West End Square proposal

The meeting about the new 'West End Square' development took place last week and some strong opinions were voiced about the 12 storey tower that is being proposed in the middle of the development.
The location is the strip of land running between the Jubilee Line and Overground lines stretching west of West End Lane.
No planning application has yet been submitted - and it will be interesting to see if any changes are made to the planning application following the meeting. The height of the buildings was certainly of concern to those present on the evening.
For those who weren't able to make it - I think these photos from their models give a good over-view of the scheme.

The newly proposed 'West End Square' located opposite West Hamsptead Post Office pushing the shops back away from West End Lane, and giving more public space at the front of the development.

The residential blocks rise as the scheme goes back - the tallest is 13 storeys.

Another (slightly blurry) picture of the front showing its location in relation to the tube station.

More pictures can be seen on the architect's website - and the panels they were displaying are available here and here.

Night Travel

Just received this from Tfl:

Bus service proposal: new night bus route N113 and changes to route N13
Overview
During Transport for London’s (TfL’s) regular review of the bus network, we received requests for a night service on route 113. We are now proposing the introduction of a new route N113 which would combine with the N13 to provide the existing level of service between Finchley Road (Fortune Green) and Trafalgar Square. The N113 would give a new night service between Brent Cross and Edgware.
Why we are consulting
New route N113
The new N113 service would run every 30 minutes on all nights between Edgware bus station and Trafalgar Square. It would run along the current 113 routing via Mill Hill, Hendon, Fortune Green and Swiss Cottage to Oxford Street, then via Oxford Street, Regent Street, Haymarket (return Pall Mall, Regent Street) to Trafalgar Square, where it would stand on Great Scotland Yard. Please see the map below. We are consulting because the introduction of the service would also affect the N13.
Existing route N13Route N13 currently runs between Aldwych and North Finchley every 15 minutes weeknights and every 10 minutes weekend nights. As the proposed route N113 would run along the same roads as the N13 between Fortune Green and Trafalgar Square, we propose reducing the weeknight frequency of the N13 to every 30 minutes and weekend night frequency to every 15 minutes. This would provide sufficient capacity as the two routes would combine on the section they would both serve. Night services via North Finchley on routes 134 and N20 would continue unchanged.

To see this yourself or to comment online follow this link:

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/buses/n113-n13

Community Action - Congratulations!

(Picture and story supplied by Malavan)

Here is the Big Society in action. 40 households and businesses from the area of Hillfield Road, Aldred Road, Orestes Mews and Mill Lane, West Hampstead, banded together to try to move foxes off our patch. No foxes were harmed in this action. No politicians or council officials were involved either. Whether our actions will succeed, we cannot be sure, but we certainly came up trumps as a community. Well done everyone!

There are more wonderful pictures of this community action - look on

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25069535@N06/sets/72157628020618514/

And this is from the Hillfield and Aldred Residents Association newsletter:

There has been a fox problem in the gardens on the southside of Hillfield Road and up Aldred Road, worst where the gardens back on the shops on Mill Lane and the area is enclosed. Individual houses had been trying to tackle it over the early summer, but to no avail. By early September rather than continue to act alone a group decided to get together and decide the best course of action to take. After some research (including contacting the RSPCA) they contacted Fox-a-gon. Fox-a-gon are fox deterrence specialists who explained that foxes can't be just be caught and moved into a new territory (firstly it is probably already another foxes' territory and secondly even if it isn't the translocated foxes don't know where to find food and may starve). Rather, Fox-a-gon's approach is to encourage the foxes to move to a more suitable territory by blocking up known fox dens and making their life more difficult (i.e. reducing easy sources of food and water). That and installing water scarecrows. Fox-agon inspected our area to look for signs of foxes and came across several fox dens, but annoying none currently occupied, although some showing signs of recent occupation.I'm jumping ahead a bit because the search narrowed to a back garden behind 43 Mill Lane. This 'garden' was overgrown with vegetation and years of accumulated junk. In order for Fox-a-gon to investigate the garden had to cleared first so last Sunday a group of HARRA residents got together to clear the junk (by doing it ourselves we saved ourselves several hundred pounds). The landlord of the site had refused to do anything about it. It turned out to be 1.7 tonnes of rubbish all moved by hand up onto Hillfield Road, so that it could be taken away. (By the way at the end the group had grown to over 40 households, which isn't a bad show of community spirit).

We'd just like to say "Congratulations everyone!"

Good news and bad news

The Friends of Fortune Green have been busy over a couple of weekends - tidying up the beds, weeding and planting bulbs so that we will all see the benefit next Spring.

The FoFG are to be congratulated on their enthusiasm and hard work and for successfully obtaining funds to upgrade the Green in various ways but they have always had support and advice (as well as money) from Camden's Parks Department. Most recently they arranged for Camden to explore the poor drainage on the Green adjacent to Ajax Road. Remember the two big fenced-off holes? (Interestingly they appear to have found a WWII air raid shelter under the Green) This investigation will eventually result in a scheme to improve the drainage before that side of the Green is re-turfed.

This is all good news, but the bad news is that Camden is slashing its Parks budget and staff which will hit the most vulnerable areas of the department. This means - yes they still have an obligation to keep our parks and open spaces comparatively clean and safe - but improvements and additional "extras" such as planting will be in very short supply! Worst of all it seems as if the future of those officers involved in Nature Conservation is very much at risk which would be a huge blow to several of our local sites (the Cemetery, Gondar Gardens Reservoir, Fortune Green, Maygrove Peace Park, Westbere Copse and the newly recreated Conservation site on the Mill Lane development. Seems like a case of throwing out the birds and the bees along with the bathwater!

Remember our local garden centre?

This shows part of the former popular Garden Centre at 163 Iverson Road - now cleared and deserted since it was forced to close by its jandlord (Network Rail) earlier this year.

Since sold on to developers, it is now the subject of a somewhat bizarre planning proposal which was unveiled to a bemused audience of local residents annd councillors at a meeting held at the Sidings Community Centre last week.

It is an awkward site being a small triangle which tapers away towards the new Thameslink station . On the narrow end (shown in this picture) the plan shows four little town houses (they will have to have very small rooms as they are squahed up against the railway fence). But is was the main building that caused most comment - looking from above a bit like the wing of an areoplane, one end was completely on stilts - the architect said it would be living amongst the trees!! The building also ran right up to the edge of the pavement which meant passers-by could look into their front rooms and made people wonder who would want to live in them.
It is to be hoped that the developers got the message loud and clear and have gone away for a rethink - the audience came up with various alternatives for future use of the site including a car park - but what most people wanted was their garden centre back!

Iverson and Maygrove Roads look likely to suffer lots of development proposals in coming years -the Council wants to build a school (and housing?) on the Liddell Road industrial site off Maygrove Road, there is already a large new building at 65 Maygrove Road and next door to this, another developer has his eye on a massive redevelopment backing on to the Peace Park.
And that's just what is in the pipeline at present - there are several other future possible sites.
Sometimes, as a local Councillor you feel as if you're the boy with his finger in the dyke trying to hold back the flood!

The march of the great cranes in West Hampstead

All over West Hampstead wherever you go - there are giant cranes! Across NW6 and NW2 developers have their eyes on our area and are hatching schemes. Many of these involve West End Lane, Mill Lane, the railway corridor and along Maygrove and Iverson Road. Lots of local residents are worried about the pace and scale of these proposed developments and feel that West Hampstead as they know and love it will change for ever.

There is a huge rash of meetings going on to discuss these and at most of them developers and Council planners are going away with the same message in their ears - Too much, too fast!

As local councillors, we are very concerned about the depth of people's concerns - particularly those who live in the affected areas. Cllr Keith Moffitt organised a meeting a week ago for representatives of local groups to see whether it would be possible to organise this network into a forum to take action on a Neighbourhood Plan (possible under proposed legislation). This is not as easy as it sounds as parts of West Hampstead feature in successive Mayor's Plans for massive amounts of new housing and these plans are "statutory" (ie difficult if not impossible to challenge). What we can all do is to push for changes to make individual schemes more acceptable but it's hard going!! Developers naturally want to maximise their profit by squeezing in as much as they can and it this means an extra couple of storeys on top - they'll go for it!

We're going to discuss all this at the next Fortune Green/West Hampstead Area Forum which will be held at the Dennington Park Road Synagogue on Tuesday 6th December, 7-9.30pm.

Meanwhile there is also a meeting - organised by the Council - on Wed 9 November at 6.30 at Sidings Community Centre to discuss the "Ballymore" Development (they are calling it "West End Square") 187-199 west End Lane wnich proposes up to eleven storeys residential with some retail along the front. Suspect this will not be a quiet meeting!

(And see next post)

New for West Hampstead

Cllr Gillian Risso-Gill has set up a new initiative - the West Hampstead Business Forum.
The inaugural meeting will be held at
6pm on Wednesday 16 November 2011
Emmanuel School, 101 Mill Lane, London NW6 1NA
The aim of the forum will be to:
• improve the trading environment in West Hampstead.
• give business a voice to contribute to the
planned “intensification” of West Hampstead
• provide networking opportunities and
promotional events for local business.
A flyer has been mailed out to around 250 mainly retail businesses in the area for the launch event. Attending the meeting will be speakers Camden Councillor Sarah Hayward, Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Regeneration, Andrew Lavery, Chair of the NW3 Hampstead, the traders’ group in Hampstead, Simon Pitkeathley, Chief Executive, Camden Town Unlimited (which has had great success in developing independent business in Camden Town) and Kate Goodman from Camden’s Placeshaping team.