Big Town Plan? Walthamstow needs Kevin McCloud (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

Have a look at this from guardian
http://www.guardian.
co.uk/media/2008/sep
/04/channel4.televis
ion1?gusrc=rss&feed=
media
It suggests that it may not be quite as clear cut as you are suggesting. Not all the local community seems to buy into this media representation of what happened in Castleford. I am all for consultation, but let's not pretend that you will ever get a single straightforward response when you genuinely consult 'the community' and that consulting 'the community' means more than listening to the groups who organise and have loud voices.

The Guardian letters mentioned by Positive above do not contest Simon's point, that parks are popular when local people have a hand in designing them, but unpopular when they're built to gimmicky plans imposed by outside consultants.

We see the same in Waltham Forest all the time. Millions are spent on consultants whose work causes damage -- the High Street repaving project killed off one end of the market, Walthamstow library makeover caused disastrous water damage through leaking roof, etc etc etc.

We can only speculate about why unqualified outsiders have such influence over an elected body and its paid officers.

Far from listening to local "groups who organise and have loud voices" the council does all it can to ignore any local voices. Unluckily for the council, it's reached the stage where we're just not going to shut up.

Sorry,Walthamster but Simon is making several points in this article some of which I agree with but some of which I don't.Noone could disagree with your first paragraph I would imagine. The point that I was trying to make is that campaigners often seem to present their opinion as the 'voice' of 'the community'. It is nothing of the kind. They also seem very keen on a pure, direct form of democracy like might be seen in Switzerland if they think that it will result in what they want - but where would that lead us in terms of capital punishment or our immigration policies? Personally I am glad we have a representative system (yes, including our councillors!) but it is important within that to devolve power down to as local a level as possible.
A good case in point is the bridge in this series. The footbridge across the River Aire, was finally opened in July. But only after flooding proved that the original scheme chosen by head strong residents, for a bridge floating on the water, was dangerous, and could be destroyed by barges torn loose from their moorings. In this case just doing what the residents wanted because that is what they wanted would have resulted in a potential tragedy, never mind the huge financial waste.
I don't want 'local voices' to shut up but I do wish they would be willing to adopt a more nuanced approach to some of the major problems facing the community, more of a calm, rasonable but assertive tone, rather than the shouting I hear at the moment.

But Positive, we're not living in Castleford and there is no Waltham Forest group campaigning for fantasies like a floating bridge.

On the contrary, this borough is riven with crazy schemes dreamed up by the council or its expensive consultants. An open-air theatre in Lloyd Park to replace the current indoor theatre. Tower blocks crammed into every available space, with no additional transport or medical facilities, let alone entertainment or amenities. Walthamstow library getting a nightmare �3.5 million makeover that ruined both its looks and its roof.

Don't take my word. Read the local paper, look up campaign sites online, listen to what local people are saying in community councils or on the letters pages.

The 'nuanced approach' you suggest would be a nice idea, but please tell me how we can achieve it with a council that acts like a dictatorship?

People get angry because this council ignores even its legal obligation to carry out consultation. The pretence of a library consultation is just the latest example.

Every campaign I've heard of in Waltham Forest is trying to save some valuable local amenity - which is usually under threat from the council itself! When the council isn't actively closing down amenities or selling off public goods, it's failing to take any action to save them. That is why this council is so unpopular.

Walthamster, by making the point that we don't live in castleford, you seem to undermine the central point of Simon's blog which is that "the parallels were striking."
I have a lot of sympathy with this article from last week's observer,
http://www.guardian.
co.uk/artanddesign/2
008/aug/31/architect
ure.london
"pot-holed and ugly bomb-site"-ring any bells? At least arcade site has only been 5 years, not 50!!
I would accept that the council does sometimes seem to go out of its way to wind up residents with its poor consultation (or indeed lack of it!) But an example of the 'shouting' rather than the calm, reasonable but assertive tone I would prefer is when you describe the council as "acting like a dictatorship." Not only is this comparison hugely offensive to all those who have suffered and are suffering under brutal regimes which really are dictatorships, it also manages to shut down any debate completely as where is there to go from there. Either someone agrees in which case I would imagine they should be organising resistance, or you think it is wildly over-the-top and makes you question the whole agenda and rationality of the particular campaign.
I do read the local paper, and have visited the local campaign sites as I am keen to improve this run-down part of London but the same names keep appearing on all these different issues - if I was a conspiracy theorist, i could almost suspect there was some kind of concerted campaign to launch the proletarian revolution led by a vanguard of professional revolutionaries.

Well done Positive, you got to nearly 7pm before starting to use terms like "professional revolutionaries"! I suspect you're a lot more of a professional than I am, as the only people I ever hear supporting the council are those who work in its press office or higher ranks.

And this place you call "run-down" was good to live in before Loakes and Co started dismantling it.

I've just reread the whole of Simon's blog in case I'd misunderstood. But I hadn't. It is about parks and nothing else. That's the only aspect in which he was drawing comparisons.

But fair enough, let's find a better word than "dictatorship" for a body that (though elected, by a small minority of the population) carries out major decisions without consulting the people. Or carries out consultations and then ignores the results if they're not what the council wanted. And ignores laws and regulations, eg in awarding major contracts. Etc etc etc.

Would "medieval barony" do? It's government by people who think they can do what they like.

As for seeing the defenders of libraries and opponents of high-rise developers as professional revolutionaries - I knew New Labour had swung far to the right, but that truly is astonishing. If it takes "revolutionaries" to support public amenities in a Labour/Lib Dem borough, there's clearly no point in voting Labour or Lib Dem any more.

Positive, you say "I have a lot of sympathy with this article from last week's Observer ... "pot-holed and ugly bomb-site"-ring any bells? At least arcade site has only been 5 years, not 50!!"

Are you seriously saying we're lucky that Walthamstow town centre has only looked like a bombsite for five years? Our "bombsite" wasn't caused by German bombers but by Waltham Forest council, which demolished a shopping arcade and left the town centre derelict. Very different case. The council is supposed to be on our side!

Waltham Forest council ignored the results of an expensive "ask the people" process (why?), paid lots of money (why?) to a company that then didn't build anything, and has now given lots more money (why?), plus the freehold (why?), to another developer, St Modwen, which is still not going to build anything local people have asked for.

Selling this site was supposed to bring in some money and create a big new town-centre amenity eg library and/or sports centre. But the council's stupid mishandling has already cost far more (eg millions, yes literally millions, of pounds to demolish the shops and keep the empty site secured) than the sale will recoup.

In other words, we've lost the excellent arcade shops, lost the facilities we were meant to be getting instead, lost the freehold, handed the entire site to a developer to cram unwanted flats in. We've gained nothing AND it's cost us a lot of money!

Not one of the huge development schemes planned in Walthamstow is meeting an expressed local need. All are speculative developments to make money for builders.

The current recession makes this a bad time to build flats. But under Clyde Loakes, the council's only way of dealing with resistance is to use bulldozer tactics. So will the council grease the developers' palms with yet more of our money in a desperate effort to get the buildings up at any cost?

