Lambeth Council axes Vauxhall Nine Elms community forums in favour of expos costing £7500

If you want to know more about the VNEB and the intensive development to take place in the area over the next 20 years, I recommend you take a look at the gigantic Mayor's Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area Planning Framework.

Back in May, I wrote a post about why the Kennington Association Planning Forum think the VNEB proposals are fatally flawed.  Essentially, they think they've identified a £588 million funding blackhole in the infrastructure. £200 million of that is the value of land that the developers might have to purchase to ensure the area is brought up to Lambeth's minimum green space standard.  We've yet to hear how the issue of green space might be addressed...

In the meantime, a community forum for consulting the local community about the whole VNEB area was launched by Lambeth's Nine Elms Vauxhall Strategy Board.  An initial wide-area-community forum meeting was held in Jan 2011.  It was discussed briefly at the Kennington Oval Vauxhall (KOV) meeting in April, where Maureen Johnston noted that she'd been involved in discussions on behalf of KOV about the possible shape of the forum.  Later, a second community meeting took place in May 2011, (announced by Princes Ward Labour councillers) here.  I didn't make it to that, but the minutes indicate that much of the meeting was taken up with strongly worded requests by residents to remove the Vauxhall gyratory (more on that in the next post) and residents' opposition to the Northern Line Extension.  The Friends of Vauxhall Park also wanted to engage with working groups on the matter of the linear park. 

In the meantime, PAPER NO. SB 11 - 35 from the VNEB Strategy Board meeting in June allows:

"The previous approach for community engagement presented by Lambeth to the Strategy Board on 26th January 2011, involved setting up an area-wide community forum that would meet a number of times of year."

Sounds good.  Sounds sensible.  Area-wide meetings ensure that lots of stakeholders meet together to ensure that no area is getting a better deal than another.  And even better, as was agreed by the earlier forums...

"The proposals also suggested establishing themed community working groups alongside the strategy board’s working groups, that would then have representatives from the community sitting on them."

Perfect.  It would be possible just to go to meetings about areas of the strategy that you felt affected you eg. transport or school or health.  The experts in the community in each area would be able to attend specific themed working groups.  But, that is no longer to be because...

"There would... be an onus on community representatives to attend numerous working groups covering technical matters that may not deal with key policy issues and concerns they are most interested in."

Umm, no.  That was the whole point of the themed groups.  The report does note, correctly, that community groups don't work according to strict borough boundaries (thank goodness). It also cites resource issues, but aren't we all trying to learn to do things co-operatively and on a shoe-string?  The new idea doesn't look cheap.  Consequently...

"It was agreed that establishing a formal Community Engagement Group with community representatives and others partners should not be progressed."

Oh dear.  What might the real reason be?

"The likelihood is that such a Group would involve a small number of the more active community groups." and "it would risk excluding hard- to-reach groups."

Well, yes.  That's democracy.  That's co-operation.  If you're active and engaged, and attend meetings, and track what the council is doing, and submit feedback on planning matters, and attend library seminars etc. etc. etc. then, yes, a group is likely to contain engaged citizens who have something to contribute to their local community.  How dangerous!  How radical!  I acknowledge that the Council needs to work hard to contact and dialogue with hard to reach groups, but that shouldn't be at the expense of those who conscientously show up to meetings and participate...  So, what's the new plan?

"Therefore, an alternative approach is recommended where the Working Groups would present to the community at a variety of ‘events’ in or close to the Opportunity Area."

A long-term die-hard community activist friend of mine said to me, "oh yes, councils love Expos, where everybody turns up at different times and note inconsequential views on little post-it notes that people stick up on a board. These are often off-topic and later ignored.  It allows the Councils to say that they've consulted, but not have to sustain any deep level of engagement, participation or criticism with community groups".  Does that sound about right?

"The events would tend to be more informal than a conference or committee meeting with presentations but more like a ‘symposium’ with the aim of collecting the views on a key topic from a wide range of people..."

