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 | Dec 6, 2015 | Our Neighbourhood
Printed also in Fitzrovia News
Fitzrovia West Neighbourhood Forum (FitzWest) will be holding a public exhibition and consultation entitled FitzWest Futures – Have Your Say at the Getty Gallery, 46 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8DX from 11.00am – 8.00pm on Monday 11thh January. This will be an opportunity for people to see the progress we’ve made with the FitzWest Plan and give their views. In anticipation of this event, I’ve been garnering my own thoughts about the area. I’m using this month’s article to highlight public space.
All of us city dwellers tend to live our lives much more in the public domain, in the streets, cafes and public spaces of our neighbourhood. My twenty four hour diary gives a glimpse of how I use our streets, not only as a thoroughfare, but as a breathing space and a meeting place.
3.00pm Tuesday
I bump into a friend. We decide to sit on one of the benches under the trees in Candover Street for a five minute catch up. It could be a lovely spot, but the parking, the rubbish bins and cars screeching round the corner detract from its potential. A shame, because Candover Street possesses some of our finest arts and crafts buildings in central London, including Boulting’s Manufactory (1903 by the architect H Fuller Clark). But if I were to step back to admire the architecture, I’d probably be run down! The speed limit in our area is 30mph. Should it be less?
Later:
I’m off to the Yorkshire Grey for a quiet pint with my husband. We plan to sit on the benches in Nottingham Place, but this building, like hundreds of others in our area is having a refit, so instead of a quiet corner we have builders’ mayhem. We walk around into Riding House Street which is also full of builders gear and completely blocked off to cars. I reckon the street cleaners have abandoned it too.
1.00am Wednesday morning
I’m woken by shouts in the street. An arguing couple probably don’t realise that I’m in bed only a few metres from where their voices are becoming increasingly raised. I pull the curtains aside. There they are, under the lamp post, oblivious to the fact that all my neighbours can hear them. About 4,000 people live in FitzWest. It is actually one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the country.
10.30am Wednesday
I’m cycling off to do some shopping. New Cavendish Street is to be designated as a cycling quietway, but who knows how they’ll manage it. I take my life in my hands, it is so congested. I think we need quiet quarters, not just a few so-called quiet streets. Are any of the through routes really necessary in FitzWest?
Some of my neighbours are still putting out rubbish, oblivious of the fact that the collection is long gone and they are all potentially in line for a £50.00 fine. I’m disgusted when I see two open bags full of food scraps that will undoubtedly attract vermin. But to give them their due, collections are not advertised on my street. Many people would prefer to take their rubbish to a recycling point.
Turning into Langham Street I have to negotiate another hazard. The female Ginko trees have dropped their fruit. The council have made an attempt to clean up the pavement, but it still smells disgusting. My heel slips on gunge.
1.00pm Lunch in a cafe
We all value this area because of the cafes and cosy pubs. I love the independent shops, the quirky businesses, the galleries and college activity. But the traffic, noise, pollution and rubbish nuisance that this intensity of use causes is something we hate. This is a beautiful area with huge potential. I ought to be proud of living and working at the heart of this great city; not embarrassed by the mess.
The FitzWest Forum is taking some short term action. We’ve asked for the Ginko trees to be replaced. We’ve started a dialogue with Westminster City Council, trying to find solutions to the rubbish problem and we’ve joined with The West End partnership to see if we can make change right across the West End.
Then there are the invisible menaces. Noise is one; pollution another. The invisible pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulates are more pernicious than ever the London smog was. They are at their greatest intensity in our area, Euston Road, Marylebone Road and Oxford Street are hotspots. More than 10,000 people die each year in London from pollution (GLA figures). It affects the young and the elderly disproportionately. Calming the traffic and planting would help, but really we must consider restricting air conditioning and discouraging diesel vehicle trips.
In our last public meeting the forum made public space issues one of the top priorities for the FitzWest Neighbourhood Plan. In the January exhibition at the Getty Photographic Gallery, we will be proposing new local planning policies can support this ambition.
Have your say. It’s free to join the forum here: Fitzwest.org/wordpress
By Wendy Shillam Chair of FitzWest
An edited version of this article appearsin the December 2015 issue of The Fitzrovia News
by Julia Haythorn | Nov 2, 2015 | Environment, Our Neighbourhood, Public Space, The Plan
This week I have been thinking about the environmental benefit of roof gardens and edible gardens in particular. My thoughts have been driven by two very different events. The first is that the West End Partnership have been adding flesh to the bones of their plans for London’s West End. As a member of their Peoples Task Group, I needed to consider, among other topics, what their emerging greening strategies might mean for people who work here, live here or visit Fitzrovia.
And in another, completely unconnected event, my own rooftop garden features in this month’s Garden Magazine, the organ of the Royal Horticultural Society(RHS). It is a special issue devoted to urban gardens.
