Forum Topic

24-storey high tower block next to Chiswick roundabout

It's funny because they say there's no housing in the area!For services to property developers and being there for them every time Hounslow Council stands proud.

Basil Finnis ● 1352d32 Comments

252 flats - that could mean at least 500 extra residents. Perhaps the developers should be asked to contribute funding to help expand the A&E services at West Middlesex Hospital, which are already being overwhelmed.

Richard Greenhough ● 1352d

"Perhaps the developers should be asked to contribute funding to help expand the A&E services at West Middlesex Hospital, which are already being overwhelmed."Shouldn't the government be doing that?A thing that puzzles me is that we are constantly being told that we are facing a public health crisis due to toxic air caused by traffic fumes but, at the same time, approval is being given for people to live next to a motorway and one of the busiest junctions in London. Can someone square that circle for me?

Francis Rowe ● 1352d

How on earth do you get that number of flats and retail space and communal gardens into that space.Thats atleast 12 flats per floor ?

Julian Pavey ● 1352d

And 12 bills per floor for Council Tax, Julian.

Roger Talbot ● 1352d

AHAAnd rubbish and recycling for allMaybe the trucks have to go underground In all honesty,not a lot of space on that plot

Julian Pavey ● 1352d

I wonder how many flats will be sold to foreign concerns as an investment and then left empty.

Keith Iddon ● 1352d

They can certainly fit the building onto the site. The real issue is where would the residents go if there was an emergency requiring the block to be evacuated? Not much space around the foot of the tower and entirely circled by busy roads.Not the easiest location for emergency services to access either. But then, as has been mentioned, it’s a council tax farm rather than a property  development. The question every member of the planning committee should ask themselves on every development is ‘would I want to live there?’

Simon Hayes ● 1351d

Does the tower have two staircases to exit? The government is considering legislation to require this in buildings over a certain height and this application may be being rushed through to avoid being illegal.

Mark Evans ● 1351d

I make no comment on the development itself, but did note the following in the front page report:"The planning committee will also consider an application for a 4-metre-high advertising screen on the side of the building."Surely it's time to bring back the Lucozade sign on a permanent basis? It would make a suitable parting gift from GSK (or Beechams as it once was) when they leave the area entirely.

Richard Cathcart ● 1350d

The Lucozade sign is in the Gunnesbury Museum collection I believe.If it is currently displayed or in their  storage facility I can't say.What I can tell you their policy is to only respect the wishes of the donor.My father's WW2 parachute bike was donated by him donkeys years ago but never displayed. When I asked if it could be returned to the family they said the request could only be considered if it came from the donor.I explained that he had passed on and I could prove he was my father but it made no difference.

Adrian Irving ● 1350d

I thought we were supposed to have learned our lesson from the high-rise housing experiments of the 1960s. Seemingly not, or have the financial inducements forced a rethink? Everywhere you look in London there are tower blocks under construction. I suppose we'll give it another 20 or 30 years then reach the same conclusions again.

Bruce Hammal ● 1350d

As I recall the site used to be occupied by a bank!

Bruce Hammal ● 1350d

Window cleaners will be busy on one side thats for sure Those flats besdie the track coming into victoria station are permantly brown

Julian Pavey ● 1350d

It did, and you could park on the service road in front of it - as convenient as anything to do with banks in the 1970s was.I'm not going to comment on that proposal because I haven't seen it but I'll simply say all the previous applications on that site have been refused.I think this idea that far east buyers buy places to keep empty is largely mythical. Can anybody point me to an example of this in Brentford? People, whether far east or far Chelsea buy things for 3 reasons - to live in them, to provide a pieds-a-terre in (nearly) London or to take advantage of the attractive growth in what you can currently rent it for.

Guy Lambert ● 1350d

I think if i remember chinese people able to invest in property abroad do so for investmant puroses only because of the property rules back in china. Firstly oversupply and secondly you dont own the land and i think issues with leaseholds when they run out. foreign buyers cany own more than one property and you cant rent it out. For that,i do believe chinese buyers do buy places to keep empty but im not sure the numbers are that high in reguard to this happening

Julian Pavey ● 1350d

And Guy, what are your thoughts on the merits or otherwise of high-density  high-rise living? I'm pretty sure it was branded as largely undesirable after the previous human experiment.

Bruce Hammal ● 1350d

It has to do with quality of construction and management. I don't really like it but given the limited land available to build on (and mainly it's private developers, selling or renting to private buyers/renters who can afford their prices) if we want to provide housing we have to go higher - very few people can afford individual houses in London. Those of us can (or could do 30 years ago) are quite privileged.I just heard that the council housing list in Hounslow has more than tripled in 3 years. A lot of these are single people, often young people who can't afford to buy or rent privately. Similar pressures affect private developers.From my own experience, people in council housing in the Brentford Towers are often happier than those in lower rise properties. Equally, high buildings in the area I know best eg 8 Kew Bridge Road, Ballymore and round the new stadium seem to sell quite strongly to people who could afford houses (some of the 8KBR properties were well over £1M)

Guy Lambert ● 1349d

Guy taking out of his backside again. These ratbags don't care if Chiswick is completely ruined by high rise development. It's the same crap from them about affordable housing and growth. It's all doubletalk.

Basil Finnis ● 1349d

I guess the councillors that approved this left the meeting with the developers with nice big brown envelopes full of cash.

