The owners of the Crescent Road shopping arcade have submitted a planning application to put another storey on the top of it, containing 4 residential apartments, each with one double bedroom. That's nos. 6-20 Crescent Road - i.e. all of it apart from the new flats in the first house. Full details are on Haringey's planning portal:
http://www.planningservices.haringey.gov.uk/portal/servlets/ApplicationSearchServlet?PKID=404824
The ref is HGY/2021/0430 (the above link should go straight to it), and the contact person is Laurence Ackrill; office phone 8489 2009. The deadline for comments is 8th March - so only a week away. There are no comments on the site as yet.
It would be worth investigating this, because these landlords have been very problematic in the past, including submitting unsatisfactory plans for Crescent Mews.
With 2 people per apartment, that would be 8 people. The planning officer comments that it is 'very likely actual car parking demands will be much reduced' - what does he mean by that? The developers are supposed to include a bike hangar onsite in their plans - any sign of this?
Replies
This planning application has been granted FULL PLANNING PERMISSION.
That is what we were told. I don't know if this generally applies to the stations' surroundings, or just Ally Pally, or the Council had long term plans at the time. There are pockets of land around the station that may yet be developped. Crescent Mews is one of them.
Also, the agents acting for the developers found some squatters (during the extreme cold weather) in Crescent Mews and pursued them. I heard on the neighbourhood grapevine that one squatter fell through the roof trying to escape the aasailants and the other was brought down and beaten. This does not augur well for the proposed development. If these people are prepared to break the law to beat up two hapless homeless guys seeking shelter in an otherwise empty building in bitterly cold weather, how many corners are they prepared to cut on the social housing units planned? The Council have until the next spring (the local elections) to meet their self-imposed target of 2000 social housing unit, so can be expected to scrutinise less and less unless scrutinised themselves (a particularly difficult task in Haringey), since box-ticking is already built into so much of what our Council does. There must be a corner in hell reserved for box-tickers for all the damage they do.
Jimmy Athanasiou (the then PGRA chair) and I looked into the listing as an option of preserving the Parade about fifteen years ago when the flats above the shops were being subdivided but were disuaded by the Haringey Conservation officer. He told us then that, once listed, the property did not have to be maintained, but if maintenance work was undertaken it had to comply with the regulations that were demanding and made any work costlier than usual. The result was that many buildings were left to fall into disrepair, then pulled down once they'd deterriorated beyond being reparable. It was hapenning all over Tottenham he said. To a tragic degree. Once predatory developers got involved, the process was unstoppable.
On conservation, we were told that we would not get the conservation area status because of the station since works might be undertaken in future.
I am out of date and do not know if the situation is still the same. Does anyone else know more?
I think since then councils have got more powers to deal with empty and neglected properties including compulsory purchase.
Thanks for this.I had a feeling there was some problem with it! But I don't see why the station should have anything to do with it.
If you haven't had a chance to submit your objections - I would recommend to do so.
I have also asked that this application be called in, and I hope to be able to update you all on this as soon as I can.
Best wishes
Nick
Thank you for asking for this application to be called in. This I assume means it would have to go before a full planning committee for a decision?
Hi Susie,
Yes - that would be the case. Although, if officers are minded to reject the planning application then the call-in may not happen.
Thanks Nick, that's helpful to know.
I'm attaching a planning refusal from a few weeks ago in Bowes Park as it might help to see the criteria used for refusals. Although it's a completely different case - demolition of one of the oldest buildings in Wood Green - the new development that was being proposed was similarly "overbearing" and "relating poorly to the street scene" as well as all other problems with it. It also contains references to the London Plan and the Haringey Local Plan as well as other policies that might be useful.
Another important point is that as these buildings form part of a Victorian shopping parade and it might be worth looking into applying for conservation area status which help with applications like these in the future.
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