Thursday, January 17, 2008

Newham Council - Flouting the law in the face of neighbouring boroughs


We reported earlier this week, the good news that our resident campaigners in Thamesmead Moorings, Greenwich had finally received consultation letters from Newham Council Planning Department. This was following months of campaigners and other organisations putting pressure on Greenwich Council, Newham and various other decision makers regarding not being consulted on the expansion application (Greenwich was saying it wasn't their job to consult, and Newham was taking the same line).

We followed this news up by asking Newham Council if they were also going to write to residents in the other neighbouring boroughs, because as you know we are a coalition across the boroughs,Greenwich being just one of them.

Sadly Newham still intend to flout the Town and Country Planning Order (General Development Procedure) 1995 .

A Newham spokesperson stated that:
"We are not consulting other borough residents in the same way, the decision was made to directly consult the residents of Thamesmead following the receipt after christmas of the additional information that Newham Council had requested from the applicants".

So that's alright then.

Perhaps the neighbouring borough council's and residents may wish to take issue with Newham over that! Fight the Flights will of course be working hard on this issue too. Democracy and Town and Country Legislation is clearly not the order of the day in Newham Council. Will Sir Robin Wales stand up and explain exactly why that is, or perhaps others would like to ask him?

UPDATE: We have been politely asked to remove Sir Robin's photograph by the Head of Communications at Newham Council, it seems that Sir Robin is rather shy for a public figure, and we would not wish to embarrass him in any way.


But we are glad at least that Newham are reading this blog - Sir Robin might now make time to reply to the residents who have contacted him in the past few months but are still waiting for a response from him regarding the LCA application/consultation. We're an optimistic bunch at Fight the Flights, we believe this is just an administrative error at the Mayor's office which will soon be resolved.