Bernard Morgan House meeting 20th Feb 2018

A Ben Jonson House committee member took notes at the Feb 20th meeting about what was the site of Bernard Morgan House, and is now the building site for the proposed Denizen block of flats:
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Here are brief notes of this meeting for residents with the construction company for the Denizen.

Construction firm McAleer and Rushe introduced themselves by showing examples of prestigious and large scale buildings of various kinds for which they had been responsible. Aim was to imply local residents could have confidence in their standards of work. This presentation was curtailed by objections from residents who perceived it as irrelevant to concerns they had. Questions were raised about firm's experience of affordable or social housing, although not planned for Denizen. "Affordable" clarified as 80% of market rent. Strong feelings persist about absence of social or affordable housing on this site.

Discussion proceeded to plans submitted to CoL for access/egress from site during construction expected to take approx. 2 years 3 mths. Residents have been reasonably satisfied with use of Brackley St during demolition period. Construction will generate more traffic including articulated lorries. The plan is for all this traffic to access the site using a one way system via Fann St from Aldersgate St through to the site and exiting onto Golden Lane. The midway gate would be opened as needed to allow site traffic to pass, and closed after it by traffic marshals.

Very strong objections were expressed to this plan on account of danger to the many pedestrians and cyclists who use this route, as well as disruption to the main road access to Golden Lane Estate. Concern was also expressed about vulnerable residents of Tudor Rose Court and the need for ambulance access.

The East end of Fann St. is to be made narrower by an extension of the site hoarding to provide loading/ unloading space and the crane to be installed will operate within the site borders.

Mention was made of possible mitigating plans e.g. a green fence to the upper playground on Golden Lane Campus, improvements to Fortune Park, but nothing definite.

The Hatching Dragons Nursery is to move.

The next meeting is set for 20.3.18

2018 Cripplegate Wardmote Notice

The 2018 Cripplegate wardmote will be held on evening of 21st March in the Barber-Surgeons Hall, Monkwell Square, London, EC2Y 5BL at 19:00 for a 19:30 start.

Click to read the whole notice

BMH: Taylor Wimpey newsletter 5

Click to read the newsletter

Girls School - Plan for subterranean prep school

The City of London School for Girls are thinking about adding a new prep facility for 240 students. There is no room in the existing buildings for this, so the City (in the form of the school) and the City (in the form of the City planning people) are thinking of applying to themselves to convert Barbican Estate car parking space into classrooms.

If this plan comes to pass Barbican residents will lose access to the parking which they have used since the estate was built and the students will lose access to daylight.

Here is a letter from the chair of the Barbican Association on the topic. If you have a child or a car which might be affected by these plans you need to act soon to make your views known.

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As you probably know, the City of London School for Girls is planning to take over Thomas More car park and turn it into a preparatory school for 240 girls. The board of governors – in effect, a council committee – will meet at 11am on Monday 26 February 2018 to decide whether to go ahead with this plan and send it to the City for approval.

This is our last chance to persuade the governors to think again. We urge all house groups to support the blocks most directly affected by helping with the lobbying effort, which means writing as soon as possible to the governors using the ready-made email list below.

Here is some background information:


The board of governors
There are 20 governors. Of these, 15 are elected members of the City of London and five are external members (a mix of former CLSG pupils and academics). Only two of the governors, Randall Anderson and David Graves, are Barbican residents – many others will have little or no knowledge of the Barbican Estate or its lay-out. We understand that no site visit has been conducted.


The plan
Thomas More car park lies beneath the CLSG all-weather pitch/tennis courts. It has 150 parking bays and serves a cluster of three connected blocks: Thomas More House, Seddon House and Mountjoy House. It is connected by an access road with Lauderdale Tower car park.

CLSG, which is run by the City of London, wants to take over the whole of the covered car park and install a new preparatory school inside it. The school would house 240 girls aged 4 to 11, of whom 90 would come from CLSG's existing preparatory school inside the main school. The cars, baggage stores and bicycles currently occupying the site would be moved to other car parks on the estate; a few spaces would remain for disabled residents – but none for visitors or contractors - plus a very small area for rubbish.

The existing covered car park would be encased in a double-glazed wall and an entire preparatory school would be built within. There would be two small outdoor play spaces, one immediately next to Seddon House, but the rest of the school would be inside a sealed underground chamber with artificial lighting and ventilation.

In addition, a separate dining hall with kitchens would be built under Mountjoy House – into an area of the Grade II* listed landscape.