Oh dear!
Firstly, Walthamster, you seem intent on proving my point about ‘shouting’ at anyone who offers any alternative viewpoint to your own. I am sorry my reference to Marx so upset you. But studying him at A-level nearly 20 years ago would hardly qualify me as a ‘professional’ I suspect. I challenge you to find one statement that is ‘supportive’ of the council in my posts. Instead the only comment I have made is rather disparaging about their poor consultation. But it seems that, like Bush’s attitude on the war on terror, to those most prominent in the campaigns currently running in Walthamstow you’re either with us or against us in this fight against a corrupt and incompetent council. Well, sorry but I just don’t buy into this kind of polarised universe where everything is so simple and clear-cut. I am sure this council, like all councils, make horrendous errors and get it wrong as often as they get it right. Much like most of us in life. I don’t expect them to get it right always, I expect them to be broadly competent and certainly not corrupt, so actually I am far more bothered about the failures in procurement and the bni stuff that has come out recently and which you allude to. I am also horrified by the state of the streets, by the way!
But if, like me, you have lived in different London boroughs and under councils led by different parties, I think you might find that every borough has ‘problem’ sites that seem to drag out in planning hell, the constant cry in most boroughs is of poor communication and consultation and that actually in spite of all the noise and criticism, most people when asked anonymously in surveys for organisations like the audit commission say that they are broadly satisfied with their council services. In fact I think I am right in saying that London residents are more satisfied than residents elsewhere in the country.
I am non party political, so it is a shame that you bring that into your last paragraph of the previous post – though it is the first time I have ever been accused of being new labour! Usually I am regarded as being rather woolly and soft left if anything. Nick Cohen (I know he is a bogey figure to the left now but bear with me!) in the Observer today quotes GK Chesterton: “When a man believes that any stick will do, he at once picks up a boomerang.” At the moment my impression is that certain people who seem to loathe this council with a passion I save only for the most evil despots of the world are guilty of picking up too many boomerangs. And I just don’t have this knee-jerk aversion to tall buildings that the campaigners have (Fight the Height – the clue is in the title!) I know this makes me beyond the pale to some, but no, I don’t regard all developers as inherently evil – if that makes me right wing in some people’s ideas then I guess I will have to learn to live with it. I’m sure I’ll get by somehow. I don’t see how Walthamstow can hope to regenerate without them.

1. "Positive not cynical" - you are Philip Herlihy, chair of Walthamstow West Community Council and a repeated apologist for the local council, and I claim my five pounds. If you're not, blimey, he's got a political twin!

2. My post was meant to be about more than just parks for Waltham Forest, but it was specifically referring to only the second in the Kevin McCloud programmes - which was about parks, and consultation on parks.

The Guardian letters "Positive" refers to appear to have been published after the first programme was aired (about the bridge) and certainly only refer to that episode. They also don't appear in any sense to contradict the series points fundamentally - the good bits of Castleford referenced by the letters even include the nearby out-of-town areas that are killing the old town centre!

3. "Professional revolutionaries" or just "people who care and have the time/inclination to try ahd make things better"? If "Positive" is Philip, then I suspect the latter is a description he'd happily give himself. It's just the chosen method of getting things done that differs. Philip/Positive wants us to engage with Community Councils, send in nicely worded letters and then sigh gently when the council ignores us. Some of us are fed up of doing things that way.

Thousands marched to save the cinema, thousands marched to save the dog track, thousands marched to save Whipps Cross, hundreds turned up to throw tomatoes at effigies of St Modwen, Vue and Primark, the council's own surveys found the vast majority of local residents to be against highrise development, the council's own surveys found the majority of residents to be in favour of saving the EMD *over* building a new multiplex. These campaigns aren't lunatic fringe efforts - while there are clearly a small band of people who have the time/inclination to get more directly involved with local politics (hey, like local councillors and community council chairs), they do actually represent a much bigger constituency than just themselves. And as I say above, the council's own surveys often back this up!

While I'd be the first to say there is a grave danger in just listening to the voices that shout loudest, the council doesn't listen to anyone - major consultations, as others have pointed out here, are routinely utterly ignored for the big findigs and little ones too. The council's growing bunker mentality on everything from the results of consultation to the flow of information is what has prompted such loud shouting. If they weren't hell-bent on enacting idiotic and unpopular schemes on us all the time, then there wouldn't be the concerted attempts to derail them there are now.

I lived in Haringey during the Bernie Grant days. And I really don't think I've ever lived with as an unpopular council as I'm living with now. No one, politically involved or not, has a good word to say about them (apart from "Positive").

4. "Bombsites" - comparing high-rise development on the South Bank in the Coin Street area to high-rise development in Walthamstow is a bit of a daft one, IMHO. The key issue about Fight The Height and the anti-tower block feeling in Walthamstow is that many, many people clearly feel that massive highrise development will actually dent Walthamstow's existing character. Part of Walthamstow's relatively unique appeal is the sense of space and light it has, because it isn't crammed with highrise buildings. Southwark can hardly say that.

