen him on You Tube.

Council officers decided that his actions amounted to a breach of his family's tenancy and issued the family with a Notice of Seeking Possession to encourage good behaviour.

Cllr Andrew Johnson, cabinet member for housing, said:

“We received an overwhelming response to the publicity and that really does show just how appalled residents were. 

“I hope that Tanin feels absolute shame when he views the footage. The lift is used every day by decent, law abiding people, including women and children and we will not tolerate louts like this who refuse to live by the rules of a civilised society. The message to hooligans like this is clear, even when you think that there is no-one around, we are watching you, we will find you and we will take action against you”

The council is also urging residents to get in touch if they know the name of the lout who urinated in a lift at Poynter House on the Edward Woods Estate.

The time is 9.40pm on Friday, May 11 and this man, dressed in a black and red Adidas tracksuit top, can clearly be seen relieving himself in the lift.

Cllr Johnson added: 

“This is another truly disgusting incident, made even worse by the fact that it is the middle of the evening – a time when the lift is probably at its busiest. If you happen to know this person, please do not hesitate to contact the council and we’ll do all we can to publically name and shame him”

If you know this person is call the council’s Edward Woods Estate housing officer on 020 8753 6896. You can contact the council anonymously if you wish.

World class research centre opened at Hammersmith Hospital

The £73 million Imperial Centre for Translational and Experimental Medicine (ICTEM) combines laboratory space for up to 450 scientists with a dedicated facility for evaluating and developing new medical treatments through clinical trials with patients. The Imperial College London facility was officially opened yesterday by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne MP.

ICTEM is a flagship facility for the Academic Health Science Centre, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s partnership with the College, established in 2007, which aims to ensure that new discoveries and technologies are translated into new therapies as quickly as possible. Clinicians and researchers in the new building will work closely with engineers and scientists to generate innovative solutions to health problems.

George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer opened a £73 million research centre at our local hospital yesterday, underlining its world class status in the research and treatment of diseases.

On the ground floor of the building, the Wellcome Trust-McMichael Clinical Research Facility incorporates two wards containing 13 beds, examination rooms and a gene therapy suite. This joint College and Trust facility is led by the Trust’s director of clinical and investigative sciences and head of experimental medicine at the College, Professor Martin Wilkins.

It allows a large number of patients and healthy volunteers to work with researchers in clinical trials to evaluate new treatments, with fifty studies taking place at any one time. Conditions to be investigated include diabetes, obesity, mental health and pulmonary hypertension.

The building’s first floor is home to the Imperial Cancer Research UK Centre, which brings together more than 100 chemists, biologists and engineers who are working on new ways of tackling cancer, such as molecular imaging techniques which help doctors match treatments to patients and methods to reduce the toxicity of radiotherapy.

These methods could enable patients to have personalised treatment based on the particular profile of their tumour, improving how they respond to treatment. Diseases to be studied include breast, prostate, lung, colorectal and ovarian cancers.

The second floor, occupied by teams from the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, houses next-generation gene sequencing machines, which are helping researchers to develop improved methods for preventing, diagnosing and treating common health problems such as heart disease and raised cholesterol.

This machine can sequence four human genomes in just 10 days, with each sequencing costing under £4,000, compared with the £3billion it cost a decade ago. This can help find the causes of a patient’s disease when conventional methods of diagnosis have proved inconclusive.

The three upper floors of the six storey building constitute one of the largest cardiovascular research facilities in Europe, including the headquarters of the British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence. One of the areas of focus in this unit is to develop stem cell treatments to help the heart repair itself after a heart attack.

Cutting edge research will give new hope to patients with cardiovascular disease as it remains the leading cause of death in the UK and is estimated to cost the economy around £30billion a year.

The opening of the Centre, built over four years with support from the British Heart Foundation, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust, marks the fruition of the College's largest ever investment in research facilities.

Imperial College Healthcare’s chief executive Mark Davies said: 

“This facility aims to be a powerhouse to drive forward the translational research of the Academic Health Science Centre. 

“The research to be carried out at Imperial Centre for Translational and Experimental Medicine is essential as it will focus on many of the most serious diseases and conditions which affect large numbers of people in the UK.”

Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Chancellor George Osborne said: 

"It's an honour to open this new Imperial Centre for Translational and Experimental Medicine. It is what this country's vision for the future of life sciences is all about.

"This new Centre rises to the challenge of ensuring we remain a world leader in life sciences. The future is academic research, clinical practice and industrial application coming together. 

"Our future depends on the work going on at Imperial and in world class labs like this across the country. Not just the future of our scientific communities but also the important contribution that they are making to the future of this country's industry, growth and jobs."

West Ken: damning account of H&F blocking tactics

Our Council has been using "data protection" as an excuse to block access to what is supposedly a public consultation process on the West Ken & Gibbs Green Estate. Residents groups requests to see information have repeatedly been ignored, and then grudgingly responded to with bizarre "45 minute blocks" being allocated to read over 1,400 forms - 800 from the estate and 600 from the wider area.

As the residents community organiser Jonathan Rosenberg points out the excuse put forward for this behaviour of "data protection" is bogus - you are either allowed to see information or you are not, there is no middle ground. What seems to be more the case is every tactic in the book being deployed by a determined H&F Council to get their own way. Together with the Mayor they seem to adopt a pantomime strategy to planning issues.

Coming just days after a Judge sitting in the High Court declared our Council to be at fault and to have been acting unlawfully in the way in which it approached the Shepherd's Bush Market scheme this will come as further evidence of the way H&F is prepared to operate in the north of the Borough.

Here's the letter, which was sent today to the Executive Director for Regeneration and Housing in full. It makes extraordinary reading:


Melbourne Barrett
Executive Director of Housing and Regeneration

LB Hammersmith & Fulham Council 

3rd Floor
Hammersmith Town Hall Extension
King Street, Hammersmith 
London W6 9JU

29 May 2012: URGENT

Dear Mr Barrett

Proposed disposal of West Kensington & Gibbs Green estates: Consultation analysis and inspection arrangements – serious concerns

I am writing further to your letter dated 14 May 2012, in which you invited West Kensington & Gibbs Green residents to make comments by 30 May on the information contained in the 23 April Cabinet report, which outlined the initial findings of the consultation on the Council’s proposal to enter a Conditional Land Sale Agreement (CLSA) for the disposal of residents’ homes to a developer, albeit you concealed this proposed agreement from residents and the public.

You have previously received (though not responded to) our 60-page critique of the Council’s consultation process. Unfortunately, we are bound to report now that we shall not be able complete our comments on the Council’s analysis of the consultation by 30 May because the Council has obstructed us from inspecting the consultation feedback forms.

In any event, the two-week deadline you have set for comments is unreasonable, given the complexity of the information contained in the Cabinet report and the scale of its impact on residents. Government and London Councils policy is that consultation periods should last a minimum of 12 weeks.

On 18 April, the Chair of West Ken & Gibbs Green Community Homes (WKGGCH) wrote to the H&F Council’s Head of Governance and Scrutiny, (copied to two other Council Officers and to the Chairs of West Kensington & Gibbs Green TRAs):

We would like to formally request to inspect the consultation responses before the Cabinet meeting on Monday April 23. According to the Council's press release "Earl's Court progress report to go before Cabinet" published April 16 2012, "By the time Cabinet meets all the responses will be available for inspection upon request, including the responses that were not considered." 

There is, however, no specification regarding who to contact or how to get in touch.

Could you please forward this email to the relevant parties and let us know as soon as possible when we could view the responses for inspection?

Please acknowledge the receipt of this email.

Around 20 April the Council distributed a newsletter to residents promising:

From Monday 23 April, H&F Council will be making all consultation responses available for inspection by appointment. You will be able to see all the responses that were considered as well as the responses we were unable to consider.

The WKGGCH Chair received no response to her letter to LBHF’s Head of Governance and Scrutiny. Following your presentation to Cabinet on 23 April, she wrote to you on 24 April:

We were told at the Cabinet meeting last night that residents' responses to the Earl's Court consultation would be available for inspection as early as today. I emailed Mr Adewumi about this on 18th April last week. (see email)

Please let me know when and how we can make arrangements to view these.

Again, receiving no reply, the WKGGCH Chair wrote to you and the Head of Governance and Scrutiny on 2 May, copied to the two TRA Chairs:

I am still waiting for a response to my emails of 18th and 24th April.

It was not until 8 May, almost three weeks after our original request, when the Council finally responded to make arrangements for inspection.

On top of the unexplained delay, the Council then imposed unwarranted and unreasonable restrictions on inspection that plainly made it impossible for us “to see all the responses” as the Council had promised. On 8 May, Mr Patterson, from the Council’s Housing Services department emailed the WKGGCH Chair:

I can arrange an appointment for you to inspect the feedback forms from the recent consultation.

Appointments are for one person at a time. Inspections are for up to 45 mins and there can be no photography or copying of the forms.

Please contact me to arrange your appointment.

On 10 May, Celine Kuklowsky, Community Organiser for the West Kensington & Gibbs Green estates, attended the Council offices to begin our formal inspection. After 45 minutes, she was stopped, even though she had made only partial progress through more than 800 forms residents of the estates (we have not even begun our inspection of the 600 responses from the so-called ‘wider area’).
On 21 May, she requested another visit to continue our formal inspection, which was agreed and took place on 24 May. Since our work was far from complete, and we had found many discrepancies that suggested a pattern of distortion biased towards the Council’s demolition stance, the Community Organiser immediately requested a third visit. Mr Patterson responded on 25 May:

The 45 minute inpection [sic] was specified to protect the privacy of respondents. You have already exceeded the allotted inspection time of 45 minutes with the second inspection. I am therefore not going to arrange another appointment for you to inspect the forms.

When the Community Organiser asked Mr Patterson on 10 May to explain the purpose behind the Council’s inspection restrictions, he replied these were “for data protection reasons”. This is insupportable. Either the data can be viewed or it cannot. There is no in-between position.

The subsequent version of the argument, that the restrictions were “specified to protect the privacy of respondents”, is equally spurious, since the Council blacked out all names and addresses and heavily redacted many forms (including entire paragraphs) to remove all personal references. Clearly, the Council obscured this personal data to ensure it did not breach the Data Protection Act when it made the response forms available for inspection by the public. Therefore, neither “data protection” nor “privacy” can possibly be used to justify the restrictions and blockage placed by the Council on our formal inspection.

We understand that the Council intends to rely on its analysis of the consultation feedback forms when it makes its next decision on whether to sign the CLSA. Inevitably, also, it will have to report this information to the Government.

We have very serious concerns about the rectitude of the Council’s analysis, which, far from being allayed by our inspection that you unreasonably curtailed, have only deepened. Inter alia, we have identified:

• Difficulties reconciling the numbers in the Council’s analysis with the numbers of forms it has placed in each category;
• Miscategorisation of residents ‘against’ and residents ‘concerned’ into ‘no opinion’, leading to miscounting;
• Absence of any procedure for dealing with ‘duplicates’, leading to miscounting, erroneous exclusion and miscategorisation;
• Failure to date and have any procedure for dealing with forms from residents changing their minds, leading to miscategorisation and miscounting;
• Forms discounted for no apparent reason, leading to miscounting;
• Forms counted as ‘in favour’ that were so heavily qualified they should have been categorized as ‘concerned’ or even ‘against’, leading to miscounting;
• 18 ‘in favour’ forms, which contained the same brief or similar content, which appeared to be written by a single hand, and which contained no signature or mark attesting authenticity.

We discovered well over a hundred miscategorised or suspect responses. Nearly all of these biased the results in one direction, and not only resulted in a systematic distortion of the analysis in favour of the Council’s position for demolition, but also hid the true scale of residents’ opposition to redevelopment and denied residents’ fixed determination to transfer the estates into community ownership.

From our inspection, which you arbitrarily limited to one and a half hours, it appears that the three and a half to one majority of residents against demolition is a significant undercount, amounting to gross misreporting.

Outwith any further investigation, which you blatantly obstruct now, we conclude that the Council has not only misrepresented its own analysis of the results but has also miscategorised the consultation response forms to such a extent as to render its analysis worthless for Cabinet Members to rely upon when making any decision about whether to sign the CLSA. Worse, the Council is in danger of staging a lie, presenting a poisoned chalice for the Government to sup when it forces it to consider whether to grant consent for disposal of the estates to the developer for demolition.

The evidence we have gathered does more than lend credence to the charge that the Council has perverted the results of its informal and statutory consultation by systematically distorting and misrepresenting its analysis; it explains why the Council has made up the rules as it went along for limiting and disallowing our formal inspection. 

The grounds we have itemized are sufficient for us, and for any sensible member of the public to fear that Council officers may be colluding to falsify the overall consultation results and to suspect that they may be conspiring to stop residents’ elected organisations from discovering the truth, thereby misleading also the Council’s Cabinet, the public and the Government.

The Council has broken its “you will be able to see all the responses” promise by delaying, restricting and finally blocking our formal inspection. The Council has no data protection or privacy defence against us continuing with our formal inspection. We have detected evidence of systematic bias: it is our duty to resume our formal inspection in the public interest, in the defence of our homes and community, and in the cause of national policy, which is Localism and the Big Society.

The Council will make itself incapable of sustaining any case that it has validated its analysis through independent inspection, unless, and immediately, it:

• Restores and maintains continued access for us to scrutinize the categorization and genuineness of response forms, without time limit, so we may complete our formal inspection absent unreasonable restrictions;
• Commissions an independent analysis of the response forms to be undertaken by a neutral assessor appointed with our agreement; and 
• Institutes a formal Review under the Freedom of Information Act of the Council’s handling of the request we made on 18 April to take up its invitation for residents to see all the responses, since more than 20 working days have elapsed within the time it is statutory for you to provide a satisfactory response.

Yours sincerely

Jonathan Rosenberg

Community Organiser 
West Ken & Gibbs Green Community Homes Ltd 
West Kensington Estate Tenants & Residents Association 
Gibbs Green & Dieppe Close Tenants & Residents Association

Cc: Derek Myers, Chief Executive LBHF; Greg Clark, Minister for Decentralisation and Planning; Andy Slaughter MP; The Information Commissioner; WKGGCH Board Members.

No room for racism – or its apologists

No racism here, nothing to see

“no, no, that wasn’t the Nazi salute, they were just pointing at people” said the Ukrainian police chief. “with their right hands”.

Seconds earlier we had seen massed ranks of angry looking young men enthusiastically adopting the Nazi salute and yelling “sieg Heil” in unison, while waving neo Nazi flags and declaring their readiness to inflict various forms of death on Jews.

Thus we witnessed for 30 sickening minutes of the Panorama programme last night various scenes and interviews with football followers in Poland and Ukraine who openly described their hatred of Jewish people in particular and foreigners in general. In one case as they trained with wooden “knives” to practice the attacks they plan to inflict over the next two weeks. For these are the two countries that will be hosting the Euro 2012 football tournament, which is why Panorama was asking perfectly legitimate questions about whether people would be safe. Not so, said former England captain Sol Campbell as he watched scenes of Asian fans who had been singled out for a beating for the crime of having the wrong colour skin, as police stood by.

But is all of this acceptable to some? Apparently so. Yesterday I responded to a series of angry tweets from someone who lives in the Bush and was clearly incensed by the coverage. In his three missives he demanded that English fans stop “disrespecting” Ukraine and Poland and warned that the real culprits would probably be England fans who he described as “pissing in war memorials”.

Stick within in the law and show “respect”, he said, and everything would be fine.

I couldn’t help responding “unless you’re black” given what I’d been told by returning fans who’d been to that part of the world before. And based on Panorama a reasonable thing to say.

But not as far as this individual was concerned. I was being completely outrageous, there really wasn’t a problem. I told him that, with respect, he didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.

That was the cue for an explosion. Coming back to my phone an hour or so later I had another few messages. I had completely crossed the line, apparently, and was being disrespectful to the people of Poland and Ukraine. I was being disrespectful to him. And I had, allegedly, said that it was inevitable people would be attacked. (I hadn’t). He then informed me that I’d been “slapped down” for making sweeping assertions. At this point I decided to block the foaming tweeter.

Ukrainian football crowd "slaps down" opponents

So what’s the point of telling you all of this? Because I don’t just think this is an issue about two faraway countries and solely something related to football. I honestly don’t know if this individual has murky views and I’m not naming him as a result. But I do find such anger (he’s not to my knowledge either Polish or Ukrainian) a bit disturbing.

We don’t have the sort of scenes you saw portrayed last night in this country anymore. But we used to. And in elections during the last decade we saw the BNP elected to numerous council seats across the country. Looking across the channel we see the National Front as the third biggest party in France and the rise of extremist parties in Greece as they continue to suffer their turmoil.

If you’d featured the interview with that Ukrainian Police Chief in black and white film you would have thought you were watching a programme about the 1940s last night. The fascist regimes of the 1930s came to power by exploiting the economic fallout of 1929 and other perceived injustices. And if that’s still too far in the past to worry you only a few weeks ago marked the 20th anniversary of war breaking out in Bosnia, which led directly to events such as Srebrenica.

And if that’s also too far away geographically let me take you back to the scenes last night of people practicing with wooden knives and talking about using them. The police filmed the killers of Stephen Lawrence doing exactly that before they went out and took his life. A black lad waiting for a bus.

I quoted the philosopher Edmund Burke this morning who is credited with the line “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”. I have seen that line inscribed in Berlin at the Holocaust memorial, and when I was in Rwanda at the memorial to the 1994 Genocide. Whether he said it or not is apparently open to dispute – but what is not, surely, is the need to challenge not only racism – but some people’s apparent acceptance of it as a fact of life.

Review: camping with a purpose

Tyre swings and a river on the left

A river, some goats and beautiful pastures are the three things that stick with me from the weekend I spent with the kids in tow at a campsite in rural Somerset. But what was also striking was the fact that the owners, a young couple who took on the site around 18 months ago, run this small site in a way that makes you think about the environment and experience a small slice of the farming life that dominates this agricultural part of the world.

Wookey Farm sits in the lee of the Mendip Hills, in central Somerset. It's about three hours by car from the Bush and is about as far from the big city as it's possible to get. The villages around are small and built of local stone, congregating around a single shop or pub. The local people work hard, but the pace of life has nothing to do with a rush hour tube. And therein lies the attraction. 

The camping area, with goat shed to the left

The site, which takes tents and caravans/motorhomes, is bounded on two sides by the river Axe which you get to by walking through a field. You can tell you've got there by the two hanging tyres on ropes by the side. And that's it – one babbling brook with clear (and icy) water and a riverside to sit on and relax. In our case this was in near 30 degree heat so the cooling river was just about perfect. And away from televisions, computers and little toys that make annoying battery powered noises you'd be amazed at how long a tyre on a rope and the opportunity to run as far and as fast as you like across a field of wildflowers before exploring a river can occupy young kids. It must be the sort of thing they did in the olden days.

Surrounding countryside

Ian and Sarah, the couple who run the farm, keep goats. And every evening these animals are hungry. There is an open invitation for those staying on the site to come along. In my London ways I'd thought this would be watching the animals expertly fed from a sanitised distance but it turns out that shifting clumps of damp hay by hand into troughs can actually be done by anyone, and that young children are not only quite good at it but they love it too. So they were put to work. Just like the olden days. 

The animals are clearly used to the not-always-gentle touches of small trainee farmers (and the flashing of lightbulbs as a cluster of city folk try and capture little Johnny's trip to the country) and it was the highlight of a perfect day for us. 

Apprenticed farmers

The site is basically a field with electric hook ups on each pitch and is sold as a unit - £10 per night for tents. Where else can you find somewhere as good as this for a tenner, I ask you? There is a single temporary toilet unit along with access to drinking and washing water, next to the recycling bins. There isn't anything as sophisticated as a shower block – but the green owners make a virtue of this by suggesting you use the river! 

The best thing for me on this site came at the end, and having spent a lot of time in this part of the world when I was younger I was looking forward to it. Sundown in this part of the West Country is something very special, and surrounded by the ancient Mendip hills you begin to realise why our ancestors in ancient times thought so too. Glastonbury Tor is very close by and you drive past StoneHenge to get here on the way from West London. 

As the sun slides down the side of a giant hill, turning the trees on top into mystical silhouettes, the field you're on turns as orange as the flames of the campfire you're sitting next to, and the shadows of the trees ark and glide across the ground. Later, the canopy of the sky is unveiled, revealing tens of thousands of stars, clearly visible sans the light pollution of London.

Chuck in a few beers and some good company and it's about as much fun as feeding a hungry goat! 

I would highly recommend this place, and wish Ian and Sarah all the best with it. I'll be coming back. 

Ian & Sarah

Goldhawk Road Traders defeat Council?!

Some breaking, and if true, sensational news from the Goldhawk Road Traders who looked set to be demolished by our Council and property developers Orion. As the 'last chances' were demolished one by one the judicial review into the way in which our Council has behaved over the issue looked set to be the last chance saloon.

Writing earlier this morning on the Facebook page leading campaigner Aniza Meghani, who I interviewed for the guardian here, has said this:

"Yipeeeeeeeeeeeee! yabadabadoooooo! WE HAVE WON! We would like to thank you all for yr wonderful support, prayers, motivation and enthusiasm, in keeping up with this case. We the Goldhawk Road Traders, would like to thank firstly, to the three Angels of Shepherd's Bush, who came into our shops almost 2yrs ago and informed us that we were to be demolished. They are, Coll, Kimi and Elaine. Their guidance and support has led us to where we are today. Also our special thanks to Sarah Gates, for putting up this Facebook page up. We would like to THANK OUR LAWYER AND HIS LEGAL TEAM, Michael Webster of WEBSTER DIXON LLP, OUR QC GREGORY JONES AND WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK LORD JUSTICE WILKIE FOR RESTORING FAITH IN OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM. ONEC AGAIN, THANK YOU ALL XXX"

Well, that's pretty clear. It looks like our Council's determination to ride roughshod over local people has been pole-axed once again by the little people who just wouldn't lie down and see their livelihoods and the character of the Bush bulldozed. You can see Aniza's determination in the video above when she first doesn't sit down and shut up as our Assembly Member Kit Malthouse was trying to get her to do, and then puts Boris on the spot. We later found out his expression of regret was less than sincere since he himself had signed the papers giving the scheme the go-ahead and must have known this as he was answering Aniza's questions.

I understand that the ruling means that the knocking down of their buildings cannot now go ahead. 

It also gives new Council Leader Nick Botterill, who inherits this mess from outgoing Leader Stephen Greenhalgh, the opportunity to take a fresh look at how these people have been treated thus far. I hope he takes it.

More details soon. You know where you read it first. And I plan on going along to the inevitable victory party in the sun - see you there!!!

1100 UPDATE: Details of the Court decision:

High Court ruling to overturn a decision of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to adopt a Supplementary Development Plan (SDP) for the regeneration of the Shepherd’s Bush Market in West London.

The 13 successful claimants are freehold or leasehold owners of various trading premises between 30-52 Goldhawk Road which is a terrace of shops, cafes and restaurants fronting onto the Goldhawk Road in Shepherd’s Bush. Although the Goldhawk Road shops were not part of the market they were set to be demolished as part of the regeneration of the area which included the building of over 200 flats by the property developer, Orion. Mr Justice Wilkie quashed the decision of the Council to adopt the SDP on the grounds of:

(i)That its decision was procedurally flawed in that it failed to follow the proper procedure for adopting a Development Planning Document (DPD).

(ii)It is procedurally flawed in that adopting a document that was a DPD failed to conduct a sustainability assessment.

(iii)Whether or not the document was a DPD or an SPD the decision to adopt it on 27 October 2010 was procedurally flawed because it failed to apply its mind to whether an environmental assessment was required before adopting it, pursuant to the 2004 Environmental Assessment Regulations.


1215 UPDATE - Some emotional reactions from the traders:

Aniza Meghani, the owner of Classic Textiles Limited stated

“Our victory is a vindication of our objections to the Council’s plans to incorporate our shops into a redevelopment that is disproportionate, ill conceived and that has not been subject to proper public scrutiny. The High Court has ruled decisively in our favour that the Council has acted unlawfully in trying to push through their plans without the proper scrutiny required for a development that would undoubtedly be of significant change to the area and involve the demolition of our shops. Many of our businesses have been established for decades and it has never been our wish to be part of the regeneration scheme as we are not part on the market. It is our intention to continue with our fight to retain our shops and we will seek to challenge the existing planning permission and also to have that quashed or otherwise withdrawn. This Council has a reputation for not listening to the people that it serves and clearly had its own agenda in seeking avoid full public scrutiny of its redevelopment plans.” 

Michael Boughton, the owner of the famous of Cooke’s Pie and Mash shop, stated

“The court’s decision is a clear message to the council that small independent shopkeepers should not be ignored when they have genuine concerns about regeneration plans that directly impact their business. The irony is that our parade of shops does not form part of the market yet the council felt the need to demolish buildings without considering any viable alternatives. The pie and mash shop been located on the same site for 113 years and is part of the historical fabric of Goldhawk Road. We are not against regeneration where it is appropriate but the council’s plans were never about the redevelopment of the market, but the building of 200 flats with their preferred developer Orion. Let’s hope my shop will continue to exist for the next 100 years.” 

Michael Webster, a Partner in the firm of Webster Dixon representing the Claimants said

“the decision of Mr Justice Wilkie is a damning indictment of the Council’s planning practices and procedures; even one of the grounds would have been enough to quash the decision however the Judge found in our favour on three grounds. Despite several warnings the Council continued to plough on with their unlawful policy of the regeneration of the market. In our view the purpose of the regeneration was not the market itself but the development of 200 flats for which the developer Orion stands to make millions of pounds. The Council has in reality used the SPD procedure to prepare a policy which ought properly to have been subjected to a more detailed examination and public scrutiny, circumventing the more time consuming and expensive procedures attached to DPDs and its adoption is as a consequence, unlawful. The Council should now reconsider its position to ensure that it complies with its lawful obligations to allow proper public scrutiny and consultation of its regeneration policies.”


1730 UPDATE - Well our Council have gone into full spin mode putting out an article on their own website that appears to be written as if the court decision was just a silly old bit of jackanapes and we can all carry on as normal anyway, can't we? Here's what a spokesperson told me this afternoon:

"This judgement does not affect the regeneration plans or the legality of the recently issued planning consent. The Shepherds Bush Market regeneration scheme represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hugely improve the market and surrounding area. It will increase retail expenditure by more than £3million a year and will create numerous new jobs. The vast majority of Shepherds Bush residents support these plans along with many of the market traders. The Goldhawk Road businesses have been offered a fantastic deal by the developer, including the chance to return to new, larger shop units on the Goldhawk Road.”

Er, sorry matey, I'm afraid that's not true. The Council are now relying on the technicality that they also used another document which was not subject to the Courts' deliberations. So ner-ner Judge we'll knock 'em down anyway.

Their problem is that the traders have also got lawyers behind them (now being paid by our Council since they were forced to pay the traders legal fees for having lost) and their legal understanding is very different. Here's what one of them told me late this afternoon:

"they can't go ahead, because there are [now] no plans to guide them. although Orion has submitted planning application, we are going to court on that to be squashed too. In reality, the borough has no plans to guide them anymore so they have to start the whole process again".

The Council will counter that they've been advised by their lawyers that they can. The problem is that those are the same lawyers who just lost a case, so I know which ones I'd believe.

So ner-ner back H&F - now then, how about listening to people instead of property developers?

MONDAY UPDATE - Planning Magazine, which specialises in, well, guess what - has also agreed with the traders view of what the court ruling means, contrary to our Council's spin. Here's what they have to say:

On Friday, Mr Justice Wilkie ruled that in preparing the document the council failed to follow the proper procedure for adopting such an important policy document.

He said that the council failed to identify the document in advance as an "area action plan", and that as a result failed to consider whether it was in accordance with the existing development plan for the area.

And he found that it failed to apply its mind to whether an Environmental Impact Assessment should be carried out prior to adopting the document on 27 October 2010.

As a result, the council will be forced to reconsider the matter, potentially placing a stumbling block in the way of the redevelopment, for which outline planning permission has since been granted to developer Orion Shepherd’s Bush Ltd.

The ruling could prove a setback if and when Orion seeks to secure full permission to proceed with its plans.

Bushstock 2012 line-up revealed

After a successful debut year the Bushstock team are back again and will be taking over some of our best venues for a day on Saturday June 2nd.

Bands have all been revealed, as have the venues, including the Best Bush Pub of 2012 as voted by you - The Defector's Weld.

I have to say the organisers Communion are a strange lot - I offered to write about them for the 2011 festival but they replied saying they had some kind of commercial publicity deal, but this year they appear dead keen. Odd. But given that so many of you thought last time around was great, plus the fact that summer seems apparently to have arrived, it comes highly recommended!

Click here to see some fairly, er, interesting promotional vids!