Brian Green ● 1349d

Have you any evidence to back up your ‘guess’? Name names.

Stewart Jones ● 1349d

In the cause of accuracy, the application hasn't yet been approved by the planning committee - that meeting takes place on Thursday. It's Hounslow's planning officers who have recommended approval and as Guy Lambert says previous applications have been rejejcted. The worrying part of this is that officers are recommending schemes like this for approval in the first place despite acknowledging the harm they do. As I said the lessons learned in the past would appear to have been quickly forgotten. Personally I can't imagine what life would be like living in a flat on what is effecively a traffic island, in a permanent fug of pollution.

Bruce Hammal ● 1349d

Correct, Bruce.I am no longer on the Planning Committee but we frequently voted against planners' advice.In about 5 or 6 years on planning I was accused a few times of getting large bags of cash but it never happened. One woman, whose application we refused, nevertheless gave me a £50 M&S voucher, which I gave to the FoodBox (actually I gave them cash and used the voucher).Planners give these advices because - very often anyway - they believe the developer is likely to appeal against any refusal and win the appeal. Planning legislation is strongly biased in favour of developers. If this happens, it costs the council 10s of thousands, sometimes more in legal costs and if the developer wins it leaves the council with no influence on what is built.Developers' predominance in donating to the Conservative party https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/20-tory-donations-come-property-tycoons/ is obviously entirely coincidental.

Guy Lambert ● 1349d

It is rare that Councilors on planning committees are corrupt or become over sympathetic to developers.  What is unfortunately common is that planning officers knowing that their long term future will be in the private sector as planning consultants become too developer friendly, that is not the same as being corrupt because usually no money or promises are made to the officer.  It is not just planning officers that this happens to, there is even a name for it "regulator capture".There is most definitely evidence that the planning system has become too favourable to developers but what Councils and Councilors frequently forget to mention is that a large proportion of the cases of "developers gaming the system" is due to the fact that the Councils have failed to comply with long standing law, usually by not adopting a local plan (or not updating it as required by law)

Justin Stephenson ● 1349d

Good points I think. As to the Local plan in Hounslow it was submitted for approval before I was elected in 2015. It was accepted but with some amendments required to do with the Great West Road area and the West of the borough. These have been submitted but not reviewed and accepted (or otherwise) so I'm not clear whether we can adopt the local plan as you suggest. To be clear, I am no expert on the arcane world of Local Plans but as far as I know we have been trying to look at plans in the context of the draft Local Plan - it is regularly mentioned and applications reviewed against this incomplete document

Guy Lambert ● 1349d

I think Brian Green has given us an insight into what he would do if he was a councillor rather than what actual councillors really do.The dilemma with this building, which is clearly ridiculously high, is that it does for once contain a reasonable amount of social housing as opposed to faux 'affordable' units which are anything but. You can see why councillors and council officers might be convinced why the harms to places like Strand on the Green and Kew might be acceptable.One problem though is it looks like the social rent flats are being positioned around the same level as the flyover. The air quality report is quite sanguine about the health impacts but I'd like to see a more independent study done just to confirm that it is safe for people to live there. After a long discussion on the health impact of diverted traffic from LTNs on this forum previously, there was no real insight offered by anyone about the real world impact of living with consistently high exceedances. It would be good to have some assurance that the borough isn't going to put people somewhere that will fatally undermine their health.

Jeremy Parkinson ● 1349d

The application was approved last night. There was little discussion about health impacts as far as I could see from a quick peruse through the discussions which are available on YouTube. The assumption seems to be that any potential health risk is outweighed by the availability of flats.Cllr Biddolph made an excellent point about the Community Infrastructure Levy that is to be given to upgrade Gunnersbury Station is woefully inadequate and wouldn't even cover the relocation of the waiting room let alone wider access, a new platform exit and a lift which are really badly needed now, let alone when all the new developments are completed.

Francis Rowe ● 1346d

'Cllr Rhys Williams, who represents Brentford East. He added that his primary concern was for the people who would gain housing and jobs due to the development and not for people walking by the river ‘tut-tutting’ at tall buildings and in his opinion developments such as the one around Brentford Stadium had enhanced not distracted from the vista.'What kind of sane person would say the developments around the stadium has enhanced the area?These are the barbarians that are ruling us now.

Basil Finnis ● 1345d

Whilst you might have a point about a vista or not,  you do your argument no good at all by questioning someone’s sanity over his opinion on a few buildings.

Stewart Jones ● 1345d

He's a councillor who has more or less taken to insulting people who don't agree with his world view. It seems Hounslow along with developers are actively seeking to squeeze the life out of the citizens.

Basil Finnis ● 1345d

Squeeze the life out of people by providing them with homes? You make no sense. 

John Hall ● 1345d

Guy Lambert: "I just heard that the council housing list in Hounslow has more than tripled in 3 years. A lot of these are single people, often young people who can't afford to buy or rent privately. Similar pressures affect private developers."I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this statement. So many council properties take so bloody long to let. A friend's late son lived in a one bed council flat until his death fifteen months ago, only since New Year has it looked like someone is finally in there. The irony is that next to this block of flats there is block of just four garages  where Hounslow council has just stuck in a planning application, to build a small block of just two one bed flats! Ironic or what? You couldn't make this stuff up.

Vanessa Smith ● 1345d

And you talk bolox John. If you believe that crap from the council and developers you're as gullible as they come.

Basil Finnis ● 1344d