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Dear all

The new owners of the Glencairn Bowls Club site (adjacent to St Martin of Porres RC Primary School) have submitted an application to build 8 houses on the site. The plans include 19 onsite car parking spaces which will be accessed via the driveway into St Martin's.  The consultation deadline is 17 January although Haringey has confirmed that responses may be submitted until 23 January.

The planning application (reference HGY/2016/4166) can be accessed via the link below.

http://www.planningservices.haringey.gov.uk/portal/servlets/ApplicationSearchServlet?PKID=301517

As a governor of St Martin's I would urge you to respond to the application as it will have a significant impact on one of Bound Green's local schools. The school will be submitting a detailed response, but some of its key objections are set out below.

a) The safety of the school children during construction and thereafter would be severely compromised. The Bowls Club site can only be accessed via the driveway into the school. HGVs/heavy machinery using the driveway during construction represent a significant risk to the safety of young children on their school drive. The application provides for 19 vehicles travelling along the school drive. This access would be unrestricted and would take place at any time of the day or night. Refuse will need to be collected on a weekly/twice weekly basis from 8 houses. There will also be deliveries to the dwellings on an ongoing basis. The risk of a child being hit by a vehicle injured or killed is real possibility that cannot sensibly be ignored. The proposal states that the school gates (the gate onto Blake Road) will be removed by the developers. If this happens, the School will lose control of the driveway which would severely compromise the security of the children and the security of the school premises. Nothing would stop unknown third parties from parking in this section of the driveway or fly-tipping (as is common in the area).

b) Change of use of the Bowls Club site from green open space/sports use to C3 housing development is wholly incompatible with the existing use of the immediately adjacent land as a primary school.

c) Loss of open space/biodiversity/impact on ecological corridor. The applicant's own biodiversity report recommends several follow up specialist surveys during the spring/summer months to demonstrate the presence or absence of the stated protected wildlife species. These follow up surveys have not been undertaken and it is therefore impossible to determine the ecological impact of the proposed development. The site is known to be home to many species of mammals, reptiles and birds, some of which may be protected species. The Bowls Club is also adjacent to Tunnel Gardens (not the road), which is a Grade 2 Site for Nature Conservation and identified as a Green corridor in the Haringey Open Space Study 2014. The proposed design does not address the impact of the housing development (eg light from the dwellings) on the ecological corridor. Furthermore, the site is green open space and should be retained as such for community use/use by the school.
The loss of the open space that would result from the housing development, is not in keeping with Haringey’s UDP on open spaces.

d) Noise pollution/Overlooking houses - There will be significant noise during construction which will be very disruptive for the school children. Forever thereafter there will be noise from the 8 dwellings - people going about their daily business, driving cars, playing music, vehicles arriving and leaving, deliveries by van/truck/lorry and refuse and recycling collections once /twice per week of 24 separate receptacles (rubbish, food waste and recycling.)  The nearest dwelling has windows overlooking KS2 playground, one of which is a openable bathroom window.

e) There is no plan to deal with the Japanese Knotweed on the Bowls Club site.

Apologies for the length of this post! Hope you find it helpful.

Kind regards

Sakina Chenot

(Governor - St Martin of Porres RC Primary, Blake Road)