Save Our London Now

Make Kingston Fit for a King

The immeasurable harm of a No-Plan

The new London Plan has been published, despite all our best efforts to get Sadiq Khan and the Housing minister to reconsider its policies given the effects they will have on the people of London and the environment in which we live and that we must cherish on behalf of future generations

No part of The Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames has yet been designated as an Opportunity Area

Kingston Council is still relying on The Direction of Travel 2016 for its growth plans, and it is sadly a fact that council officers and our elected representatives alike worked with The Mayor of London to agree the massive housebuilding targets for large sites throughout the Borough that have been assigned to Kingston in the new London Plan

The massive developments already starting to coming forward across Kingston are doing so outside of any local plan and are not supported by any local Strategic Environmental Assessment, Habitats Regulations Assessment or Equalities Impact Assessment that would at least professed to have assessed and mitigated the harm that development on such a large scale will have on our communities and the environment in and around Kingston

This is incredibly worrying

Meanwhile high rise towers are being proposed on Canbury Place Car Park that fail to use solar power or allow public access to roof spaces because developers want the roof space on the 21st floor - which will tower over the surrounding area but offer people who can afford the flats wonderful views towards Richmond and Wimbledon and Hampton Court - to be private amenity space for residents; and the redevelopment of the Cambridge Road Estate, among many other issues, will give rise to significant exposure for residents to overheating and pollution. This huge development of 2100 units housing 5,500 people will also put unacceptable pressure on the irreplaceable habitats and protected species in Richmond Park, both on its own and in combination with population growth happening all around, as Richmond Park is the designated recreational green space for new people making millions more visits a year to the park

Meanwhile, Kingston Council officers are now recommending the demolition of the

historic Victorian Regent's wing of Kingston Hospital, with plans to replace it with an 8 storey tall development of housing with care for the over 55s

What is most shocking is not even the planned overshadowing of existing residents, the destruction of a perfectly sound Victorian building at a time of climate emergency but the fact that - in a high-rise development for the elderly - council officers are recommending the proposal for APPROVAL with NO fire safety measures agreed and without having finalised the materials out of which the building will be built on the outside

All these plans and others simmering away in the background never were sound and are not now. Individual proposals are being approved time after time when there is clear evidence that they may be breaching policy and legislative requirements. In this situation, the only recourse residents have is legal challenge

Leigh Day solicitors have sent a letter to Kingston Council referring, amongst other things, to the decision of the Planning Committee to demolish The Kingfisher Leisure Centre without any firm or funded plans for a new centre. The council has agreed to take this planning application back to committee to be considered again

Individual proposals will cause harm in their own right but even more harm when they are measured alongside the harm caused by all the other proposals that the council is individually asserting will have no effect on the environment around them and people affected by them

The scale of development planned and the no-plan is simply no good. We must challenge it in whatever ways we can