Plans: https://cityoflondon.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c35cdd534cf3fa196e129f541&id=f3eb5599f0&e=cf7fc2ffca

Information provided by school: https://cityoflondon.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c35cdd534cf3fa196e129f541&id=f0950308c6&e=cf7fc2ffca


What we are up against
Proponents of the plan will argue that the Barbican Estate is over-supplied with car parking space. They will argue that it would be irresponsible of the City not to make better use of this redundant space, and since the school badly needs to expand, and since the Thomas More car park is ideally located next to the main school, the plan makes perfect sense. All that's needed, the proponents will say, is for a few residents to move their cars to other nearby car parks.


What to say
House groups and residents will write what they like and the more variety, the better – we want to avoid anything that looks like a standard letter. But for those who aren't sure where to start, here's a reminder of some of the concerns that have been raised:

• Whether an underground car park is a suitable location for a school (for example, lack of natural light or ventilation, lack of playground space, traffic fumes).
• Traffic generated by the school run (although this will be a problem whatever site is chosen).
• Land currently in community use would be handed over to a private school catering mainly for children in other boroughs. There is nothing in this for the displaced residents.
• Encroachment into a Listed Grade II estate.
• The loss of a highly-valued residential amenity. Thomas More car is not redundant – it contains 80 odd residents' cars, 62 walk-in storage rooms, 80 bicycles, 12 cycle storage lockers, several motorcycles and motor scooters and a recycling area, and visitor and contractor parking. It would not be acceptable for residents to be deprived of such an important amenity and even if it were, there would not be enough room for the vehicles and baggage stores in the nearest car parks – many would end up on the other side of the estate.
• The impact on other car parks (especially Defoe and Andrewes).
• The damage to relations between the school and the local community.

The board of governors exist to do what's best for the school. Other City committees further down the line might consider the residents' interests but for the moment, it's all about the school. So one approach might be to imagine yourself in the role of a governor and consider which of the points above would persuade you that this plan was not in the best interests of the school.

The governors' email addresses
Here are the governors' email addresses. Please just copy and paste them into the address field of an email: Clare James is the chairman

clare.james@cityoflondon.gov.uk, nick.bensted-smith@cityoflondon.gov.uk, anna.sapirabulafia@theology.ox.ac.uk, rehana.ameer@cityoflondon.gov.uk, randall.anderson@cityoflondon.gov.uk, rogchadwick@yahoo.com, emma.edhem@cityoflondon.gov.uk, skle2@cam.ac.uk, david.graves@cityoflondon.gov.uk, tom.hoffman@cityoflondon.gov.uk, ann.holmes@cityoflondon.gov.uk, robert.merrett@cityoflondon.gov.uk, sylvia.moys@cityoflondon.gov.uk, richard.regan@cityoflondon.gov.uk, thriplowbury@aol.com, ian.seaton@cityoflondon.gov.uk, sirms@snyder.org.uk

Please also copy the email to these four addresses:
catherine.mcguinness@cityoflondon.gov.uk, john.barradell@cityoflondon.gov.uk, bursar@clsg.clsg.uk, alistair.maclellan@cityoflondon.gov.uk

Catherine McGuiness is chairman of the policy & resources committee, John Barradell is the town clerk and chief executive, Alan Bubbear, is the bursar of CLSG, and Alistair MacLellan is the clerk to the board of governors. The email needs to be copied to Alistair MacLellan because there are three external governors for whom we do not have email addresses and we have asked Alistair MacLellan to forward copies of our emails to the missing three.

Many thanks for your support

Best wishes
Jane Smith
Chair, Barbican Association on behalf of the BA Thos More Car Park working group and the affected houses

Barbican OpenFest - 17&18 March

The proposed Beech St. tunnel concert gets a name:  the Barbican OpenFest.  The City, in the form of the arts centre, have produced a document presenting the event:

Click to read the whole document

From the BEO:

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Please click here for information on the major new Culture Mile installation in Beech Street tunnel announced as part of Barbican OpenFest 17 & 18 March 2018, including details on other cultural events taking place.

BEO - New Communications Officer

The BEO have a new Communications Officer, Nabeela Ahmad (nabeela.ahmad@cityoflondon.gov.uk). The note below appeared in the 9th Feb Estatewide News Bulletin email.

Here's hoping for a BEO blog.  I have suggested this to Nabeela.

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Dear Residents, 

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Communications Officer for the Barbican Estate Office. I look forward to meeting you all over the next few months and would welcome any feedback regarding this weekly bulletin.

