Do you want Community facilities?

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The council wants your views on the Blackhorse Lane re-development, and more importantly who pays for and is obliged to provide what. Here’s what the council says:

“The draft Planning Obligations Strategy for Waltham Forest has now been published for consultation. As part of this there is a specific area based strategy for Blackhorse Lane which sets out how developers will be expected to contribute to the cost of schools, parks, public transport and street improvements through ‘Section 106’ payments“.

Fully understood..? Don’t worry its much less clear than it at first appears!

Essentially building lots of housing is guaranteed (it’s where the money is (or at least was). Everything else like access to green space, improving the night time economy (the council had promised to reprovide The Standard Music Venue), community spaces, etc etc is up for argument over who provides what and who pays.

The Council will charge a set Section 106 contribution for each new residential unit and per new square metre of commercial floor space. BAG questions whether the payment of a tariff will effectively mean that developers will not have to provide ANY infrastructure provision, including community facilities, themselves?

Visit the council site here to submit your views

BAG is also concerned that the first phase of development is for large-scale, high density and exclusively residential proposals. Occupation of this development by up to 1000 new residents will place an unsustainable and damaging impact upon existing infrastructure provision in the area.

The later phases in which community facilities, access and the like are promised currently have no detailed content or proposed timescales. Moreover, the delivery of these other phases could be seriously in doubt in the light of the current economic climate.

With this uncertainty BAG urges the Council to review its brief for the first phase of intensive residential development to ensure it makes a direct contribution to the community by, for example, incorporating a mix of uses and community facilities at street level to meet the needs of both existing and new residents. This is the only way the council can meet its own statement here:

“Effective methods of funding these physical and social infrastructure requirements are needed particularly to make sure that they are in place at the very early stages of the development so that new residents can benefit from them and existing residents not be disadvantaged“.

Some facilities which would provide value and services to the community and help to ensure a more sustainable development could be commercial or privately funded (e.g. shops, cafes, nurseries and creches, local small business or workshop opportunities), possibly with publicly-funded subsidies for local users or subsidised rents for marginal start-up businesses. Would the payment of the tariff preclude such provision as all the infrastructure would effectively be Council-owned, supplied and managed?

Does the tariff approach also mean that opportunities to integrate infrastructure (and especially community facilities) into the fabric and construction of a development may be missed, and that monies received will then be expended elsewhere in the area, possibly at a later and indeterminate date, and in ways or at locations that are physically disconnected from development sites, and possibly at greater expense as the economies of scale and integration available during planning and construction will be unavailable?

BAG would also like to see further details on proposals for the assessment of local area infrastructure needs and the likely contribution to these from public funds. In particular the following questions are raised:

What is the brief for this assessment?

What headings / topics will it include?

What methodologies are proposed for the assessment?

Who will carry it out?

What inputs will there be from the local community?

What is the timescale for a) commencement and b) completion of the assessment?

What procedures will be carried out from its initial findings to its formal adoption?