My own rooftopvegplot. Open by appointment April – September
If you are not a member of the RHS then this might be a good time to join. The organisation is slowly becoming a little more progressive and organic gardening, protection of wildlife and greening the urban realm are now all on their agenda. People like me, who do not own acres of manicured evergreens somewhere in the Dukeries, are now welcomed. I’m rather proud that a productive, urban, organic garden, the size of a postage stamp is featured within the hallowed pages.
The RHS is taking a number of excellent initiatives that the most progressive of urban gardeners and the most devoted of environmentalists would approve. In this issue November 2015, the magazine is suggesting how we can find space and place to plant more. Their ‘Greening Grey Britain’ initiative.
Front gardens make an amazing difference. But we don’t have front gardens in the inner city!
The RHS are right on the button when they say that gardens play a crucial role in urban and suburban areas, and potentially will become even more important in the future as our climate changes. From helping protect us against flooding and extremes of temperature, to supporting wildlife and helping gardeners to be healthy, gardens can provide an amazing range of benefits.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/gardening-in-a-changing-world/Greening-Grey-Britain/urban-planting
The estimate is that 25% of the urban realm is open space, that might be transformed into a garden. That could be a formal flower garden, a wild space, a flowering place for pollinators or an allotment. Gardens can be at ground level, on balconies or on rooftops. Temporary gardens can be found on building sites. So called guerrilla gardens can spring up anywhere. We have our own guerrilla gardens in Great Titchfield Street, started by one of the flat dwellers in Collingwood House. The idea has proved infectious, the space around trees in the street have been invaded by flowers right up as far as the restaurant Conchiglia and the Smile Clinic. Well done to those businesses for taking up the initiative. It’s a great pleasure to walk down that part of the street now. (Though I despair at the number of cigarette butts I see casually tossed into flower beds.)
Guerrilla Gardening in Great Titchfield Street
My own contribution to greening the city is a rooftop vegetable plot, designed to be intensively productive all year round as well as beautiful. It is organic, and full of flowering produce as well as leaves and roots. I have bee hotels up there, a stick tower for insects and several bird feeders and nesting boxes. You can find the article in this month’s RHS magazine, or in the recently published book, ‘My Tiny Veg Plot’ by Lia Leendertz. Pavillion, Books 2015. This lavishly illustrated book is an excellent resource for different urban/small space gardening techniques.
As part of the FitzWest Neighbourhood Plan we will be looking at how we can improve the urban space. That’s about reducing deliveries, traffic calming and improving space for pedestrians and cycles. It’s about improving our rubbish collection system so that the streets are no longer strewn with take-away cartons and banana skins. It’s about management of contractors and street diggers, so that builders rubble, skips and cranes don’t litter the streets, causing danger to pedestrians and blocking carriageways. And it’s also about finding more places for planting.
A survey of green space in FitzEast has already been completed for the Business Improvement District. This is an issue that touches those who work or visit the area as much as it does residents. We need something similar in FitzWest.
if you would like to join FitzWest please visit this page of the website:
https://fitzwest.org/become-a-member/
And if you’d like to help with the survey of public space and greening of FitzWest email me, Wendy Shillam on info@fitzwest.org
by Julia Haythorn | Nov 2, 2013 | Our Neighbourhood
Do you live or work in Fitzrovia West (ie west of Charlotte Street) and care about safeguarding our unique environment?
What is FitzWest?
On 6th February 2015, FitzWest was designated a Neighbourhood Forum by Westminster City Council and already over 200 local people and businesses have joined. The Forum will make a Plan for the neighbourhood, targeting housing, planning, pollution – and much more. Now we need your involvement too!
Why should I get involved?
The diversity of people and activities in this area is in danger of irrevocable change. If you want to help keep the small shops and businesses, plus the mix of housing that ordinary people can afford – please sign up to be a member of the Forum. If you want Westminster City Council to make improvements to our streets and green-spaces – get involved in shaping local policy now – join the Forum, its free and easy to get involved. Look through this website, join a topic group and have your say. Or just email your thoughts to info@fitzwest.org. Make sure you have a voice.
Will the Neighbourhood Plan have teeth?
The Neighbourhood Plan will put community priorities at the heart of town planning decisions, ensuring that developments in this area contribute to change that is locally agreed and positive. The Neighbourhood Plan will help to shape Council investment in things that local people have told us they’d like to see, such as, street improvements, street safety, management of rubbish and the building of new gardens and playgrounds. But we need your views and your support.
Priority topics for the Neighbourhood Plan will include:
- Liveable Neighbourhood
- Nurture Young and Independent Businesses
- Urban Realm
- Environment
“Our mission is to ensure that Fitzrovia develops as a habitable, sustainable and neighbourly community through all means available including planning, collaborative working and community enterprise.”
Join us Now!
Let’s keep our neighbourhood special. By working with, and having an influence on, the Council and developers, FitzWest can ensure that any change is beneficial and that we continue to enjoy the best place to live, work, or visit in central London.
