by Julia Haythorn | Dec 12, 2016 | Consultations, Public Space
We recently received this letter from Westminster City Council:
Great Portland Street Public Realm Improvements Westminster City Council, in partnership with The Crown Estate, is proposing public realm improvements on the western side of Great Portland Street between Riding House Street and Mortimer Street. The improvements are indicated on the enclosed drawing and include the following:
- Repaving the footway with new artificial stone paving footway and installing new granite kerbs, and
- Removing the level difference between the footway and the basement roof slabs.
The works are programmed to commence in February 2017. If your property has a vault/basement that extends beneath the footway and possibly the carriageway, the works being undertaken may cause water ingress or dampness to appear when the ground is disturbed if the vault/basement has not been properly protected by tanking or other damp proofing. The City Council is not required (nor can it) undertake to maintain the surface of the public highway in a watertight condition. This is in accordance with Section 180 Sub-Section 6 of the Highways Act 1980. The basement/vault to your property is a separate structure from the public highway and keeping it in a watertight condition is the responsibility of the owner or freeholder. If you are the occupier but not the owner of the property, you should make the owner aware of this notice.
Contact: Tel: E-mail:
Ref: Date: Ryan Reardon 020 7394 3020
ryan.reardon@wspgroup.com 0001-70027737-S6-1 09 December 2016
FM Conway Limited is working on behalf of Westminster City Council on this scheme and would be pleased to receive any comments you have regarding the proposals by 23rd December 2016.
Your views are important and will be reported to Westminster City Council officers for their review and consideration before a decision on the proposals is made.
Yours sincerely,
Ryan Reardon
great-portland-street-public-realm-improvements-consultation-plan
Click o the link above to view a plan.
We have replied as follows:
Dear Mr Reardon,
Thank you for consulting us. We have placed the information on our website and look forward to further responses from our members. Fitzrovia West Neighbourhood Forum is currently writing its policies at the moment. These will be published early in the new year. However, we can confirm that the community – both residents and businesses wishes to see more public realm improvements and so in general we welcome this initiative. We do however have a few observations:
- The removal of a kerb cross-over, thus limiting wheelchair access in this area even more is regretted. We recommend that you re-consider this regressive action.
- We wish to see all pavements in the area re-paved with York stone which is the traditional material.
- It is a shame that works like this are simply replacement works, when it is clear that Great Portland Street needs a holistic design approach along its entire length. This re-design should, in our view include improvements for pedestrians access, crossings and disabled accessibility. It is not clear whether this pavement work will make crossovers at shop thresholds better?
With kind regards
Wendy Shillam Chair FitzWest Neighbourhood Forum
by Julia Haythorn | Jul 14, 2016 | Environment
Today newspapers are reporting a concerning development in the long running saga of the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. Up till now FitzWest had been assured that there would be no pedestrianisation between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Circus because there were no suitable routes for buses and taxis through our area.
However Valerie Shawcross, London’s deputy mayor for transport, has now announced to the London Assembly that the plan is to ban all vehicles from Tottenham Court Road to beyond Selfridges and the entrance to Bond Street tube station. There is no indication of how this is to be achieved.
In response to this announcement I have written to Val Shawcross as follows:
Dear Val,
PEDESTRIANISATION OF OXFORD STREET
I represent Fitzrovia West Neighbourhood Forum. Our forum is a 200 strong group that represents both residents and businesses in Fitzrovia. We are united in order to create a neighbourhood plan for the area.
One crucial aspect of our plan, triggered by strong public support, is to improve the streets where we live and work. There is no public green space in our area, little sitting out space and hardly any pedestrian streets. We suffer from some of the worst pollution of any residential area in Europe.
We are in the middle of writing policies that will go public this autumn. So far public consultation has strongly prioritised the greening of streets, the reduction and calming of traffic and the improvement of arrangements for pedestrians.
In particular we wish to enhance the Great Titchfield Street/Mortimer Street hub of our area. This has become a dynamic focus for local and specialist shops, small businesses and provides the area’s vitality. But it is already stymied by the fact that Mortimer Street is a by-pass street for Oxford Street.
There are over 4000 people living in very dense flats in this area. Our population is not dominated by West End Wealthy, but by ordinary people, many of whom have lived in the area for years, whose children attend the local schools and who work in local businesses. Many people live in social housing, or housing for the elderly. They cannot choose to move out of the area if it becomes even more devastated by traffic.
This week’s announcement that pedestrianisation in Oxford Street shall go ahead leads us to fear the implications for our area, especially Mortimer Street and Newman Street. While the Crossrail project has gone ahead we have had several long term bus diversions through our area, along Mortimer and Newman Street. This has resulted in lines of jammed buses belching out exhaust. I enclose a photograph of Newman Street, taken during one of those diversions, to indicate how unpleasant those short term diversions were.
Taken 12.22 09.04.2015
If the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street results in a permanent diversion of taxis and bus routes along these streets it would be devastating for the area.
