Amid all the madness of the political scene, normal life of course goes on. No matter who is elected mayor on October 21, he will not have power over planning decisions. That will still be left to the quasi-judicial development committees, which never (let’s repeat that: never ever, oh no, never) vote on political lines. Ahem.
Around the corner from me in Bow is a large empty building site. It is a sad symbol of council failure. Four years ago, a Safeway supermarket and a large car park stood there. It was the heart of the community around the famous Roman Road. Then Morrisons bought out Safeway and deemed the store surplus to requirements. It closed and except for a few weeks when squatters moved in, it remained empty until the bulldozers arrived last year.
The council owns the freehold on the site, but the leasehold belongs to a development company called Goldquest. Goldquest wants to build three tower blocks there, with the tallest 10 storeys high. It would add 500 new residents to an area whose medical, transport and educational services are already creaking under the pressure of recent over-development. The blocks would also tower over a street of Victorian terraced houses and decrease the daylight into council flats across the road.
Although there will also be a small, shoppers’ car park, other parking bays will be removed.
As a sop, the developers have promised a Tesco Metro on the ground floor, but this would be a smaller store than the Safeway and there is no guarantee that Tesco will actually move in.
A petition a couple of years ago suggested overwhelming local opposition to the proposals. But Labour councillors, led by current deputy council leader Josh Peck, ignored all that and voted by a majority of one to grant planning permission. (The Tories had refused to attend the committee because they were boycotting council meetings at that time). Josh, who lives about half a mile away in a Victorian terrace unhindered by 10-storey blocks, argued that Goldquest’s section 106 commitment to plough millions of pounds into the area would help to regenerate the Roman Road.
That planning permission was then quashed after procedural errors emerged. When it went back to committee pretty much unaltered, Cllr Shahed Ali, who had voted against the plans while sitting as a Respect member in the original hearing, inexplicably changed his mind now he was there for Labour. When I asked him why and whether it was because he was angling for a seat on the cabinet, he told me he would get back to me. That was a couple of months ago. He hasn’t.
The next chapter involved a High Court judge and when he ruled that there was a case to answer in a judicial review over Josh’s neutrality on the planning committee, the developers withdrew their application and started the process all over again.
Their new application can be viewed on the council website here. A campaign group called the Bow Safeway Site Action Group has been set up and they are urging residents to write to the council by October 25 to object to the plans. They can be reached on savetheroman@googlemail.com. Their letter to residents is below:
Safeway site redevelopment – Object Now!Your support is needed urgently in the latest stage of the campaign to stop excessive and inappropriate development of the former Safeway site at 2 Gladstone Place, Bow E3.A third planning application has been lodged by the developers. It is effectively the same as before and if passed would result in the construction of 3 huge tower blocks up to ten-storeys high containing 208 flats. There would be a Tesco Metro on the ground floor but this would be smaller than the previous Safeway supermarket. The development would cram in the region of 500 more residents into this small area. The old 140 space shoppers’ car park would be replaced by only 30 shoppers’ spaces.Detrimental developmentIf it were to go ahead on this scale the development would have a serious and detrimental impact on the area. It will put intense pressure on health care, transport and the environment in the Roman. Your access to a doctor could suffer, your chances of getting on a bus will be even worse than at present and local schools will be increasingly oversubscribed. It is in breach of planning guidelines and puts the developer’s profits before community interests.Write to winSuccessful action by local residents forced the first planning permission to be quashed. The second is still the subject of a judicial review action. The developers are now trying to bypass the legal process with yet another planning application. We all as local residents now need to show our continuing opposition by sending letters of objection. The letters must be sent before October 25th when the Council’s consultation period ends. A draft letter is attached for you to adapt to your own views.We support regeneration of the area but this development proposal is not right for this site. The supermarket and the main shoppers’ car park should have priority to preserve the Roman’s future. Lower-density residential housing is more appropriate and in line with both local and London-wide planning guidelines.If you would like an electronic copy of the draft objection letter, need more information or wish to offer other help to the campaign please get in touch by e-mailing savetheroman@googlemail.com.Make your view countRemember your letter matters. It does have an effect and it is vital if you wish to protect and change the Roman for the better. Please send it to the planning department by October 25th quoting reference PA/10/01970 and including your name and address.
Trial by Jeory 
Transport: MIle end, Bow Rod, Bow Church, numerous buses.
Medical: Are you saying that docotrs would refuse to work in the area?
Educational: The only problem locally is that everyone wants to go to Morpeth.
What exactlyis the objectino to new supermarket rather than a disused building site.
I seem to remember the person heading up this protest group was Carol Swords. Right at this moment she’s on a speed boat heading full throttle east across the Mediteranean hoping that her in hope she collides with the Israeli machines guns in time to the ELA deadline.
Where is it exactly that you point out a certain conflict in this planningnissue Ted? I don’t see it on your blog. You do know how to lose credibility sometimes.
Dan, I assume you mean the potential Josh conflict?
Here’s a press release from the Action Group May 24, 2010.
Dan, how often do you take the Number 8 bus during rush hour? Even John Biggs was appalled by how bad the situation was a couple of years ago. Josh and Marc Francis know it’s struggling.
The size and scale of the proposed development is the objection. You should know that: they’ve been aired at planning committee twice. Were you there?
The No8 bus is hampered by the bad layout and parking bays of Roman Road. Fix that and you fix the problem. I hope you’re happy that little old ladies still have to get the bus to get to Tescos due to the fact that the new supermarket has been constantly held up.
‘Credibility’ that’s cheap coming from you Dan, supporting an imposed candidate!
As you are a well known opportunist, why don’t you come and join the Tories, we have a good chance of winning. Actually don’t, you would be a liability.
What is it about these annonymous commentators? Has Lutfur become such a liability that they have to pretend to be Tories now.
I have no idea why you think Carol Swords has been involved. The only contact we have had with Respect was when one of our group referred the Council’s blatant mis-handling of the first planning application to then MP George Galloway’s office, but I don’t think they did much in the end.
Re Dan’s subsequent comment, what we would like is for the little old ladies to be able to buy everything they want in the new store, not still be facing the bus ride to the full size store at Bromley-by-Bow to top up their shopping every two weeks because the new one here has been squeezed in small. And if the Council had stuck to their planning guidance of May 2007 and refused to consider plans for double the density then the store could have been built ages ago. What happened when Sainsbury’s asked to take the site back in 2006?
Nothing new about Dan McCurry and his support for Labour cronism and corruption!
Its good to see news worthy article chucked out about the corruption around the Safeway site. Glad to see some bit of good come out from all the gutter journalism about Lutfur Rahman.
Hopefully, Ted will see beyond the prejudices he holds about Lutfur Rahman and be fair and write unbiased articles about all the mayor candidates.
Ted if you search deep and hard you will find the clicks in TH Labour party… Safeway site, council homes selloffs, councillors giving favours to friends by getting them shop premises (mile end bridge!), Rich Mix bottomless money basket… there is a lot more but let us put that challenge to you!
At least us Labour people are willing to put our names to our comments.
COMMENT REMOVED FOR LEGAL REAONS AND WHILE I CHECK FACTS
I have to say it is refreshing to see an article that isn’t anti-Lutfur Rahman. If Ted keeps this up, I may have to humbly admit to having been wrong about his total bias towards the Helal Abbas camp.
Corruption deserves to be exposed, no matter who the perpetrators are.
It would add 500 new residents to an area whose medical, transport and educational services are already creaking under the pressure of recent over-development
I phoned my GP (on Grove Road)for an appointment, not an emergency, yesterday afternoon and was told I could come in at 5.30. Tube to Mile End, empty bus up Grove Road (as theer are now more busses and more routes).
Schools in the area are overesubscribed because they are so good – that’s a bad thing?
The same people campigning against this campiagned against Safeways being built in the first place.
Bit of a low jibe at Josh, Ted.