Positive says: "I don’t see how Walthamstow can hope to regenerate without ." I think that says far more about your lack of imagination on how Walthamstow can go forward (and, sadly, the council's) than it does anything else. Really? You can't possibly see a thriving Walthamstow without a forest of towers? Well I, and many others, can. And it's a better future.

Sorry, not guilty to being this person. It's ok though, I'll waive the £5 I think that makes you owe me! I really am not any 'apologist' for the council - why does there seem to be a concerted effort to place people into two different camps (pro- or anti- council) when surely most people sit to varying degrees in the middle. All I am asking really, I suppose, is that campaigners like yourselves reflected that reality a bit more rather than constantly claiming that you represent 'the community'.
I think this piece from the architects journal gives quite a balanced view of this project
http://www.architect
sjournal.co.uk/news/
newsfeatures/2008/08
/kevin_mcclouds_cast
leford_regeneration_
read_commentary_and_
see_the_projects_fro
m_tonights_channel_4
s_tv_show.html
Walthamster writes as if consultants weren't involved every step of the way in all these projects. I would also highlight the quote from Alison Drake:

'I love Cas as much as anyone but I still think it's a dump', says local Alison Drake, one of a network of community champions who became integral to the making of the Channel 4 programme. 'We don't ever talk about the good old days – we know really they weren't the good old days – people suffered too much for them to be good.'

I wasn't here but from people I speak to who were they wouldn't particularly recognise Walthamster's description of 'the excellent arcade shops.' Nor would they agree with his belief that things were fine here "before Loakes and Co started dismantling it." As someone who wants to remain positive, I actually think, in spite of the undoubted problems, Walthamstow is a good place to live. Yes, it could be a whole lot better but actually one of the things bringing it down for me is all the noise and heat from what I perceive to be a group of very angry and disaffected people who believe their way is the only way and God forbid anyone who offers an alternative perspective. You state "No one, politically involved or not, has a good word to say about them (apart from me)." even though neither of you actually has taken up my challenge to highlight a statement I have actually made that is positive about the council! And you can't really believe that can you - the problem is you are all just talking to yourselves and so the angrier you get the more convinced you are that everyone else is that angry. Now you know I am not the person you seem to know, you at least have evidence that there are two people who are not on your wavelength. I can assure you from people I speak to that we are by no means alone. And the fact you have to misrepresent deliberately my statement that I don't have an aversion to tall buildings into saying that my vision is for a 'forest of towers' highlights to me that the council would probably be justified in saying back to you 'people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' the next time you accuse them of not listening. I will make my main point one last time: to insist that people fit into extreme categories of either being a defender of libraries, or hell-bent on their destruction, pro culture and the arts if you believe that cinema can return to the emd site, but a cultural philistine if you think the best chance of getting a cinema into walthamstow is still on the arcade site,seems to me not only untrue, but also extremely unhelpful in creating the kind of productive and constructive atmosphere where all different groups, including the council can work together to improve the area. On that note I will now retire. Thank you though, as in a strange way I have enjoyed this debate - it is the first time I have engaged like this on a blog and I now see how addictive it could become.

Positive, you've arrived here, seen people struggling to defend our few remaining amenities and jumped to conclusions without bothering to find out what's going on.

I don't know any "angry and disaffected" campaigners. Some, it's true, are out of patience after years of trying to negotate with a council that refuses to hear any voice but its own, or to fund anything except its own strangely unaccountable projects.

The campaigners I've met in Waltham Forest, over the years, are a lively and sociable crowd who don't let the council get them down. And there's always room for more!

It really makes me sad that one of our our great East London towns has gone to rack and ruin,even the bookies are shutting down.IE The Bell{campbells}and now left wing middle class campaigners are gonna change our town,yeah right,what by not washing!!!