18 February 2016
Trouble at the Folgate
by J.R.Thomas
If the second Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was hoping to exit the office he has graced for the last eight years to roars of acclamation and waving bicycle helmets, he may be disappointed. It is far too early to write any considered view of his eight years in office, but he is facing increasingly tricky rising tides, not just the spring tides on the Thames threatening to flow into his offices, but more damagingly, tides of criticism from a combination of motorists, cyclists and conservationists.
The motorists are upset by the central London traffic chaos caused by the creation of the so called “Cycle Super-Highways”, now being built alongside main traffic arteries, by Transport for London, the Mayor’s agency responsible for transport matters in Greater London. In spite of protests from road users, including cyclists, the Super Highways are being built as two lane segregated tracks, with high kerbs to separate them from vehicles. This means that they use up at least a lane of former general roadway.
The current big project has been along the Embankment, curving alongside the Thames and one of the main routes for vehicular traffic flow east and west. The works have, not surprisingly, caused chaos and congestion through the City and Central London, but what is dawning on motorists and traffic planners alike is that the reduced capacity caused by the works will be a permanent feature.
This, rather wonderfully ironically, came to a head last week at the Conservative Party’s Black and White Ball, a major Tory annual fundraiser. It was held in the City of London. Many grandees of the Party had thus to make the journey from Westminster to the City, and with a new variation on the Cinderella model, many were very late at the Ball, having been stuck in immobile traffic jams on the Embankment.
Boris’s attendance at the ball apparently enabled views to be quickly and directly expressed to him.
The following day, TfL announced plans to build a Cycle Highway from the west by closing a lane of the Westway, an elevated road which is one of two main routes from the west into Central London, and which already suffers from severe congestion most of the day, but especially at rush hours. Not great timing!
There is no doubt that the narrow and poor quality streets of central London need to make provision for the increasing use of bikes, but even the cyclists themselves are critical of the way in which this is been tackled. The high kerbs of Cycle Highways are felt to be dangerous – reducing flexibility of movement for both motorists and bikers, and very dangerous if struck at speed. What is more, the Highways tend to vanish at narrow sections of road, inevitably the most dangerous places. TfL belatedly seems to have recognised this and for its third generation of segregated ways is proposing using secondary roads which may wind more but can be closed to all but local traffic and thus bring about natural segregation.
But this may be the least of the Mayor’s difficulties in his remaining months. When he took office, almost eight years ago, Boris said that he had little interest in planning matters but that he would learn. Later he said it was a very interesting part of the job. It is not entirely clear what he has found so absorbing. There has been little evidence of any change to the policies of the previous (Independent, then Labour) Mayor, Ken Livingstone, whose policies were mainly to allow much more development and in particular to solve the problem of space capacity by allowing many more tall buildings. Other than that, and attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to encourage development at transport hubs, there seems no particular vision and strategy for development in London.
It is true that, formally, the Mayor has little power to direct planning matters, but a Mayor who was so minded could be proactive in creating an overall planning strategy for London. That has not happened so far (though both the main candidates to follow Boris into the hot-seat seem likely to do more to develop that approach). Both Boris and Ken were keenly pro-development, leaving details to the planning committees and professional officers of the various boroughs. But what both have also done, and Boris more so, is to use their powers to call in large scale development proposals that have been turned down by the boroughs, and then to examine and, if appropriate, approve them. Boris has so far called in fourteen proposals and found it appropriate to approve all of them. That is to say that in each case he has overruled the decision of the locally elected planning committees and made that planning decision himself.
London’s local authorities and many conservation groups have become increasingly concerned by this approach. The latest decision looks set to become a cause celebre. The development in contention is what is known as Norton Folgate, an area of medieval streets adjacent to Bishopsgate, just outside the City boundary, and much rebuilt over the centuries (property developers have always been with us). Plans were put forward as long ago as 1977 to carry out a comprehensive demolition and redevelopment of the Georgian and Victorian buildings which now define the site. That attempt was defeated by a great conservationist grouping led by, or at least, husbanded by, John Betjeman, who even squatted the buildings, and ultimately stopped the scheme. But such a prime site, so close to the gleaming glass towers of the City, was always going to tempt the men with money and bulldozers, and now they are back.
There is an unusual twist in this tale. The planning authority here is Tower Hamlets, whose demesne immediately abuts the City on the east side. But the site is actually owned by the City of London Corporation. The City Corporation was once described as “a giant property company with a small social services department attached” and it owns large amounts of non-operational land both in and outside the City. (As the City have now seconded many of their social service functions to neighbouring councils, that may say something even more clearly). The City long ago – before the first battle of Norton Folgate – agreed to sell the site to British Land plc, the UK’s second largest publically quoted Property Company. British Land is, it should be said, well regarded both in the property business and outside it as a well-run corporation which has a social and architectural sensitivity to the world around it. Its large property holdings include in the City the enormous Broadgate estate and the towering new Leadenhall Building (the Cheesegrater, if you prefer).
A year or so ago British Land applied once again for planning permission to redevelop Norton Folgate. If it is successful in this it will buy the site from the City. Much has changed there since 1977 – suffice it, perhaps, to say that property owners looking to develop their properties do not usually spend much money on maintenance and repair and the City has allowed the buildings to deteriorate to a surprising degree. Tower Hamlets Council, against the advice of its officers, turned down the application. Very quickly, Boris called it in, and approved it. Maybe too quickly, as there was little evidence of due consideration, and Boris did not consider an alternative offer for the site which would have kept and restored the current buildings.
The conservationist groups, including some of the young idealists who squatted Norton Folgate the first time round, were irritated from the off at this renewed attempt to redevelop an historic area, at the bland and high rise scheme – not one of British Land’s best – and were riled by the Mayor’s call in, and, as they feel, robust corner cutting. They have gone straight to court this time for a full judicial review as to whether proper process was followed. This has been followed by a call by them, supported by a number of the great and the good from the anti-development and pro-conservation lobby, for a full public enquiry into all the circumstances of the Norton Folgate planning process, not least the links between British Land and the City Corporation.
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