Nabeela

BMH Court hearing 1st March at the Royal Courts of Justice

From OPEN Golden Lane here is an update on the legal fight challenging the City planning approval of the Taylor Wimpey Denizen apartment block on the site of (the now demolished) Bernard Morgan House.  You can read more on the Open Golden Lane blog, but here is the update:
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Update on Save Golden Lane

Click to go to the donations page

Dear Friends and Neighbours

Many thanks for your continuing support.

We now have the Court date for our application for judicial review. The Court hearing is on 1st March at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand WC2A 2LL.

The hearing is in public and we will be able to publish the time and the court room number the day before.

Our claim is a challenge to the loss of sunlight to our local school and park's open spaces and to our homes, the lack of on-site affordable housing and the financial contribution to off-site affordable housing being less than 50% of the City's policy requirement and the damage which this gross over-development will cause to a unique area of post-war heritage architecture.

Our claim will be argued by our very experienced and specialist barrister, Matthew Horton QC, who has the reputation as a "Brilliant heavyweight advocate, who has a great presence and thinks outside the box"

However we can't win this case without money! Please help by donating towards our legal costs. This claim is not only about the damage to our local community but has far reaching importance.

A win will be a blow against property speculation and Londoners being priced out - we need social rented accommodation for people not luxury investment apartments left empty.

It will be a blow against those seeking to damage our architectural heritage and steal our sunlight by over-development.

It will be a blow against corporate governments which seek to exploit community assets for their own benefit.

For far too long the Corporation of London has ignored the community's views and needs in preference to the views of developers. This has to change. If we win this battle there will be far reaching consequences for other developments.

Please help support this campaign (donate here) and put a stop to communities being ignored and the development of more unnecessary overdeveloped luxury investment properties. We need affordable homes here not cash boxes in the sky.

Please help to spread the word by forwarding this email or sharing the link with 5 of your friends or post on Facebook or twitter.

Many thanks for your support.

The Golden Lane Consortium

More information can be found here

OPEN (Golden Lane)

Tunnel Concert Gets License

The City licensing committee have now approved the proposed event planned for 16th-18th March.  The committee earlier deferred making a decision because the quality of the application was so poor, but brisk reworking by the Barbican Centre seems to have won high praise and approval.

Details of the granting of the license are here:

Click to read the whole licence approval

The Culture Mile

On Wednesday evening there was a meeting to discuss the "Culture Mile".  This is a scheme to promote the cultural aspects of the City.  The Barbican Association has been looking at the proposals put forward by the City and has come up with a set of comments:

Click to read the comments paper

Here are notes taken about the meeting made by a member of the Ben Jonson House Group committee:
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At the meeting were two of the City of London's Look and Feel Strategy Group, two Councilmen from Aldersgate, Residential Group reps from Blake House, Lauderdale House, Breton House, Thomas More House, Defoe House, Mountjoy House and Ben Jonson. The BA Chair, Jane Smith, chaired the meeting.

The Culture Mile discussion document is available on the web, outlining the many ideas that the Look and Feel Strategy Group have come up with for making the Barbican area more inviting to visitors, more destinational as an Arts Centre. This is a large document, which has been updated and revised several times over the year or more that the Group has been active. It was commissioned by the City of London from an outside set of consultants, but has undergone revisions from the internal Look and Feel Group.

The BA Cultural Mile Group has now written a response to the City's strategy paper (see attachment), and Jane Smith ran through the main points of the document. In short, it insists that the balance of residential and other uses of the Barbican Estate and Centre must be maintained. The Barbican is a cultural icon, and this needs to be respected in all works taken to 'improve' it. We support the improvements to the Beech Street and Barbican Tube station - both of which need a proper clean up. The signage to the Estate and to the Centre to improve accessibility is also welcomed. Cleaning up the architecture - washing it to let the texture and beauty of the design show through - also approved. However, we do not want the forecourts, highwalks and open areas cluttered with more art/pop up shops and given pretty lighting displays along 'blank' areas of wall. The Group also make the point that we are not keen to make the surrounding streets - particularly Beech St and More Lane more 'active' - as these area serve as buffer zones of quiet in a busy city - more cafes and bars will make the whole area much noisier for residents. The main thrust of the document was to ask that they do less things, but do them well. And let the architecture speak for itself.

The two reps from the Look and Feel Strategy Group asked some questions of the meeting to clarify what particular things the residents would like to see done, and areas of special concern.

The response document is to be updated as a result of the meeting last night and will be submitted to the City on Monday next week. Further consultation meetings are to take place.