We can now look forward to two tiers of events.  Cross-borough VNEB expos and community style events costing £5000-£7500 a time (tier one).  Tier two (at least at the Lambeth end) seems at first to be slightly more acceptable, with a localised "Lambeth Community Forum" which will be shaped by existing forum leaders (probably Kennington Oval Vauxhall forum) until you find out that attendees are a rather select band of people... "by invitation to existing forum leaders and leaders of recognised community groups."  Great.

The Lurker isn't impressed.  Anybody know what's going on?  Well word on the ground is that it was due to Cllr Sally Prentice's move from Regeneration and Planning to Employment and Enterprise.  The new Regeneration and Planning Committee member is Cllr Nigel Haselden, so perhaps he's the one to ask.

Can anybody offer a defence?  The expo idea appears to me to weaken community group input and atomise attendee participation.  It will be difficult to establish consensus or disagreement, as people will just turn up and leave again without having to listen to one anothers' views.  Difficult questions and hedging answers won't be heard by an entire room of people, and it's not exactly possible to minute conversations at the Expos.  Very convenient.

£588 million funding black hole in Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea infrastructure

Ok, so I've been a bit of a bad blogger recently, but sometimes I find I can't fit my real life work and spare time projects and activities into 24 hours so I periodically have to drop a few things. In light of all the cuts and planning and development etc. I'm going to try and catch up from where I stopped, so be prepared to be inundated for the next few days.

I left off back in April with a KOV meeting, focused somewhat on the Strategy for the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area, but as one commentator noted, I failed to cover an impromptu note from the floor detailing work performed by David Boardman (and others) from the Kennington Association Planning Forum.  I know that planning matters can be dull, but the big story here is that the KA Planning Forum claim that the funding gap in the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area (mostly on account of the Northern Line infrastructure) is not £58 million, as highlighted by the Development Infrastructure Funding Study (DIFS) (commissioned by the GLA and developers), but a whopping £588 million.  This is a major regeneration news story that has not (as far as I know) been noticed by the mainstream press at all.

I was going to try and write it all out to explain where the money is missing, but it was easier to develop the graph produced by KAPF and add a few explanatory notes.  As you'll see, the first graph shows an admitted £58 million funding gap, but the DIFS study didn't make it very clear that developers were refusing to fund £62 million of required police, health etc. spending and that £63 million funding was supposed to come from borrowing, despite the fact that Wandsworth Council don't like to borrow on account of it being costly to tax payers.  That means that the original deficit was closer to £183 million. You can see it all detailed on this first graph. See the penultimate page of the revised chapter 12 VNEB OAPF for the figures used in Graph 1:

Once the document had been out for a while, KAPF analysed it and found significant weaknesses.  They specifically  sympathised with the company asked to write the DIF study (Roger Tym and Partners) on account of their being asked to "believe a number of implausible things".  So here's a few reasons that KAPF think the developers are wildly optimistic on spend:

*  When working on funding for any transport project, the Department of Transport ask that an optimism bias be added.  This is to account for the fact that major engineering projects are unwieldy and expensive.  In the VNEB OAPF, £800 million was allocated for the Northern Line Extension.  But by the time the DIFS emerged, the optimism bias had been removed and the NLE had been reduced to £564 million (shaded light pink).  KAPF chose to add £130 million (a 23% optimism bias) back into the costs (shaded bright orange).

* Affordable housing was reduced in the DIFS to 15%, despite the fact that Lambeth's Affordable Housing targets are 40%.  If only 15% of the housing built was affordable, the developers would be able to raise a levy of £40k per dwelling.  If  40% of housing built was affordable, a levy of only £25k per dwelling is possible.  High levels of affordable housing would reduce the funding, leaving costs at the same level.

* By assuming lower levels of social housing, there has been an economizing of both healthcare and education costs.  In order to estimate numbers of children for schools, Wandsworth assumed a 10% child yield (1 child in every 10 properties), but child yield in Lambeth is currently 20%.  Wandsworth also removed 25% of children from their calculations on the assumption that they'd be educated privately.  KAPF think that if the midpoint figure of their estimates is used by both councils, a secondary school is definitely required.  That's another unanticipated £74 million (shaded bright yellow) on top of current education provision (shaded light green).  If KAPF are correct in their estimation, they also think that a primary school will need to expand to being four form entry.  If a new primary school is required, the costs go up further (this is not shown on the graph).

* The KAPF review of the infrastructure report goes into plenty more detail over other issues, but I want to provide a broad overview.  By far and away the largest problem is the lack of green space in the VNEB.  It is certainly deficient, and this was proved by the refusal of the Secretary of State to permit the appeal of the developers on the Bondway.  In the Mayor's Planning Framework, the linear park (a long green strip running from Vauxhall to Battersea) was intended to be 1500m long and 50-100m wide, a total of 11.3 hectares.  By the time the developers had finished with their Infrastructure study, they had reduced the total park space to 3.5 hectares!  Assuming it was still to be 1500m long, it would only be approx. 23m in width.  

The national standard for green space is 2.4 hectares of open space per 1000 people,  Lambeth's open space projections assume that the entire Borough will eventually have 1.44 hectares of green space per 1000 people.  If the VNEB were to be constructed with a park of only 3.5 hectares, the area would be unproceedable.  To reintroduce the missing hectares, and bring the VNEB up to the level of Lambeth's most space deficient ward (Ferndale), would cost the developers, by KAPF's  estimations, £200m (shaded bright pink).

So, on a basic reading by a local planning forum, you can see that the sums don't add up.  A deficit of over £588m is not something that can be papered over.  I know that there have been more developments on the VNEB (including the leader of Lambeth Council coming on board for the project) since I updated last month, so I'll blog about that in due course.

A new civic organisation for Oval

In addition to the Kennington Association, Vauxhall Civic Society, Riverside Community Development Trust, Lady Margaret Hall Settlement, Kennington Oval Vauxhall Forum and a gazillion "Friends of" groups, please put your hands together to welcome the recently relaunched Oval Partnership.  They're focusing on developing Oval Farmers' market in the grounds of St Mark's church and have recently launched a campaign to ensure adequate green space provision around Vauxhall, considering all of the new developments.  If you're interested in joining, no doubt there must be some method, but I couldn't find contact details or a form on their website.

I reproduce text from their recent email below and note that I may have more to conribute on the matter as I hope to attend local organisation VNEB consultation this evening.

The Oval Partnership is concerned that there is a real lack of additional open green space for all the proposed developments in Vauxhall. The proposed density of building and population is not balanced by an appropriate supply of green open space.  As the proposals for Vauxhall/Nine Elms are still in the development stage, everyone concerned needs to ask their local councillors to press Lambeth to make provision for some proper green space.

The problem and green spaces promised so far: The greenery proposed to date is at best decorative and aptly called 'parsley' by ecologists. For instance, the linear 'park' in Nine Elms turns out to be no more than front gardens for the new buildings, and the Sainsbury's site's proposed open spaces are small and paved. The Bondway, Vauxhall Cross and Wyvil Road developments are not offering new green open space of any substance at all.

Why we need green open spaces neighbouring onto the new developments:  Green open spaces need to be close to the new developments, so that new residents can use them for (for instance) walking the dog, family picnics and sending children put to play football or family cricket. It is London's parks and green spaces that make this such a great city to live in, and without adequate provision of green open space Vauxhall will risk looking like Canary Wharf rather than a place designed for living.

Although Spring Gardens is being invested in, it is in practice too far from the new developments in Vauxhall for any of the activities described above.  Spring Gardens will not be the park of choice.  It is quite far to walk if you have any encumbrance or not much time. Instead, the park that will be used for family picnics, walking the dog and sending children out to play football, will be the one closest to the Vauxhall developments - Vauxhall Park. The same applies to lunch hours and office workers - of which there will also be a considerable increase in Vauxhall. This means that we are looking at standing room only on sunny weekends and busy lunch hours in the summer in Vauxhall Park.

The overall lack of additional green open space to counterbalance the proposed increase in density of building and population will have a negative impact on the Vauxhall area and its vicinity.  The purpose of allowing new development is to produce an general improvement of the area.  Without adequate green open space the hoped for improvements will not be forthcoming.

What you can do: Please can you contact your local councillors and ask them to lobby for additional and substantial green open space.  You can find your local councillors’ contact details on this link: http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/moderngov/mgMemberIndex.aspx?FN=WARD&J=3

Ghislaine Stewart, Chair The Oval Partnership

Local Development Framework - Draft Core Strategy [Sections 5, 6 and 7]

Lambeth council recently released a draft version of its "Core Strategy", which is the most important document contained in the "Local Development Framework". The entire document is 116 pages long, although the Council welcome comments. I've been sifting through it over the past few days have and produced a cut-down version, mostly just summarising what was written. I've not changed their wording much, but have shortened and simplified because it contains some interesting ideas for the Borough.

I've used the document headings where possible, but have not summarised every section as it's a highly repetitive document.The terms in purple are the "key" definitions.
The insightful comments in red are my comments. Due to length of the document, I've split my summaries into separate blog posts.

Section 5 – Spatial Planning Issues

In order to achieve sustainable development over next 15-20 yrs, the Core Strategy must address 6 key issues:

1. Accommodating population growth (p24)

According to the mayor’s London Plan, Lambeth must find space for additional 1100 homes every year until 2016/2017. This target has been exceeded for the three yrs since 2005/6. Demand will come as Lambeth children grow up, existing households break into smaller units, and adults/families migrate to the borough to find work and a place to live. Affordability is a struggle in Lambeth where entry level price for housing is high compared with household income. Lambeth’s essential public services find it hard to retain key workers because they can’t afford to live close to whether they work. Lambeth need to identify an additional four pitches for gypsies and travellers in Lambeth.

2. Achieving economic prosperity and opportunity for all (p26)

Lambeth is prosperous, but with pockets of extreme poverty. The poverty is in commercially vibrant areas eg. Waterloo/Brixton. Therefore skills shortages are filled by migrant labour which then increases demand for local housing, transport and services. The Core Strategy will contribute to tackling these barriers by maintaining a supply of local job opportunities. Affordability of premises is an issue for some businesses eg. creative sector and social enterprises.

Waterloo and Vauxhall present the most significant potential for commercial development and job growth in the borough, as well as potential for new housing. However, this will not happen unless the capacity of the public transport infrastructure serving these areas also grows at a sufficient rate. Major developers will be expected to help meet the cost of increasing this. (p27) [They will probably be able to tick the boxes to say that this is done if the developers of Battersea Power Station add two additional tube stations to the Northern Line, but I’m not sure whether those will fall strictly in Lambeth. I think that one of them will. It doesn’t really help anybody living towards the south of the Borough]

Lambeth’s hierarchy of town centres presents another opportunity. New shops need to be located in a way that supports, rather than undermines existing town centres. Brixton and Streatham have potential for new commercial and residential development. This will help secure their future in the face of retail and leisure expansion at Elephant and Battersea. Clapham High Street is thriving. Other high streets need careful regeneration eg. West Norwood, Stockwell [where exactly is Stockwell High Street?] and Herne Hill (p28).


3. Tacking and adapting to climate change (p29)

Most important contribution is to reduce carbon emissions by meeting needs locally, promoting alternative to the car, sustainable design of buildings, re-use of existing buildings, renewable energy, safeguarding allotments, retaining/promoting tree growth, urban greening and reducing landfill waste. [I detect a clash of goods between attempting to build the council housing stock on certain open land, versus promoting green spaces in the north of the Borough. Watch this space.] However, there will still be a need for appropriate car usage, and parking, including for those with mobility difficulties.

4. Providing essential infrastructure (physical, social and green) (p31)

It won’t be possible to achieve the significant levels of housing and economic growth set out in the Core Strategy without supporting transport infrastructure. [This point is reiterated throughout the document, but other than the proposed Northern line extension, I can't see where the investment might come from to promote this.] North/south transport is better than east/west transport and major developers in worst locations will be expected to supplement significant future public sector investment. More land is required for schools. Lambeth, particularly in the north has little open space relative to population. More open space is needed for burial sites.

Lambeth has various sites for sustainable waste management, but does not have the quantity to manage 486,000 tonnes (the prediction by 2020) (p33). [This is very interesting, and presumably all Boroughs have similar problems. I wonder what community strategies could be promoted for reducing waste.]

A general theme running through all partners’ programmes is trend towards neighbourhood based delivery so local facilities need to be increased to promote adult learning, skills training, English language tuition, employment support, child care etc. [I detect another clash of goods between promotion of "local" high street services (Brixton/Streatham) and development of large retail establishments (Elephant and Vauxhall). The document does actually mention this, but fails to outline how all of the community/retail areas are to grow co-operatively.]

5. Promoting community cohesion and safe, liveable neighbourhoods (p33)

Some communities feel their neighbourhoods lack stability and not enough households stay long enough to put down roots. [That’s probably a correct assessment if one considers that there’s a yearly churn of 20%! See previous post.] Residents in some parts of the borough feel that communities are essential to stable community and that the loss of family housing to flats is damaging that. The Core Strategy seeks to address that. Multiple social problems frequently occur on existing social housing sites and it’s difficult for those communities to make positive changes. [Unsurprisingly], some of these estates fail the “decent homes” standards. [It’s not clear whether “the decent homes standards” relate to the figure on p14 that one third of council housing is “unfit”. I suspect it doesn’t, but I’m not clear what the decent homes standards are, and since it sounds alarming, it would be useful to have this outlined.] Communities need spaces that allow informal day-to-day contact and social interaction. Lambeth has such buildings eg. youth centres, places of worship, cafés, local shops, but coverage is uneven and some have shortages of useable space, while others have under-used facilities. Space for young people is a priority in areas where unemployment/gang activity is high. [I hope they've read the studies that suggest that unstructured youth clubs can actually increase crime.] Lambeth has no central volunteer centre. [Interesting point. A volunteer centre would be an interesting proposal.] Large church congregations struggle to find good sized premises in good locations. In the South of Lambeth, there’s a lack of play facilities.

6. Creating and maintaining attractive, distinctive places (p35)

Historic assets are currently under used. The Core Strategy intends to pay particular attention to proposed development on the River Thames. High density development will continue to be essential to meet Lambeth’s needs over next 10-15 years. Tall buildings are appropriate for some uses and in some locations. The Core Strategy encourages high density development, including tall buildings, where of high quality and appropriately located. [I still wonder where tall buildings are ever appropriately located. I wish somebody would do some work on whether tall buildings create or deter community cohesion.] The large number of artists is a distinctive feature of Lambeth and they have specific space needs. Local shops, independent businesses and street markets are essential to identity. These include gay businesses in Vauxhall, Brixton/Lower Marsh markets, Portuguese businesses in Stockwell and Somali businesses in Streatham.

Section 6 – Spatial Vision and Strategic Objectives & Section 7 – Strategic Policies

These sections reiterate much of the above, but p38 has an optimistic and visionary idea of Lambeth in 2030. p42 has a map, showing transport hubs and key areas. p46 sets some housing targets that I haven’t seen elsewhere in the document.

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Section 8 will probably appear tommorrow. It is quite interesting, but is taking a while to summarise because it deals with local areas, and is quite information heavy.

