Kensington and Chelsea Liberal Democrats

Lib Dems object to Kensington & Chelsea Core Strategy

Housing policies fail key legal test

The Kensington & Chelsea Liberal Democrats have made a formal submission to the Planning Inspectorate, objecting to the final version of the Council's Core Strategy, the list of policies that are supposed to guide the Council for the next twenty years. The Liberal Democrats argue that the Core Strategy fails one of the Inspectorate's key legal tests of soundness on at least three counts.

The legal test in question is the test of 'justification'. The Liberal Democrats say that the consultation process, the Council's housing policies and the plans for elderly provision fail this test.

Robin Meltzer, the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for the new consituency of Kensington said:

"We have formally objected to the Core Strategy using the legal soundness test of 'justification' on the Council's very controversial plan for housing. The plan would see the building of thousands of new market homes in the poorer wards in the Borough without due effort to create mixed communities in other areas. We think this fails the basic test of whether a policy is, as the Planning Inspectorate guidance says 'the most appropriate strategy when considered against the reasonable alternatives'."

The Core Strategy identifies all wards north of Holland Park Avenue, except for Pembridge, as unsuitable for off-site affordable housing. Robin Melter said: "This makes a nonsense of the fact that during the very period of the Core Strategy consultation process, the Council granted affordable housing off-site for their own planning application to sell off the playground of the Holland Park School. The affordable housing for this development is to be placed in Notting Barns in the poorer, north of the Borough. Also during the Core Strategy consultation period, the Commonwealth Institute and Odeon Cinema developments on Kensington High Street failed to trigger any affordable housing whatsoever, on or off-site."

The Holland Park School planning approval has been seen by residents as particularly offensive, not simply because of the sale of educational land to developers but also because the land was once part of Holland Park itself, a park which has been eaten into steadily.

The Liberal Democrats have encouraged the inspector to examine the extent to which the splitting of the plan for the new school building itself from the private housing planning plan for one third of the same site was a deliberate attempt to get around the Core Strategy policy, putting affordable housing in a ward which already has a high proportion of social housing.

The Lib Dems say that the Council's affordable housing policy is in disarray. "The Council has significantly watered down their commitment to on-site affordable housing," said Robin Meltzer who has been campaigning for more on-site affordable housing in the Borough.

In the first draft of the Core Strategy, the wording was: "The provision of affordable housing on site is of such strategic importance, no alternatives to this approach are being offered." Presumably realising that recent major decisions have entirely ignored this, the wording has now been changed to: "On-site provision is not always possible, in which case provision should be within the area that does not reinforce the broad spatial pattern of housing tenure in the Borough". They proceed to give some very stretchable examples of when off site will be allowed - design, size of site etc.

"This is a nod and a wink to developers," said Robin Meltzer. "It gives the green light for yet more segregated communities."

The Liberal Democrats also objected under the soundness test of 'justification' to the Council's proposals for the elderly.

"The policies in this document make it clear that developers are free to develop social and community use land, as long as they include some new community usage on the development. This is presumably the principle behind the developments planned for the Edenham residential home and the Holland Park School playground site. This means that the amount of land in social and community use will diminish over time. There is no justification for this because the great need for land which falls under this category is already established.

"Furthermore, the Edenham home has not been replaced elsewhere in the Borough, and the Council have made no proposals to do so, despite the findings of the review of housing for elderly people."

Read about the objection to the consultation process for the Core Strategy