Former school building in Waterworks Lane

Anyone know if there are any plans to make use of the former school building in Waterworks Lane? It is, we think, the only listed building in the Leabridge conservation area and is mid C19 tudor style. Unfortunately, this building is identified by English Heritage on their Buildings at Risk Register. It formed part of the Paradise Park development and some repair work was done on it, but work seems to have stalled. There was talk of a local museum or educational facility. If anyone knows more, please do leave a comment. Sad to see it left so neglected!

National Grid: October minutes

Only just noticed the minutes from October National Grid meeting were posted on the We Love Millfields facebook page: National Grid October meeting.
Things don't seem to have moved on much so thought worth noting here.

s106 funding from Latham's Yard devt

Hackney says it has spent £150,000 upgrading the children's play facilities in Millfields.
Really???



FOI Question
Could you please confirm how much s106 funding was secured as part of the Taylor Wimpey / George Wimpey development of Latham’s Yard site, Clapton, E5 9RP. Could you please confirm how this funding has been allocated and spent to date and how much is still to be spent.

Answer
There are three planning applications which match this description, so information about each one is provided below:
a) Planning application 2001/1894 “Leeside and Middlesex Wharves, Latham's Yard A”.

In total £1,009,000 was received in monetary Section 106 contributions with a further 'in-kind' contribution provided in the way of affordable housing. All funding has now been allocated.

Below is an explanation of how the contributions were broken down under each 'head of term' (category) and how these contributions were allocated and spent as applicable:

• £275,000 for Public Transportation Fund;
• £364,000 for Bus Subsidy Fund;
• £20,000 for Employment and Training –Jobs Brokerage;
• £150,000 for upgrade of children’s play facilities in Millfields Recreation Ground;
• £35,000 as an in-kind contribution for public art;
• £200,000  for improvements to Southwold School and Harrington High School; and,
• The in-kind affordable housing contributions provided for 214 units of affordable housing.

b) Planning application 2006/2195 “Leeside and Middlesex Wharves, Latham's Yard A” enabled £351,967 to be negotiated in monetary contributions with a further in-kind contribution in the form of provision of a Doctor’s surgery.

Below is an explanation of how the contributions were broken down under each 'head of term' and how these contributions were allocated and spent as applicable:.

• £200,000  for employment and training initiatives (to be received); 
• £151,967 for highways works  which have been implemented on Theydon Road and to the north side of Southwold Road (through s278 funding); and,
• Provision of Doctor's Surgery (this has been provided).

c) Planning Application 2009/0238 “Lathams Yard Blocks 5 and 10” enabled a total of £74,555.26 to be negotiated, with a further in-kind contribution in the form of affordable housing.

Below is an explanation of how the contributions were broken down under each 'head of term' and how these contributions were allocated and spent as applicable:

• £2,010.44 for open space;
• £72,544.82 for libraries and education;
• Affordable Housing – this included six four-bedroom socially rented units; and three one-bedroom and two two-bedroom intermediate units.

Monetary contributions are yet to allocated to specific projects.

Leabridge robbery stats

In December, this blog published an email from someone who advised his partner had been mugged crossing Millfields North one evening. Hackney Hive followed this up by posting details it had received on muggings, along with conflicting responses it had from local police on whether there was / wasn't a problem:
Hackney Hive: confusion over Millfields Park muggings




Crime statistics relating to specifically to the park are not available, so it is difficult to get to the bottom of this. Although the police have said there isn't a problem with muggings in the area, they have been taking some action about robberies in the area (again see Hackney Hive for details on a recent event between north and south Millfields). 

Leabridge Safer Neigbourhoods Team referred us to the monthly robbery stats - personal property (which includes muggings) for Leabridge ward which covers the majority of the park. These are copied below.

Leabridge Ward Monthly Robbery (Personal Property) Offences

 Source: MPS

	Robbery: Personal Property
Jan-09	8
Feb-09	8
Mar-09	9
Apr-09	4
May-09	9
Jun-09	3
Jul-09	6
Aug-09	3
Sep-09	1
Oct-09	3
Nov-09	4
Dec-09	10
Jan-10	7
Feb-10	5
Mar-10	6
Apr-10	7
May-10	3
Jun-10	8
Jul-10	3
Aug-10	6
Sep-10	7
Oct-10	5
Nov-10	8
Dec-10	14

Survey in Hackney Marshes/Millfields

Post on www.yeahhackney.com

Not sure if there's a close date.

dtassinari said:

Hi, everyone, I’m sharing a link to an online survey about how people use and enjoy Hackney Marhses and Millfields:
http://bit.ly/hackney-moving
(Disclosure: it’s for a university research project I’m conducting)
I’m cross-posting it on several groups, since I think that it could be interesting for people who regularly visit those green areas to have their voice heard on problems that they see with park infrastructure and maintenance.
I would be grateful if anyone can spare 5 minutes to take the survey! Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions and comments.
Thanks in advance

Sustainable communities in Hackney: January 14 students' presentation at Wally Foster Community Centre

Email rec'd from Matthew Wood-Hill, Development Planning Unit, University College London

---------------

Dear All,

Thank you a lot for all your support so far with the work on Justice in the Green. The feed-back from the students are really positive and we are looking forward to seeing the outcomes of their work. We would like to invite you to take part on two upcoming Justice in the Green events: the students' presentation and the exhibition.

*Students' Presentation:*
We would like to invite you to join on January 14 the students'  presentation at the Wally Foster  Community Centre.

Your presence would be crucial and really important so that they can share with you their major findings as well as receive feed back from you on the work done so far. During that  presentation they will also be introducing their idea/pitch for the short video clip they are producing as an audio-visual report. The objective is that this video will be uploaded in the Justice in the Green website together with a series of testimonials to start building up an interactive map of Hackney Marshes and surrounding green areas. The idea is that in the future community members will be able to upload themselves videos, events, statements and pictures related to these areas. After receiving your feed on findings and pitch, they will still have a week to refine their analysis and outputs.

Bellow is the schedule for the day:

10.00-10.30 - Group 1:  Unstructured Play
10.30-11.00 - Group 2: Collective Sports
11.00-11.20 - Break
11.20-11.50 - Group 3: Cultivating Spaces
11.50-12.20 - Group 4: Creative Arts Expression
12.20-13.00 - General Discussion
13.00-14.00 - Lunch
14.00-14.30 - Group 5: Being with Nature
14.30-15.00 - Group 6: Moving through Nature
15.00-16.00 - Discussion and Wrap-up

*The Exhibition:*
Also we are already preparing for an exhibition at some point in February (probably also at the Wally Foster Community Centre) where we hope we could have a day of discussions and interaction among community members engaged on the use and appropriation of public/green spaces in Hackney. It would be great to get the various community groups interested to have stands/spaces to present their work or/and run activities/workshops during the day of the exhibition. From the UCL side, we would like to present the interactive map in this event and explain to the wider community how it works.

Please let us know if you will be able to attend the events and, in the case of the exhibition, if you are interested in having a space in the hall. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you there!

Best wishes,
Alex

Orchard Care Fun Sunday 16 January

Email rec'd from Tim Evans, MUG Committee:

At last, another chance to have fun mucking about in the Millfields community orchard! We'll be doing an orchard care session on Sunday 16 Jan. Start at 11 am and carry on as long as we feel like it, weather permits, or there is stuff to do. No experience or skills needed. Kids welcome. Wear (& dress 'em in) clothes to get mucky in and footwear for long wet grass. Don't forget wet soil can be cold on small hands.

Tools and gloves provided (also rain shelter) but you could probably help by bringing any of the following:

·      wheelbarrow (please let me know in advance to save us bringing them)

·      shovel

·      garden spade, fork, trowel, handfork, weeder

·      secateurs / pruning saw (if good and sharp)

You may fancy bringing snacks & thermos.

Things we hope to do, depending on turn-out, weather, energy etc:

·      Replace a few trees that have died (2 didn't take originally but have been hard to replace exactly, the others got diseased last summer)

·      Weed, especially grass, to reduce competition for moisture & nutrients

·      Mulch with wood chip to suppress grass & retain moisture

·      Adjust guards to allow for growth

·      Learn a bit about pruning fruit trees (if not too cold for standing still to listen!)

Hope to see old & new faces for a cheerful start to the orchard year.

Tim
020 8986 34546

MUG Annual General Meeting

MUG is having its Annual General Meeting on Thursday 10 February. The venue is the Nye Bevan Community Hall, Overbury Street, E5 0AH. There will be refreshments from 7pm, with the meeting starting at 7.30pm.

It should include updates on the Masterplan, the National Grid alternative route through the park (in the unlikely case that  NG have done anything which could even loosely be termed as “progress”) and details on the new communications strategy, including the MUG website.

It will also be voting the appointment of this year’s Committee, including the Chair and Secretary positions – so its really important as many people as possible turn out to show their support and have their say on what they want to happen with the park.  

Sadly, Brian Weller has decided to step down this year as Secretary. Although this blog has disagreed with Brian on some of the issues relating to the park, it does think he’ll be an extremely hard / impossible act to follow as Secretary. Not sure if his mind is completely made up – if you’d like to encourage him to stay on, his email address is: brianandsueweller@hotmail.com

Essex Wharf: Waltham Forest approve four 5-7 storey residential blocks

Last night Waltham Forest approved the dreadful Essex Wharf development (3rd application - 124 residential units in 4 blocks of 5-7 storeys) outlined in the previous posting. Despite an excellent campaign against the development by a wide range of interested groups, a large turn out on the evening (standing room only in the gallery) and a range excellent of speakers on why this development is completely inappropriate for this site, approval was already a done deal.


Some more comments on the meeting can be found at:
http://www.brind.tv/marshes/essexwharf/landsale.html

Waltham Forest Guardian article:
www.guardian-series.co.uk/3101181/8769980


Does anyone have a sense of:-

(a) how likely it is that Lee Valley Regional Park Authority will refer the matter to the Secretary of State under the statutory powers of the Lee Valley Regional Park Act 1966? (Although the Park Authority spoke against the development at the meeting, it weakened the argument that the authority had sold part of the land to the developers.)

(b) whether the public inquiry into the second application (167 residential units in 3 blocks of 7 seven storeys) will proceed. I'm not sure if the public inquiry was just a bargaining tool to get the 2nd application through, or, having now established WF will accept 124 residential units, the greedy developers will continue to press for even more units to be squeezed onto this site.

N Millfields development: Support needed at WF Council mtg Tues 4th 7pm

Email from New Lammas Lands Defence Committee, Lea Valley Federation and Millfields Users Group below. Please do make it along if you can.  
 

Waltham Forest council is about to go ahead with tower blocks on Essex Wharf which will overshadow north Millfields and destroy its visual connection with the rest of the Lea Valley Park. We need people in the Waltham Forest council chamber on Tuesday evening to show the strength of opposition. Please come if you can. This is why ....

======================

The New Lammas Lands Defence Committee, Lea Valley Federation and Millfields Users Group are calling URGENTLY for all environmentally concerned people (in Hackney and Waltham Forest particularly) to come and SUPPORT US at:

Waltham Forest TOWN HALL at 7.00pm on
TUESDAY 4th January at the Councils Planning Committee Meeting.

We need YOUR help to stop four massive and ugly tower blocks being built right on the riverbank of the Lea on Leyton Marshes at Essex Wharf (beside the Lea Bridge, at Leabridge Road, Clapton E5).

This is probably the worst threat to Leyton Marshes since the Leyton "Relief" Road over ten years ago. We need as many people as possible to come to the meeting and pack the Council Chamber out to show the strength of our objections to high-rise building - particularly when the site is on open land within the Lee Valley Regional Park beside the River Lea and our support for keeping the Leyton and Walthamstow Marshes as pleasant, green semi-rural open space for recreation and nature conservation.

We are NOT planning any form of demonstration on the Town Hall steps, but we DO want as many people as possible to turn up at 7.00pm to be in the Council Chamber at the start of the meeting at 7.30pm. As it is a very major development, the Essex and Eastwood Wharf application (by developers Sherrygreen, although they are using the names of subsidiaries) is the first item on the Agenda, so we will not be hanging around all night.

The Planning Committee (seven Councillors) will be asked to decide whether to grant Planning Permission for a development of FOUR MASSIVE HIGH-RISE RESIDENTIAL TOWER BLOCKS within the Lee Valley Regional Park. The Regional Park Authority is - unsurprisingly -
opposing the plan, as is the Borough of Hackney (whose Planning Committee unanimously voted to object).

Essex Wharf is surrounded by green open space - including an immediately adjacent waterfowl breeding area in an oxbow of the river - and it is very close to two Nature Reserves: Walthamstow Marshes and the Essex Filter Beds bird sanctuary. Across the river is the open parkland of Mill Fields. The site is entirely within and entirely surrounded by the Lee Valley Regional Park, which is
Metropolitan Open Land.

There is currently no residential housing whatsoever along the River Lea in the borough of Waltham Forest, and the site was until a few weeks ago in commercial use as a wharf on the River. There is no
housing anywhere else within Leyton Marshes. If allowed to go ahead, this development would lead to the complete loss of Leyton Marshes as an entity and would set a dangerous precedent for more high-rise high-density tower blocks all along Lea Bridge Road, starting with the Thames Water site between the Essex and Middlesex Filter Beds Nature Reserves to the south of Lea Bridge Road.

The Planning Application will be determined by just SEVEN Councillors, none of whom live in or represent Lea Bridge Ward. They probably do not know anything about the area, and it is unlikely any
of them have ever been onto the Marshes. The Boroughs Planning Control Officers are recommending that the proposal should be approved. We need the Councillors to vote AGAINST the
recommendation, and turn the application down.

Three members of the public - including the Chief Planning Officer of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority - will have 3 minutes each to state the objectors case. The Boroughs Planning Control Department and the Applicant will have as long as they like.

It is going to be very difficult to get the arguments against across in any detail. Therefore, our best hope of influencing the Councillors decision is to have as many supporters as possible in the
Council Chamber - the more people we can get, the more likely it is that we can get the recommendation overturned and permission refused.

Waltham Forest Town Hall is on Forest Road, Walthamstow, between Hoe Street and Wood Street. Only two bus routes go past it - the 123 and 275 - but it is a short walk from the Bell Corner which is served by about ten routes, including the 97, 69, 34, all of which serve Walthamstow Central Bus Station, beside the railway station (BR Liverpool Street to Chingford line and Victoria line tube).

Please do come along and show your opposition to this appalling scheme and the recommendation to accept it. Please let others know about it and ask them to come along as well. Please network this
message out to any groups you know who may be able to help - all that is needed is for as many people to come and sit in the Council Chamber while the application is debated and voted on.

We MUST show that we care about our green open spaces, and that we are opposed to high-rise high density building anywhere there is a space that developers think they can move in and make a fast buck.

----------------------------------------------------------
Background on Essex Wharf and the Developer's Tactics

This area (historically Essex and Eastwood Wharf) was the site of an ancient ferry crossing, before Lea Bridge Road was built, and until 1994 was historically in the Borough of Hackney. It therefore appears in the Waltham Forest Unitary Development Plan as whitefield land, in other words there is no designated or proposed use for the site. The only legal document relating to it is that produced some
time ago by the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, which envisages a use for the site for river-based sport and recreational use.

There have been two previous applications for high-rise high density housing on this site, both of which have been rejected by Waltham Forests Planning Control Department under Delegated Powers. The first was the subject of an Appeal to the Planning Inspectorate by the would-be developers, and their Appeal was lost. a second Planning Application was also rejected by Waltham Forests Planning Control Department under Delegated Powers and is also the subject of an Appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, which we would fully expect also to be lost.

Unfortunately, this third Planning Application is now being brought to the Councils Planning Committee - and deliberately so before the Appeal on the second (refused) application can be heard.

The site is entirely within and surrounded by green open land in the Lee Valley Regional Park, a 20-mile long green wedge of open land stretching along the Lea Valley from the Thames to the open countryside of Essex and southern Hertfordshire. The Park was established in 1967, as a smaller version of a National Park, to safeguard the Lea Valley as green, open space in the same way as the
Green Belt was designated to control the urban sprawl of London into the surrounding countryside. To build any structure here which is not related to public recreation or wildlife conservation would be a travesty and would detract entirely from the purpose of the Lee Valley Regional Park.

Pollution on the Lea

Not sure if these signs have been up for a while or if they’re part of an Environment Agency response to the River Lea being voted 4th worst in England and Wales - see:

www.ourrivers.org.uk/results

www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/river_lea_voted_fourth_worst_river_1_729181

Given the Environment Agency’s continuing consent to Thames Water discharging raw sewage into the Lea, not sure how committed they are to the clean up. You may, however, want to make a note of the number.