Latest News

Next Meeting - TBA

The next meeting of SLSAG will be at The Lion, Wick Rd, Teddington. Date to be advised.

PLANNING INSPECTORATE PUBLIC INQUIRY 23 APRIL

The Planning Inspector’s decision on Linden Homes’ application for the Sandy Lane site will be published sometime in the next four weeks.

NEW PLANNING APPLICATION:

We'd also like to alert people to a new planning application (08/0617/FUL) that has just been submitted for the nursing home on the Sandy Lane site, which will run the width of the site along Bushy Park Road.

The operators, Caring Homes Ltd, have approval for a three-storey nursing home; they now want to increase the height of the three storeys, build a fourth storey on the half of the roof near the railway line, change the footprint of the building (to a kind of flattened W shape) and reduce the number of bedrooms from 71 to 56.

The public comment period runs until March 28th.

Link to Richmond Council web site.

KEY HEARING DATES ANNOUNCED

Linden Homes’ latest application for the Sandy Lane site will be considered by Richmond Council in March and the Planning Inspectorate in April. The application is for an extra 36 apartments, bringing the total to 234 for the whole site, plus an extra 5th storey on five blocks.

The Public Inquiry into Linden Homes’ application for the Sandy Lane site will be held on April 23rd and 24th in the Council Chamber, York House, Richmond Road, Twickenham. The Inquiry is open to the public, and anyone wishing to speak should contact the Planning Inspector beforehand (teamp6@pins.gsi.gov.uk) or turn up at 10 am on Wednesday April 23rd.

Linden lodged its appeal on the grounds of non-determination (ie, Richmond Council failed to reach a decision on its application within the statutory 16 weeks). The latest news is that the council’s Planning Committee will consider the application on Thursday March 13th, in the Council Chamber, York House, Twickenham. The meeting starts at 6.30pm and anyone can attend. Do come if you can - a large attendance would give the committee an indication of the strength of local feeling.

The Richmond planning officer’s report on Linden’s amended application will be published on March 5th. We will have a link to the report from this site soon after, plus a synopsis of the officer’s conclusions. We will also give details on how to register to speak at the meeting.

Amended Application

Linden Homes has amended its new application for the Sandy Lane site. Under the amended version submitted in November 2007, the company is seeking an additional 36 apartments (rather than 40), bringing the total for the whole development to 234 apartments. Linden is no longer requesting a sixth floor for the central block but still wants another floor on five blocks, making them five floors high. It also wants to fill in the gaps between four of these blocks to create two super-blocks running the width of the site.

Other changes to the June 2007 application include:

The building materials on the southern faces of blocks B/B1 and C/C1 have been changed from white render to London brick to "lessen the impact of the scheme on Bushy Park by reducing reflection during the winter months, when tree cover is less and the sun is low in the sky"
18 of the 36 proposed extra flats would be affordable housing

Cartoon: Perhaps the most significant change is that the proposal for a biomass boiler to supplement the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant has been dropped. The cover letter from Linden’s agents, Lennon Planning, admits that the biomass boiler would have had 'negative impacts'. Instead, Linden gives the council two options to choose from:

Powering the CHP engine with a mix of biogas (40%) and methane (60%); or
Powering the CHP engine with methane (i.e. natural gas) and installing 153m2 of solar collectors for water heating.

Since Linden’s Sustainability Statement notes that option 1 has 'no working precedents', it would seem that option 2 is the only real choice. While solar collectors to provide 25% of the domestic hot water requirements for 25 apartments are better than nothing, they hardly justify the claims made for the Sandy Lane development at the start of the Sustainability Statement: "a landmark sustainable scheme... a blueprint for sustainable community dwellings...designed with special regard to the Kyoto protocol".

Linden’s attitude towards the environment is better illustrated by comparing the design targets in the June 2007 application and the November amendments: in June they aimed at a 45% reduction in CO2 emissions and for 20% of energy to be generated from renewable resources; by November, these targets had dwindled to a 35% reduction in CO2 emissions and 10% of energy from renewable resources. And even these more modest targets are open to question, as we believe we showed in our comments (see Have Your Say) to the council on the November amendments.