Low jibe from me, m’Lord, or from the judge? I think Josh’s aims to regenerate the Roman and in particular its night-time economy are extremely welcome and he knows I feel that.
People living there aren’t against some development, but simply not on that scale. Go and speak to anyone waiting for the Number 8 on Roman Road and ask them about the transport situation. Or John Biggs.
I’m registered with the GP practice at William Place – a good practice which is working efficiently to deliver services. But I’m registered there because my nearest practice (in Harley Grove) was oversubscribed. William Place will be the nearest one for these 500 new residents and I was lucky to be able to get a registration with them in the first place – they were nearly full already.
I’ve recently had to visit the doctors and if you need to get an appointment with anyone you can usually get something the same week but rarely the same day. And if you need to see a specific GP (for a follow-up appointment) you’re looking at over a week’s wait.
The transport links there are at breaking point – Grove Road is quite a walk from the Safeway site and many will need to take the no 8 bus to get there. I don’t know enough about the schools but even if they’re oversubscribed because they’re so good – the fact is that they are oversubscribed so any parents would have to send their kids to schools at a distance, increasing demand for transport services at peak hours.
In an ideal world it would be good if Old Ford Housing could get this site to replace the prefab head office next to Barclays Bank that has had its planning permission expire together with a supermarket and 3+ bedroom social housing rather than yet more small one & two bed yuppie hutches that are already over supplied locally since the decline of the buy to let market. Many of the people living in thse move out of the eastend once the kids get to school age anyway middle class flight back to suburbia.
White Flight may have been the case a few years ago – but there has been a noticeable demographic change in the Yr 7 intake at TH secondary schools – i.e. the middle classses are staying put. Also, more aspirational working class Bangaldeshis are also moving out to the suburbs. This is a big problem for Luthfer nad his extremist allies (a lot of whom themselves pretend to live here, but live in places like Ilford and Upney) – as thye’ve got less pepole who they can tell haw to vote …. which is why this election is such a despearte last ditch attempt for them to grasp power.
Old Ford Housing and its parent company Circle Anglia is behind the whole development, yet very rarely do they publicise that due to its controversial nature. They allow this unknown company that hardly anyone has eard of take the flack.
Joe, seems like you already knew that and the fact that they wil have 2 floors of office on that site along with the Tesco.
Old Ford need to come clean.
Oy yes and guess who is on the Old Ford board…..Marc Francis who also is the housing and planning cheif.
I didn’t know that thank you, I had heard Old Ford / Circle Anglia had lost the site, obviously wrongly, thank you.
Thanks Ted for exposing the two-faced Josh Pecks, I have been living in the area for 20 years, it used to be buzzing before and Safeway was the hub for shopping within the vicinity. Cllr Josh’s would sell this community for his own benefit any day of the week. He is a control freak [CONTENT REMOVED FOR LEGAL REASONS].
He is now the running the mayoral campaign for Abbas, it is widely known that if Abbas gets in then it will actually be Josh that will be running the council as Abbas is not really fit to be the Mayor. Josh would be deputy and Abbas will be a token mayor used as a puppet on a string. Josh also has a puppet master, Michael Kieth, the real king maker.
Good luck Tower Hamlets and sorry to Bow residents.
Nothing but Truth, so whats the news on Marc francis running the campaign for lutfur and Shiraz
Ahmed or whomever you are ( probably it’s the useless and nothing better do Dan McCurry). Why are you shifting the subject to Lutfur again, Josh is the culprit here, he was involved in the matter and stated in the report – read Ted’s post again.
Aktar, whoever you are, I use my name for my comments because I’m not scared of using my name. You on the other hand are hiding your name. What an idiot.
Bow has lost out considerably under Cllr Josh Packs while other areas in Tower Hamlets have been regenerated Bow is just sidelined. There have been private developments and plenty of it, but for the yuppies other then that everything is declining here. Roman Road is in a sad state with empty shops and lacks any soul. Since Cllr Josh has been in Cabinet and as Deputy what has he really achieved for Bow? It’s all talk no action from him.
vote him (Cllr Josh) out next time or even better don’t let his mate Abbas become the mayor. Vote for the right person.
You mean his puppet Abbas?
It may seem as if I’m dodging Ted having quoted me in this piece if I did not make an appearance on this piece so here I am. As a current member of this SDC planning committee, I cannot go into the details for legal reasons. But I do want to correct Ted to state that I can recall him asking me why I had voted in favour when previously I had voted against? He posed this question to me during another conversation not specific to his subject. I recall my response to Ted being that as the application was heard a long time ago, I could not remember the details so would have to examine the paperwork to recall. Ted did try to make my mind up for me by implying I was instructed by party colleagues. This is not the case, and everyone that has seen me speak at these meetings ever since I first became a councillor, including Ted, should know that I always speak my mind and and very vocal and challenging at such meetings. In fact I spoke and voted against the recent Rich Mix S106 allocation when my party colleagues voted in favour.
Hopefully this answers Ted’s incorrect analysis upon this particular occasion as he does usually otherwise get it right?
Respect former councillor Shahed Ali, when you are mentioned in Ted’s post he gets it wrong but when he attacks Lutfur he gets it right. Double standards, matey.
Also which party were you refereeing to Respect or Labour, you played them all.
Cllr Shahed Ali suddenly you have amnesia, you need to check paperwork, that’s how important the decision was for you. Also why are you supporting Abbas if he gave £2.5m to rich mix? Double standards!
RICH MIX CENTRE….two mentions above, including one from Cllr Shahed Ali who wants plus points for voting against the S106 allocation. Double standards aside, if he gets the plus points, we are also going to have to give plus points to the 14 councillors who wrote in objection to the S106 allocation, that’s Marc Francis (I think he’s up there in comments too), Lutfur Rahman (got to be up there), Abdul Asad, Rofique Ahmed, Ohid Ahmed, Lutfa Begum, Stephanie Eaton, Aminur Khan, Rabina Khan, Rania Khan, Harun Miah, Ahmed Omer, Oli Rahman, Abdal Ullah.
MINUS POINTS then to the 6 councillors on the SDC who voted in favour of bailing out Oona’s Rich Mix Centre with £2.093M of S106 money which should have gone elsewhere:
Councillor Carli Harper-Penman
Councillor Bill Turner
Councillor Kabir Ahmed
Councillor David Edgar
Councillor Dr Emma Jones
Councillor Anwar Khan
Not forgetting of course that Councillor Denise Jones is on the Management Board with Oona King and Michael Keith, who wanted to be our mayor….and that the Rich Mix Centre was bailed out under the Leadership of Helal Abbas who wants to be our mayor.
So on Thursday we either vote for the Rich Mix Mob or finally get rid of them.
Apparently naughty Mr Abbas has been colluding with the very naughty (according to him) Islamic Forum of Europe:
http://www.islamicforumeurope.com/live/ife.php?doc=articleitem&itemId=479
26,000 people on the Tower Hamlets housing list and who knows how many people who can’t afford to buy because the planning system artificially restricts supply so much.
It’s far more efficient in terms of CO2 and energy for people to live in compact cities than sprawled across the land.
And yet we always get this outrage at any proposals to build any thing to help address these issues from indignant nimbys, harping on about spurious concerns that are either easlily addressed or wrong. I’m going to write in support of the application.
I’ve lived near the Roman for over 25 years. This development is mostly about cramming in as many flats as possible. Tesco may or may not come. If they were really interested in the Roman they would be here already.
The 4 main objections to this development are:
1. It is twice the height of the properties it faces, and closer than the minimum distance from them.
2. It is being built on a car park which supported the local shops and market. One in 5 visitors on market days were from outside the borough – outside money coming into the area. Without a reasonable amount of car parking the shops and market stalls will be forced out of business.
3. Now that Iceland and Poundland have opened the council seem to have no idea of what to do about all the articulated lorries that arrive. This needs sorting out before Tesco’s are allowed to open:
4. Only a small number of the flats will be social rented, some will be affordable (define affordable), but most will be private flats for private profit.