Lambeth Liberal Democrats

COMMENT: Labour's Macho Planning Regime

As the 2006-2010 Council cycle comes inexorably to a close there's been a whiff of Labour testosterone in some recent planning committee decisions which have been a little hard to fathom given that they've been so unpopular with local residents and have such far reaching and long lasting effects.

Maybe it's been a madcap scramble to leave behind a legacy - any legacy - of their term in office. Maybe it's a desperate attempt to show Labour's political chums in Whitehall that the Lambeth Lads (and Lasses) can still cut the regeneration mustard. Regeneration being the buzz word for New Labour because it sounds so positive and glosses over the old negative property speculation connotations. And, of course, the mantra has it that regeneration equals new and new equals good.

So, with weeks to go before an election of a new Government and a new Council (although in this context new might not now be so attractive to Labour) a new deal with Tesco is announced to save face for Labour's ruinous inaction over four years to build a new Streatham Leisure Centre.

The price of this new deal quickly becomes apparent when it is revealed that the well-known grocer, that also has aspirations in China to increase its profits to stratospheric levels, will be able to clear the site in one fell swoop and get a store that's 50 per cent larger than the megastore it already has planning permission for.

The sub text of this is that the famous Streatham Ice Arena goes under the bulldozers and Labour is left with frozen egg on its face because of a promise to keep continuity of skating which is why the original deal crafted by the Liberal Democrats required the new ice rink and leisure facilities to be built first alongside the old one to ensure continuity.

A bit like the Clapham swimming pool, incidentally, where the new swimming pool would have been built where Mary Seacole House is now being demolished so that continuity of swimming could have continued. Labour promised at the 2006 election that it would Keep Clapham Swimming - but what's the odd election promise broken between friends? Developer friends that is.

Meanwhile a letter is sent out to Streatham residents signed by Lambeth Council's Leader crowing about Labour's regeneration triumph - but no word is said about how they intend to keep their promise to maintain continuity of the ice rink. Labour has subtly changed the emphasis from ice rink to ice provision.

Even more subtly residents and local amenity groups later discover to their horror that this actually means building a huge temporary shed (with attendant coach and car parking) on nearby Streatham Common. The inference being that the hugely environmentally important Streatham Common is just a spare space, doing nothing and presumably valued by Labour at next to nothing that can be plundered simply to get them out of a political jam.

Of course Labour has a history of undervaluing and plundering open space. There was a secret plan to develop Spring Gardens in Vauxhall that nearly succeeded. There was the plan to subsume Albert Embankment Gardens into the foyer of a new Hotel which did succeed although Labour insisted it was still a public area - try taking your egg mayonnaise sandwiches and thermos there now. And then there's the infamous decision to carve away a corner of Brockwell Park in order to provide more road space.

At the other end of Streatham, Labour's desperation to be seen to be doing something - anything - is graphically illustrated by its baffling decision to approve a huge residential development at the Caesars/Megabowl site supporting a few small shops underneath whereas the development plan for the area identified a need for a major retail development with a few flats attached.

Curious how at one end of the High Road - and not the core shopping area at that - the well-known grocer can seemingly do what it likes, while at the other end the developer is allowed to argue that there is no strong demand for retail.

So a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give Streatham some anchor stores at its polar opposite end and give the Longest High Street in Europe some clear retail punctuation point is abandoned in a desperate rush for political point scoring that probably will not endure for even a month.

The picture in other parts of the borough is scarcely any more encouraging. Project Vauxhall is the grandly-named planning free-for-all (Nine-Elms Opportunity Area) that is an opportunity for developers starved of the ability to build Tower Blocks elsewhere in London to pile-in with the pile-drivers in a key area that straddles the Lambeth and Wandsworth borders.

The population of a small town is likely to be built in this hinterland around the less-than-attractive Vauxhall One-Way System and the opportunities on offer from Labour all appear to be all one way too - straight into the developer's pockets. In the space of a few weeks the 130 metre 178 unit residential tower known as Vauxhall Sky Gardens was approved while a neighbouring monster Bondway Tower with 47 stories and 400 flats went straight to appeal.

Mind you all this pales into insignificance with the nearby 180 metre, 50 storey phallus that is St Georges' Vauxhall Tower, finally granted permission by then Secretary of State John Prescott and now undergoing construction.

Further along the river at Waterloo the story's much the same. The 43-storey stump that is the Doon Street Tower got full backing from Lambeth Labour. Set immediately behind the Royal National Theatre on one of the most prestigious riverside sites, the trophy tower of 329 apartments contains not a single affordable home.

Given that Lambeth languishes at the bottom of the 32 London Boroughs for its approval record for affordable new homes and yet has 18,000 on its housing waiting list and a chronic level of poor social housing this curious disparity between Labour's cosy relationship with developers building for the rich and any attempt to provide for the poor is nothing short of scandalous.

These giant monuments to Labour hubris are likely to remain long after the Labour politicians who sanctioned them have been long forgotten. However we suspect that the problems associated with these massive developments will linger like a bad smell for rather longer.

There has to be a better way to plan our future built environment. One that does not pitch communities one at another, one that does not pretend to consult and then ignores the very people that the new buildings are meant to serve. Labour talks glibly about a new co-operative spirit but its actions are anything but co-operative.

There is a new way to plan for the future - a Liberal Democrat way. We believe in involving people to shape their own communities and we will find new ways to make this work in the complicated Town Planning system. Labour over the past four years has concentrated almost exclusively on improving their ranking over Government target times for dealing with applications. Liberal Democrats are more concerned with the quality of planning decisions than the speed of them.

And Liberal Democrats guarantee to protect parks and open spaces - and we will work hard to find ways to extend parks not reduce them, to provide new green open space and to bring existing green open space up to a much higher standard.

After all, all those extra people that Labour has crammed into the geographically smallest London borough is already getting just a bit crowded right now.