Statutory Consultees

Several statutory consultees have commented on Linden's June 2007 application, and their main points are:

The Greater London Authority says that the new scheme is "acceptable in principle" [not a surprise, since the GLA is in favour of greater density]. However, the GLA lists a number of conditions that need 'satisfactory resolution', including:

Securing a 50:50 split between social rent/intermediate tenure in the 16 new affordable units. [Linden had wanted all 16 to be intermediate units for key workers, but after talks with the GLA has agreed that half should be social rent for people on housing association waiting lists.]
Securing an "appropriate contribution" to the children's play areas and/or Bushy Park Reducing the number of car parking spaces. The new application has 246 car parking spaces for 238 apartments. The GLA wants a reduction of at least 8 spaces
Securing the energy efficiency, centralised heating, combined heat and power and biomass boiler by way of condition.
Investigating the possible impact on bats. The GLA Biodiversity Team notes that any bat roosts in the trees close to the development could be harmed by the light and says the Royal Parks Agency should confirm whether or not there are any roosts and whether they would be harmed

The Environment Agency objects to the new application because Linden has not submitted a surface water flood risk assessment and so has "failed to demonstrate that the surface water flood risks resulting from this development can be safely managed".

The Royal Parks Agency objects to the new application because "the visual impact and intrusion on Bushy Park will be significant and negative and detract from the historic views of the Grade 1 listed Deer Park". The Agency objects to the increased height and the infilling and says that "whilst in the past, we had a good line of communication between ourselves and the developer, this latest revision to the development has been submitted without consultation, which is disappointing".

Local Resident's Petition

Action Group with Tony Arbour standing close to the first block under construction David Harnden chairman of The Sandy Lane Action Group hands over to the London Assembly member Tony Arbour a list of 568 signatures opposing the new plans for the redevelopment of the land formally known as the Seeboard/Jewson's site.

See Teddington Online article 'Marked support for SLSAG petition'.

10 Downing Street Petition

There is currently a petition on the 10 Downing Street website which exactly captures the predicament we may well find ourselves in later this year. We therefore urge all our members to sign up to this petition and encourage all your neighbours to do the same.

The petition reads as follows:
When planning permission is rightly & democratically refused by local authorities, with the full support of hundreds, if not thousands of local people, the current 'appeal' process allows the handful of individuals in Bristol or the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) to have overall decision on the matter. This is not a democratic process. In 99% of cases, local opinion (people who actually have to live with these decisions on a daily basis & for years to come) is steam-rolled in favour of financial gain & power, by people whom it will never effect. Neither applicants (building developers or corporations eg phone masts) or the ODPM have an interest or consideration for the impact to our quality of life. How can thousands of citizens' voices be so easily & readily pushed aside & ignored? The current process undermines & devalues our democratic rights. This must be changed, with power given back to the people who have the best interest & understanding of the area they live in.

The petition can be found at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/planningappeal/

Government White Paper Proposals

www.planningdisaster.co.uk
A new campaign against the government's plans to remove community voices from the planning process. Visit the site for more information.

First properties are advertised for sale

An artist's view of apartment block Foxtons
are advertising a 3 bedroom and 2 Bed, 2 Bath properties. Said to be a "Gorgeous new development in Idyllic location boasting great local amenities and private balcony's".

Site Meeting - 4th May 2007

The remediation work being done on the Sandy Lane site is causing numerous problems and concerns for people in neighbouring properties. On Friday, 4th May, David Harnden and Ian Jones-Healey of School House Lane met with Council officers and representatives of Linden Homes and the contractors. These are our notes of what was said.

9.30 am: meeting between Ian and Catherine Jones-Healey, David Harnden and Nikolay Vasilev, Contaminated Land Officer, Environment Directorate, Richmond Council

Nikolay described the remediation process. The two gasholder bases at the Bushy Park Road of the site are being intensively cleansed to remove the heavy hydrocarbons. On the rest of the site, the top 3 m of soil will be treated with bacteria to tackle the pollution - the soil will be mixed with compost and have air pumped through it to aid the process. This is already happening at the Cedars Road end of the site. There is a generator to pump the air through the ground, and this has now been screened with straw bales following complaints about the noise.