We support a reduction of traffic in Oxford Street, and have no objection to pedestrianisation per se. In fact, we too wish to look at traffic calming schemes to support improvements to Great Titchfield Street and Mortimer Street, which is the social and economic hub of our area.
Unfortunately it is not just Oxford Street that subjects the population of Fitzrovia to life threatening pollution. The diagram below (taken from the Kings College Model commissioned, as I understand it, by GLA) identifies Mortimer Street and New Cavendish Street as highly polluted as well. This pollution is exacerbated in the centre of London because of the urban heat island effect, which can trap a bubble of polluted air, stopping it dissipating, as it might do in greener parts of the capital. I am sure that enlightened traffic engineers in the GLA have already considered these limitations and are proposing alternatives. For example a bus hub at Tottenham Court Road and a further hub at Hyde Park Corner would be well supported by our community.
We are especially concerned that All Souls’ Primary School, our excellent local primary school, lies only yards from the Mortimer Street/Newman Street junction. The prospect of diverting transport onto a minor road and increasing pollution levels so close to an area where children are taught, is not worthy of the new GLA administration.
The FitzWest Neighbourhood Forum is doing all it can to improve the environment for our inner city residents, existing businesses and the hundreds of thousands of new visitors that will be attracted by Crossrail 1, Crossrail 2 and HS2 which also arrives at our doorstep. We seek help from the GLA to achieve that result, not hindrance.
Please, can I have your assurance that no scheme will be approved which diverts public transport and taxis through the streets within our area?
Yours sincerely
Wendy Shillam
Chairman Fitzrovia West Neighbourhood Area Forum Executive
CC
Caroline Pidgeon Chair London Assembly Transport Committee
Tim Steer Head of Transport
Cllr Robert Davis MBE Deputy Leader Westminster CC
Jace Tyrrell, Chief Executive New West End Company
Paul Dimoldenberg Leader Westminster CC Labour Group
I have also sent copies to our Ward Councillors.
Please add your comments below.
by Julia Haythorn | Jun 6, 2016 | Consultations
We’ve mad a comment regarding Westminster’s proposal to change mixed use policies in the city plan.
Our general concern is the proposed relaxation of the requirement to provide an increase of residential use as part of larger commercial developments in the Core CAZ and Opportunity Areas such as Tottenham Court Road. The West End and central parts of the City are characterised by a mix of commercial and residential uses adding variety, interest and enhancing interaction between different sized businesses and residents. The proposed change in wording will lead to more large scale, single use, ‘iconic’ developments which, although highly profitable, add very little and often detract from the quality of the built form in the City as a whole, or indeed in areas such as Fitzrovia.
For the full text go to: EXTERNAL CONSULTATION
Please add your comments if you agree or disagree with our response.
by Julia Haythorn | Apr 9, 2016 | Consultations, Our Neighbourhood, Public Space
The forum receives more complaints about rubbish than almost any other topic. In response to this we have set up a sub-group to focus of the problems of rubbish disposal, dumping and collections in our area.
We’ve devised a questionnaire and we would be very grateful if you could fill it in for us, giving us your views.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/190rmWoVZjnJ-8IuVYafRcta49kBJ-22QpS7v99ycEWE/viewform
If you have any further comments please feel free to add them in the comments box below, or if you are reading this on our home page use the quotation icon at the head of this article.
Thank you.
by Julia Haythorn | Feb 15, 2016 | Environment
Market Place could be a much greener oasis than it is today. Do we really need this wide delivery bay?
Now that our public consultation exercise is coming to an end we are delighted to report that we are in a position to start delivering one of the most popular aspects of our proposals ahead of time. Many of you supported the idea of greening small oases that would bring some welcome calm to our busy city as well as provide opportunity for pollution busting planting and locations for wildlife to flourish. In fact new green oases in the streetscape received the most votes when we asked what community Infrastructure money should be spent on.
Fitzrovia is one of the least green areas in Central London. The only public blade of grass in FitzWest is the new development at Pearson Square. That pocket handkerchief, delightful though it is, cannot hope to serve all our needs. It is our intention to recommend to Westminster City Council that more spaces like this are built as part of developments. But what about the concrete jungle we already inhabit?
Consider places like this above. It is the pavement on Great Titchfield Street, right outside the Regent’s Park Hilton. It’s the view that people living in the sheltered housing across the street view daily. Now we have some hope of doing something about such spaces (where development might not happen for years)
FitzWest Neighbourhood Forum is delighted to announce that we have been selected as one of the areas to receive Tesco’s BagsofHelp funding.
Tesco has teamed up with Groundwork to launch its Bags of Help initiative in hundreds of regions across England and Wales. FitzWest applied for a grant and we are the lucky recipients of a regional award. How large the funding is will depend on votes cast in our local Tesco.
The scheme will see three community groups and projects in each of these regions awarded grants of £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000 – all raised from the 5p bag charge. The public will now vote in store from 27 February until 6 March on who should receive the £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000 awards. To learn more about the initiative please look at www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp
