Kingston council's sham consultation on growth

Have Kingston's residents been shafted?

Here is my submission on Kingston council's "consultation" of the "early engagement" document for The Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames' new Local Plan. I believe that the consultation breaches statutory requirements and is unsound

Please also read my evidence of why growth plans for Kingston are unsound, including a timeline since 2014 that shows how the Greater London Authority and our council has manipulated events in order to sneak through their plans

In the GLA's Housing Supplementary Planning Guidance 2016 , the Authority made clear that it has given itself powers to ensure London Boroughs develop housing in EXCESS of their local need where a Borough has identified the capacity for development to happen

KIngston council has signed our Borough's death warrant

This is the key to Kingston's problems

Kingston Council has agreed to develop sufficient new buildings to house 147,696 extra people over 22 years, nearly double our existing population, most of which will be high-rise, dense development on large sites throughout the Borough

Our local "objectively-assessed need" is to develop housing for 33,752 people

This growth is happening simply because our council has put forward LARGE SITES on which it has said that mass development and large-scale intensification can happen, and which have now formed the basis of our housing targets in the draft new London Plan

The council put forward sites in areas where there is poor transport accessibility, where there is protected land and the need to protect biodiversity or where development will have a detrimental impact on our long-established neighbourhoods, communities and on nationally and internationally protected sites such as Richmond Park, Bushy Park and the River Thames

Our council also decided not to protect our neighbourhoods from the GLA's plans to develop on small sites in the new London Plan by not seeking to expand existing Conservation Areas or nominating new Conservation Areas, a strategy adopted by Richmond Council

This leaves nearly the whole Borough exposed to redevelopment in the new Local Plan

Our council has agreed this growth strategy with the GLA without informing us, the Borough's residents

There has been NO strategic environmental assessment of the cumulative effect of planned growth on this scale on our Royal Borough and the surrounding areas

There has been NO health equality or health inequality assessment of the cumulative effect of planned growth

There has been NO equalities impact assessment of the cumulative effect of planned growth

WE MUST KEEP OPPOSING THE BASIS OF THESE PLANS