In response to concerns about contaminated dust being blown around the neighbourhood, Nikolay said that while there would be some additional risk, it would be comparable to the risk from dust from ordinary roads being blown about. While the level of extra risk is hard to quantify, there are monitoring stations around the site for dust and contaminants and so far there has been nothing to show health risks. The monitoring stations have been in place since last summer. The council officers are keeping their eyes on this site.

10 am: meeting between Ian Jones-Healey and David Harnden (representing SLSAG), Nikolay Vasilev, Cllr James Mumford, Richard Brinkworth (Southern Testing), Mr Clifford (Site Manager), Nick Sawyer (Contracts Manager, Linden Homes), plus an environmental health officer from Richmond Council and representatives from Biogenie and the companies monitoring air quality and dust, and noise and vibration.

Nick Sawyer chaired the meeting and ran through the Email sent by David Harnden to Chris Maunders of Linden Homes and Nikolay Vasilev, with contributions from relevant people for each particular issue. DH's Email questions are in the boxes with responses expanded below.

Contract All | Expand All

Apart from the two spots at the Bushy Park Road end of the site, where the gasometers used to be, there has been no sign of any remedial work being carried out elsewhere on the site, even though the Southern Testing report talks of the whole site being polluted. The breaking of the concrete and the earth-moving that has gone on has resulted in large quantities of dust being blown around the neighbourhood. The assumption must be that this dust is contaminated.

With the remedial work, we have to break up the concrete first. The concrete was laid on a plastic membrane. The piles of soil along Sandy Lane are of uncontaminated soil that is suitable for reuse as topsoil.

Moving of the contaminated soil will begin at the end of next week. By July the whole site should be flat again. It will be a 20-week-plus treatment process. The soil will be mixed with compost and bacteria and aerated. It stays where it is for six to eight weeks and is then turned over.

The crusher is finishing today. In future, breaking up concrete and so on will be limited to what we find underground, plus the remaining concrete under these Portacabins, which will be done in October/November and should take around two weeks.

The third pollution hotspot identified by Southern Testing - in the centre of the site by the railway line - appears to have been totally ignored. The concrete surface over this hotspot has been broken up and is now being fed into a grinder, presumably for use as hardcore. Inevitably, large quantities of earth are being fed into the grinder along with the concrete, and according to Southern Testing this earth is highly polluted. The grinding machinery results in particularly large amounts of dust, which is being blown everywhere. It was only on Wednesday 18th April, following our meeting with you on the Tuesday, that the workmen started to spray water on the rubble before it was crushed.

With the third pollution hotspot, it is underground structures that are polluted and these are still in the ground. The surface is not contaminated. Air quality monitoring is being conducted by a specialist company, and all the readings are below danger levels.

The contractor advertises that it has signed up to the considerate contractor scheme, but is ignoring several of the scheme’s provisions. For example: there has been no acoustic enclosure around the grinder; instead of 'careful material handling', the diggers have been breaking up concrete by dropping pieces from a height or else hitting them on the ground with their scoops (which causes severe vibrations in our houses) rather than using the drilling machines; and I have seen a lorry leave the site carrying rubble but without any sheeting.

An acoustic enclosure for the crusher would be impractical - it’s moved often and other machines/vehicles need access to it. The generator for the air pumping has been screened.

Breaking concrete by dropping pieces or hitting them with the scoop, rather than using the drills, is not good practice and should not happen. We will do better in future and will speak to the men.

A fence to screen neighbouring houses in School House Lane was only completed at the end of last week, several weeks after work started on breaking the concrete, moving earth and grinding the concrete.. This could have been done much earlier.

With the fencing we were let down by the fencing contractor. However, we feel we have put it up reasonably quickly, and we kept the crusher behind the fence that had been completed.

