NATIVE LAND GRAB/ HOLLAND PARK PLAYING FIELDS

Evidently each time Cllr Cockell is asked by councillor colleagues when he is going to step down as Leader his reply is always 'Shortly Shortly'-hence the soubriquet Cllr 'Shortly Shortly'.

Anyway.... to more serious stuff.....on July 12 the Major Planning Development Committee will be making a vital decision. It will decide whether to grant a third Planning Application for destruction of the treasured Holland Park School playing fields so that super luxury flats can be built and sold at vast profits, to secretive money men from parts of the world you would not want your daughter sending postcards from in her gap year.

No surprise that the recommendation from the Planning Department will be to grant  consent.

The Council has spent tens of millions of pounds on providing an unnecessary school building against an unsecured contract sum from Native Land. It cannot possibly afford the purchasers to “walk away” from the contract:it would lose £90m, plus, of course, the Council’s share of profits to come from  flogging the monster flats to dodgy 'got rich quick' foreigners. How can the Council be expected to make an impartial decision? The Council also faces  a ticking time-bomb. Holland Park School has indicated that it will apply for Academy status in 2013. From that point the land would no longer belong to the Council and any proceeds from the sale would belong to the school so £90m of  profits gained at the expense of the playing fields would go down the drain.

Another reason being given is that the approved consent made on the Council’s own application was so awful that almost anything would be an improvement.The previous application was such rubbish that English Heritage said the plans for the school would damage two Conservation Areas. Not a bad achievement. These proposals for the school itself remain unaltered, despite the fact that it stands for everything Michael Gove claims to be abhorrent.

So in spite of the fact that the application is a blatant policy breach of Kensington & Chelsea’s Core Strategy, the application is recommended for approval. In particular it will have a significant adverse affect on the views from Holland Park, already reeling from another dreadful decision to permit high rise buildings on the Commonwealth Institute site. It also breaches Core Strategy CH2 which prevents the provision of off-site affordable housing in the already over-crowded northern wards of the Borough. These are major policy breaches and will create dreadful precedents for the future. So just why are they being recommended?

Very unfortunate and very embarrassing-but then this is what happens when 'Shortly Shortly 'Cockell plays the big time developer, assisted by the mysterious Daniel Moylan.