There’s a headline we didn’t expect to write!
The inquiry into Montreaux’s planning application for the B&Q site (1049 residential units, up to 18 storeys) is coming in February next year. On 8 November, Barnet’s Strategic Planning Committee met to decide how to approach it. Council officers began as if for an appeal and proposed, basically, that as the committee had voted to approve the application last year, the council should support it at the inquiry. Seems obvious, but ….
For NorthWestTwo, Ben argued that it’s an inquiry not an appeal; the council had never issued a decision that it now had to defend; the committee had never approved the officers’ flawed report or voted on the merits of the application; a then-leading councillor had told them it was very bad but they had to vote to approve it, otherwise the Mayor of London would impose something worse. Oh, we also revealed that the draft Local Plan, which supported the development, is in trouble.
For the Railway Terraces, Jessica expanded on that and on just how bad the development would be for the Terraces and all Cricklewood. Councillors Schneiderman and Clarke spoke strongly against it too.
The committee voted 1:6 aganst the officers proposal, ie against supporting the application.
It didn’t end there. Pretty soon the officers had worked out an alternative proposal and that was carried 6:1, with cross-party support. Barnet’s position at the inquiry will be, in part:
The proposed development and the parameters sought, by virtue of the excessive height, scale and massing would result in a discordant and visually obtrusive form of development that would demonstrably fail to respect the local context and its established pattern of development, to the detriment of the character and appearance of the area and the setting of the adjacent Railway Terraces Conservation Area.
We’re very pleased. We still want to join in at the inquiry, there’s even more than that to be said, but it won’t be the residents against Barnet and the developers. The council is now with us.