A School House Lane householder concerned about the effect of the constant vibration on her house spoke with a man on the Sandy Lane gate of the site. He said that a vibration test had just been done and that he would phone back with the results, but never did. She then phoned someone from Biogenie (the man on the gate gave her the contact details) and explained her concerns. The man from Biogenie said he would call back, but never did.

(DH noted that as well as calls not being returned, the neighbours to the site had been given very little information about the work. A more proactive approach would be preferable, such as a website or a physical board showing that the monitoring tests are being conducted regularly and that the results are OK.)

We plan to produce a newspaper to inform people, which will be done by the Remarkable Group. There will be a project manager on site from next Tuesday. We will also consider a notice-board. [Mr Sawyer said after the meeting that the project manager could speak to SLSAG about the site remediation. It was agreed to give him a week or two to become acquainted with the site.]

We are completely in the dark as to the results of vibration tests and air monitoring. Given the above concerns, we would like to have evidence that these tests are being carried out regularly, and what they show.

The highest level of vibration recorded is 1 mm/sec, whereas damage to properties only occurs at 15mm/sec and above. Therefore the vibration is well below the danger level.

We are called in when work likely to cause vibration is planned. However, the workers on the site don’t know exactly when the monitoring is being conducted. Vibration monitoring has been carried out in Bushy Park Road, School House Lane, Crieff Court and Cedars Road.

A neighbour from School House Lane who regularly walks down Sandy Lane noticed that there was a large pool of water on the site close to Sandy Lane and more or less in line with the Leg of Mutton pond in Bushy Park, which was there during the second half of the week ending Sunday 15th April. The water subsequently appeared to have been covered up with earth. It is possible that the excavations went below the water table - which raises concerns that the water could help contaminants leach outside the site. It is also possible that the contractors have broken the culvert that flows from the pond in Bushy Park. If so, has it been repaired?

The water was caused by the demolition work, which hit an old water main. It has been repaired. The excavation is going down 3m, which means we are stopping at the top of the water table. We will treat the water.

The culvert from Bushy Park is intact and the water quality is being regularly monitored. The culvert will be relocated marginally during the building works. It is a brick culvert, but with a metal sleeve inside. It is still intact.

(DH noted that when the crusher was first in operation, he and his wife could see no sign of hoses being played on the rubble and that consequently there were very large clouds of dust. However, after the meeting with Chris Maunders of Linden Homes on April 17, when these concerns were raised, hoses were trained on the conveyor belt from the next day onwards and the problem is much reduced.)

We have had hoses trained on the crusher from the start. However, at the beginning we were trying out different methods to see which worked best.

(DH noted that these early methods must have been remarkably ineffective, given the amount of dust being created and the apparent absence of any water to damp it down.)

The representative from the dust monitors noted that recently there has been nothing above the nuisance threshold.

(DH noted that ‘recently‘ was the operative word. While the hoses trained on the crusher since April 18th have significantly improved the situation, before then a lot of dust was being generated. It would be preferable if the contractors took steps to prevent problems, rather than reacting to complaints.)

DH and IJ-H raised the problems being caused to houses on Bushy Park Road by the pigeons displaced from the site, and the lack of a satisfactory response from Linden Homes. The Richmond environmental health officer noted the problems of proving in court that the pigeons causing the damage were the ones from the site. DH noted that after the tall building had been demolished, he had seen flocks of pigeons circling where the building had stood and then landing on the roofs of houses in BPR. He hoped that Linden Homes would take a common sense approach to this and any possible future problems, rather than splitting legal hairs. Cllr Mumford expressed the same hope.

Local Radio

Radio Jackie - The Sound of SW London and North Surrey - 107.8

On Friday 11th May & Wednesday 27th June Radio Jackie included an interview with David Harnden (SLSAG Chairman) on their local news spot. You can hear the item 'Angry residents in Teddington and Hampton Wick are fighting new plans for a housing development' by downloading the transmission in either MP3, Ogg Vorbis or Windows Media digital music format here.

MP3

Oog Vorbis

Windows Media

If you do not have a Digital Music player installed on your computer you can download and install a free version of WinAmp from the WinAmp web site.

The Local Bats

Feedback

The Site