Recycling and going green in Lambeth

According to an article in 24dash, Lambeth Council have just employed Susan Sheehan to be a "Green Community Champion Coordinator". Fortunately, that coincides with your host, the three wheeled one, attempting (with some neighbours) to encourage this little corner of SE11 to become a green space.

As many of you might know, whilst Lambeth Council offers an opportunity to recycle garden waste, they do not (yet) offer recycling facilities for green kitchen waste (peelings, orange skins etc). My fellow residents and I (or some of them, anyway) have decided to do our bit by installing a composter in our communal area (which is what the Council encourage here).

Surprisingly, well, it was to me, Lambeth Council offers all Lambeth residents subsidised compost bins of either 220 litres or 330 litres. Despite what it says on the Lambeth website, (and displaying an odd bit of Council ludicrousness) both the 220 and 330 litre bins cost £39 (at least according to a guy I spoke to from Blackwall). Unfortunately, at a composting seminar I attended a few weeks ago, the type of bin available, from Evergreener/Blackwall is the type that is not recommended for composting because, being entirely enclosed, it's difficult to "turn" in order to let the air flow through it. Apparently, it can also be difficult to get the compost out at the bottom. Consequently, I have sent an email off to our new Green Community Champions Coordinator asking whether Lambeth Council might be prepared to subsidise the wooden style composter.

Additionally, Lambeth Council don't subsidise wormeries. I've ordered a personal wormery from a different site, but it would be great to have a corporate wormery (which I'd be happy to look after), and Southwark Council once ran this offer in conjunction with St Mungos that I think has probably now finished. I could be wrong, it might still be going, but since I'm not resident in the Borough of Southwark, I can't access a subsidised wormery anyway. I'm actually quite tempted to have a friend write to our local councillor (I wouldn't want to reveal my secret identity) and ask about subsidising wormeries. What does everybody think? Is this an esoteric interest?

Oh yes, according to phone man, Lambeth Council also subsidises 190 litre water butts (£42.95, normally £47.95).

Because I'm a reponsible, civic-minded and "trying to go green" three wheeled one, I've asked our new Green Community Champions Coordinator what becoming a (presumably voluntary) "Green Community Champion" entails. As soon as I have a response, I'll let you all know in case any other readers are interested.

And just in case you wondered what else Susan will be doing, the article quoted above quotes her as saying:

"My role will be to give people practical help, inspiration and advice, whether it be helping them organise their first neighbourhood meeting, put them in touch with organisations that offer grants home insulation or solar panelling, or advice on how to set up a food-growing group."

I suggest that we all encourage her in her work by emailing her at ssheehan@lambeth.gov.uk or phoning her on 020 7926 6210 and asking how we might all go green. Also, she has set up a "farm" for all communities living on an estate in Balham. There's a website here.

Vauxhall Park - wandering out of SE11

Last week, we went for a brief visit outside of SE11. We just about missed the Vauxhall Park fete - I had forgotten it was on, and we were looking for somewhere warm and sunny to go and relax. We were pondering the green space outside of the Vauxhall Tavern, but it was absolutely packed with sun worshippers already, so settled on Vauxhall Park. That's when I remembered the fete, but we arrived just as everybody was taking down the stalls. Still, there were quite a few people milling about, and we really really liked the green space. There was very little traffic noise from within the park, considering that we were parallel with the Nine Elms Intersection (in this respect, it seems better than Kennington Park)! I never realised that Vauxhall Park is so peaceful, nor so pretty. I haven't got any pictures of the main green space as it was cluttered with things and vehicles being removed. However, there's a big field of lavender that it's possible to relax in, and a well-grown pergola nearby which you can see below. Everybody was enjoying the sun... Excitingly, a new cafe is to open in Vauxhall Park. It hasn't been completely finished yet, but I imagine it should be complete within the next week or so. The picture I took doesn't really do it justice.


The pergola:




The field of lavender:



The new cafe: