How to renew your garden waste collection in 12 easy steps

I have had a garden waste collection service from Kingston Council for a few years now and every year the convoluted renewal process annoys me so this year I thought that I would record it step by step.

This is the web page that the renewal letter (not an email) from the Council tells you to go to.

There is a big Subscribe button and no mention of renewal, but this is the right place.

Press Subscribe.

I am an existing customer but the system pretends, for the moment, that it does not know me and starts an address search.

If you are asking for house number and post code then you do not need the full address too. No other website I can think of does this.

Success, it has found me!

Sorry, it has not found me, it has only found my address.

Now it needs to do a second search to find the service at that address, the one that I am here to renew.

We both agree that I have one garden waste bin.

For reasons that escape me, at this point, in the middle of the process, it decides to ask me if I really want to do this.

Basically this is the same screen as the one two back where we both agreed that I have one garden waste bin that I wish to renew.

No, I have not changed my mind since you last asked me two screens ago.

A payment request, now we are getting somewhere!

I minor point but the payment process is embedded in the renewal process and behaves differently. The dark blue square buttons are now rounded and light blue, and Next has been replaced by Continue.

I was about time we had another confirmation screen. This is number three.

All done and the transaction is confirmed.

Note that in this dialogue it uses the word "Confirmation" to mean both "your confirmation is required" and "our confirmation is given".

Saying Thank You is so important that it gets a screen of its own when saying that on the confirmation screen would have done the job.

Two Towers

The saga of The Old Post Office (TOPO) in Kingston which started in 2014 still continues. The main decision to approve the scheme was made in 2016, despite the significant objections to it, but there was always a question over the main tower.

The Council wanted a visually striking building to mark the southern entrance to the town centre while residents wanted something as small and discrete as possible.

In the very proposal it was shown as 12 storeys tall and after the initial consultation it went up to 16, despite all the feedback saying it was already too tall. It kept changing slightly in size and quite a bit in shape and we finally got the scheme on the left.

There was considerable criticism of this and so a working group of the developer, residents, architects and others were asked to come up with something better. That's the tower on the right.

Over the week a number of drop-in consultation sessions were held where residents could give their views on the new proposal. I suspect that my views will be in a small minority but I prefer the original scheme to the new one.

The original scheme looks more modern and, I think, fits in better with its neighbours. There is also a lot more going on and I like that, one of the joys of the Lloyds Building is that there are things everywhere.

To me the new tower looks like it was designed by a committee (which obviously it was) and we have got a bland compromise. I presume that this scheme will go ahead so I just hope that it looks better in real life than it does in this drawing.

An open letter to the Royal Park Gate Residents Association

Royal Park Gate Residents Association needs to improve

It is now over two months since the inaugural meeting of the Royal Park Gate Residents Association and I am deeply irritated at the lack of progress since then. All of the enthusiasm shown at the meeting has been allowed to dissipated and in two months there has not been one email from the Association. This is unacceptable.

I am also angry at the way that work has continued along the footpath through Royal Park Gate without consulting residents. The meeting made it clear that there were mixed views on whether the wildlife friendly planting should be replaced with flowers. I do not know where the balance of opinion lies, I am firmly in favour of keeping it wild myself, but I do know that the nature of the area where I have lived for twenty years is being changed without me having any say in this. To create a Residents Association and then to refuse to consult with it before undertaking works like this is also unacceptable.

At the meeting we also talked about the state of the footpath and the way that the vegetation restricts the width severely in a couple of places. The path needs to be kept clear to allow buggies and bikes etc. to share it and if the Council is not going to do this then it makes sense for the Residents Association to do so. In desperation, my wife and I cut back the vegetation on the junction with Northweald Lane to the edge of the path so now people can pass on both sides of the bollard.

I am disappointed that nothing has been done to the section just north of Debden Close. This, combined with the planting of flowers, suggests to me that some people on the committee are acting in their own interest while paying no heed to the needs of other residents.

The lack of consultation on the works done and the complete lack of any communication on anything else prove to me that the current committee is not functioning properly. I strongly urge the current committee to stand aside and let those prepared to make the Association a success to do so.

Kingston Council Go developments drop-in session was a waste of time

Just over two years ago Kingston won £30 million from Boris "to deliver transformational change for cycling in the borough, bringing benefits to everyone whether or not they cycle". That quote comes from The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames A cycling vision for everyone Kingston Council’s Stage II submission to the Mayor’s Outer London Cycling Fund December 2013.

Since then not much has happened.

Plenty of staff have been working on the programme, I've met over half a dozen of them at various times, and several documents have been produced, including a 1cm thick booklet on the proposed Riverside Boardway that I was not allowed a copy of.

Then we heard that the Mini-Holland scheme had been included in the broader Go Kingston programme that is looking at all transport improvements, not just cycling, and Kingston Council announced a series of drop-in events, inviting residents, businesses and organisations to learn more about the ‘Go Programme’.

So I went to one but was bitterly disappointed by it.

What the exhibition confirmed was that very little had been achieve to date, unless you count rebranding as progress, the definition of the scheme had got much broader and the emphasis was now more on the public realm than on improving provision for cyclists.

To make things worse, there was no information on the main schemes, just a map of where they were which we had seen many times before. Even the drawings we had seen for the Kingston Station and Riverside Boardway schemes previously were missing.

The exhibition had very little information and none of it was new so I could not see what the point of it was. I did not stay very long.

Huf Hauser in Kingston Vale

I am interested in architecture and love Huf Hauser so I jumped at the opportunity to see inside a couple of them in Kingston Vale. The opportunity arose via the Kingston upon Thames Society - the houses (hauser) had won an award in their Townscape Awards and discussions with the owners over this had led to an invitation to visit them.

Each Huf Haus is carefully designed individually to meet the requirements of the owner and the features of the site. In this case the owner had gone for an Asian theme that was reflected in the landscaping, objects of art and the house names.

The first house was a single family home split over three floors. The impressive main living space was on the first (middle) floor which was also the level of the garden. This picture was taken with the kitchen area behind me, the dinning area immediately in front and the living area beyond that.

The room was very practicable, i.e. I could easily imagine myself living there, vast in size and had lots of glass to let the light and views of the garden to flood in.

This view of the approach to the kitchen/dining/living area gives more of an idea of how big that area was, that is quite a large dining table that is almost lost in the space at the far end, and also of how big the corridor space was; most rooms in most houses are smaller than that corridor.

Other rooms were more problematic. The house was littered with what were clearly bedrooms, i.e. they had en suite bathrooms, what could have been bedrooms and other rooms that could have been anything. This large room on the ground (lower) floor was a case in point. It was one of the larger rooms, even in this house, and had lots of light from the windows but I could not see how I would use it if I lived there. It could have been a home office, I suppose, but there were several other rooms that could have been that.

I said that Huf Hauser were designed to the owner's requirements so I am sure that each room had an intended purpose and that this would have been clearer had the construction completely finish and the rooms been furnished but impressed as I was by the enormous size of the building and the sleek design I just could not see how I could make use of all of that space.

The house next door was designed in the same style but for a different purpose and only over two floors. To be simplistic, it was like two family homes stitched together so that one of the halves could be given over to children, elderly relatives or even rented out as a self-contained property. It was much easier for me to see how all the rooms could be used in each of these scenarios.

The main space in the main part of the house was, again, the most impressive space. This time I took the photo from the far end of the living area which ran up to the first partial partition, the dining area next and the kitchen area at the far end with the units behind an island that ran almost the full width of the room. Add to this views of the garden on both sides and it was a living space that was both practicable and pretty.

I had already been a fan of Huf Hauser for many years and this visit just made me a bigger one.

Joining the Kingston Conversation

Kingston Conversation was a series of meetings held with the public by the Leader of the Council, Cllr. Kevin Davis, and as somebody who is active politically and locally it was very much the sort of event for me.

The logistics were not ideal, i.e. I had a ticket for the Wales v Australia game at Twickenham that afternoon, but the 10am start and convenient location (Tudor Drive Library Hall) meant that I could get there.

The event started with a flood of old memories as the only other times that I had been to that hall was to take and collect toddlers from the playgroup there. They are now in their twenties.

While billed as a conversation the format was more Q&A, which I guess it was always going to be with about sixty people there. Kevin Davis started the session of with a short introduction on the changes facing Kingston, most of which had been said several times in several places so was not new and then he and a small panel of other councillors fielded our questions.

As usual I took notes of what was asked, what was said and what I thought at the time and I have restructured and added to those while writing this up. So none of this is attributable and all mistakes are mine.

Communicating with the public

Kevin Davis (KD) wants to improve communication with residents and while this series of meetings was welcome it could only reach a very small percentage of the public.

The recent whole-borough survey had had a good response by the standard of most surveys, around 8% I think, but was still a low number and the nature of surveys is that they can get simple answers to simple questions (such as, what shampoo do you use?) but are not very good at dealing with more complex matters (such as, how should Kingston grow?).

With the decline of local newspapers and Councils being forbidden to produce their own it is hard for them to engage with the public and that leads to bad decisions being made and reasonable decisions being explained badly.

Growth in Kingston

Kingston Council (RBK) seems to be saying two stories about growth simultaneously, one that it is being forced on us by the London Plan and two that is something that RBK is campaigning hard for.

Nobody has told us why Kingston has been identified in the London Plan for significant growth despite its physical constraints (Royal Parks and the river) and weak transport infrastructure. I suspect that RBK councillors had a large part to play in this but they are keeping quiet about it now.

Growth is a positive word and that helps to mask the negative aspects such as lost space, changed charters and even busier trains, buses and roads. It is difficult to see what the benefits of this growth will be to the existing residents of Kingston.

The large number of new homes that we keep being told about is only a target and there will be no sanctions if it is not met.

Major changes are being considered to accommodate this growth, such as moving the bus and railway stations and remodelling some of the main roads.

Growth does not necessarily mean more tall buildings and we may even lose some of the ugly ones that we already have. There was some debate on whether there should be a planning document specific to tall buildings. KD was against the idea because it could encourage developers to build to the limits, e.g. if we say a maximum of nine storeys in the town centre then everything will be exactly nine storeys. I would hope that we could develop a plan with some flexibility that would cope with this.

The good news?

Almost all of the questions raised issues around the negative aspect of growth, e.g. over-crowded trains and a lack of school places, and while that is understandable it did beg the big question, what is in it for us?

One person asked just that and the answer was Crossrail 2, regeneration of the council housing stock and transformation (!) of sports and leisure. So there was some good news for some people but none of those benefits were particularly attractive to me; I want some small theatres and for RBK to make more of our heritage assets.

There were some fine words from RBK on heritage but the evidence is against them. We have recently lost the Penny School and the TOPO scheme would smother the Post Office and Telephone Exchange.

Transforming Kingston Council

Kevin Davis said that the budgets cuts on the way would have a dramatic impact on RBK and it would be no longer possible to just implement across the board marginal cuts, the Council would have to think about stopping doing somethings altogether, e.g. the discretionary services like Libraries.

RBK is also looking for more revenue generation ideas but, for some reason, did not seem that keen on collecting more traffic penalties even though these are justifies penalties, i.e. somebody has done something wrong, and the alternatives, like paying more for council services, are more like general taxation.

One of the cost-cutting measures going through is the closure of all of the council's care homes as the private sector is cheaper. That worried me on two grounds; care not cost should be the driving factor and RBK needs to ask why the private sector is cheaper. If, as I suspect, they are cheaper because they pay their staff less then that is a problem for Kingston as we want care workers who are paid enough to be able to live here.

The final part of the meeting took me right back to working at Lambeth Council ten years ago with RBK extolling the virtues of shared services and promising to break down silos. Not only are these old ideas, they are bad ideas. Shared services only work when there are economies of scale and very few council services have this, e.g. one teacher is needed for every class of 30 infants, and silos cannot, and should not, be broken as that is where skills and domain knowledge grow.

RBK are promising transformation but they sounded very naive and gave me no confidence that they had the slightest idea of what transformation looks like or how to achieve it.

Kingston Heritage Open Days 2015

The Kingston Heritage Open Days (HODs) are a major event for the Kingston upon Thames Society and this year I volunteered again to guide people around The Guildhall. "Guide" is probably too strong a word as I did little more that usher them from one room to the next and I relied on the objects to tell their own stories, luckily most of the exhibits on the walls were well labelled.

There were several parts to the short tour. The Guildhall was built in 1935 and is typical of that period. Kingston Council has maintained the period features over the years, I suspect more because they did not want to spend money updating the building than because they wanted to retain the heritage, and so the building itself was a significant part of the tour.

One of the rooms I took the visitors was the Council Chamber where the historical crest combined nicely with the ceiling light.

The main part of The Guildhall tour was the visit to the Mayor's Parlour. This was a room steeped in history, including the ceremonial mace, and interesting objects gifted to the Council over the years. We also had the current Deputy Mayor, Councillor Mary Clark, as our host and the official Mace Bearer, Brian, as our expert on the history of the Council and all the objects in the room.

Brian's talk and explanation of the objects brought the history of the Royal Borough to life. It was fascinating even though I had heard it before.

In the grounds of The Guildhall was the Coronation Stone which commemorates the crowning of Saxon kings in Kingston. The stone probably does not date back to that time but it is old.

Pictures inside The Guildhall show the stone in its original location a few meters away in what is now the middle of the main road. At first people and horses could easily move around it, then it became a mini-roundabout and finally the increasing volume of traffic meant that it had to be moved to its current location.

Before The Guildhall was built the Town Council (as it was then) met in the Market House which survives as the centre-piece of the Ancient Market. Looking down on the market was the golden statue of Queen Anne.

Kingston owes its existence to river crossings and when John Lewis was being build just over 25 years ago evidence of a previous bridge was found just downstream from the current one. John Lewis Partnership have been good custodians of the remains and these were open to the public for HODs.

The former Bentalls shop (now the Bentalls Centre) was designed by the same architect, Maurice Webb, who designed The Guildhall and he took Hampton Court as his inspiration. When the Bentalls Centre was build the original facade was retained, and it is easy to see why.

Out of Order is Kingston's most famous work of art and probably its most famous landmark. It is often used as the symbol for the town on postcards etc. I love it.

Aviation played a large part in Kingston's history and Sopwith had his main factory just north of the town centre until the company moved about a mile north to Ham. Sadly both sites are now housing (I live in one of them!) but some of the ancillary buildings survive. This one is in Canbury Park Road and is now the home to the marvellous BalletBoyz. It's a wonderful space put to wonderful use.

In another room was an exhibition on Kingston's aviation history that was packed with informative display boards, evocative photographs, models and paintings, and enthusiastic people. Kingston's aviation history is something that people are interested in and want to learn more about. The exhibition deserves a permanent home.

Kingston Heritage Open Days were a lot of fun for me and I was pleased to see so many other people taking part. I guess we will be doing HODs again next year.

Warren House on Kingston Hill gets arty

Warren House on Kingston Hill makes its money these days as a venue for conferences, weddings and other special events and that means that a lot of attention is paid to make the garden something to be enjoyed over a glass of wine and also a perfect background for photographs.

There are various gardens within the garden to suit different moods and occasions and while none of them are very large they are all pretty and have interesting things in them. The collection of gardens is made more interesting by their contrasts and I always like moving between and through them. The sunken garden is a particular delight of mine simply because it is hidden away below an ornate wall.

Next to the house is a small Italianate garden with a cute water feature. This had a new addition this year with some birds flying above the water. This was one of the several works of art that had been added throughout the garden since my previous visit and it was fun discovering them all.

The side garden, which was never really part of the main garden, was closed for a serious makeover that will bring it up to the standard of the others. Seeing the new garden will give me a good excuse to go back to Warren House the next time the gardens are open. Not that I need an excuse.

Matthew's Manifesto for the Kingston upon Thames Society

When I took over as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society in January I agreed to give a talk to one of our monthly public meetings about what I wanted to do in my new role and circumstances dictated that I would do this at the very next meeting in February!

This was challenging for a couple of reasons, it did not give me much time to get my thoughts together and I had already committed to giving another talk a couple of days later that also need quite a bit of preparation.

I managed to find an afternoon to work on this the weekend before I had to give it and after some juggling with ideas I was pleased with the structure that emerged. I knew most of the things that I wanted to say but the trick was to say them in the right order (and in the right way) to make a coherent and relevant story.

I started with just a few words about myself that were relevant to my new role, followed that with a few examples of places and building that I liked (a good excuse to dig out some holiday pictures) and then a few comments on what I found good, bad or indifferent about Kingston. Having set the context I then explained how I saw the role of the Society, how this could develop and what we would need to do to achieve that.

As is my strong preference, my slides had few words and as many pictures as possible. They were more there for my benefit, to remind me what to talk about, than to give the audience something to look at.

So, using the simple prompt "I moved to Kingston in '87" I was able to talk about why I chose Kingston, why that area and that house, and how I came to be a member of the Society soon after moving here.

I explained that a big influence on the way that I plan to operate as Chairman is my work, training and natural inclination for the structures approach of Management Consultancy, and this presentation was an example of that. Later I would say more about People, Process and Technology.

I made the section on some of the places and buildings that I like a little quiz and asked the audience is they recognised the places. There were a lot of correct shouts for Bruges and Portmeirion but nobody knew the amazing Python Bridge in Amsterdam.

The point of this part of the talk was to highlight the things that I like to see when travelling that could be applied to Kingston. I like exploring cities and finding little squares with fountains, or well designed public square or quirky buildings, and I like trams.

As a resident of Kingston I wanted to be able to have the sort of day out there that I have had in places like Hannover, Antwerp and Girona. That meant lots of interesting places well connected to each other.

I said some more about this in a quick summary of my thoughts on Kingston though my score on the good, bad and indifferent at 5, 2, 1 was probably more positive than I felt about the town.

Again the pictures allowed me to say more than just the words on the slide so when saying what I did not like about Kingston Station I mentioned the lack of routes and the way that the station is surrounded by the relief road so getting to or from it any any direction requires crossing several lanes of traffic where the lights are all phased to ease the flow of traffic to the hindrance of pedestrians.

Having set the context, I then talked about the purpose and activities of the society. I said that I think the Society is here to: Protect the things we like about Kingston, Celebrate them so that they can be appreciated by more people, which in turn helps their protection, and Enhance Kingston to make it a better place to live.

I had evolved the Protect/Celebrate/Enhance framework some time ago and this was the first chance that I had used it in anger and it lived up to the task. I used it to structure the activities that we already did and to show some of the additional things that I would like us to try, e.g. protect more through listing Assets of Community Value, celebrate more by arranging more visits and enhancing more by supporting relevant community projects.

Identifying things to do was the easy part, the hard part was working out how to do them, and the only way was to use more resources from within the Society or from other organisations.

The Management Consultant in me wanted to use the word "stakeholder" but I think that I managed to avoid it.

Having identified the main groups of people that we deal with I then went through each of them in turn suggesting how I thought we could work better with them. For example, we could do far more with our members than send them one email a month and invite them to one meeting. I said that I would like us to have more meetings of more sorts in more places, e.g. a semi-formal meeting in Tolworth to review plans for the former government offices site or a social gathering in New Malden to discuss local issues.

People was a large part of my manifesto but Process was significant too.

I closed the presentation with the summary, Matthew’s Manifesto means building our own capacity and using that of other groups so that we can do more things, improving our ways of working so that we can do things better and, above all, it means communication, dialogue and co-operation.

You can read the presentation on slideshare.

We then went in to an extended Q&A session that, I felt, worked very well. The questions showed that the members had understood what I was saying and were broadly supportive of it while understanding that it would be difficult to achieve. The questions were mixed and detailed and I enjoyed answering them, or rather participating in the conversations that followed.

I went into the lion's den confident on what I wanted to say but with some trepidation on how it would be received and I was delighted with the response that I got. I know it is not going to be easy making these changes to the Society but at least I know that a good number of our members are happy with the direction I am taking.

My next "state of the nation" address will be at the AGM in January 2016 and it will be interesting to see how much progress has been made by then.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: January 2015

January's Kingston upon Thames Society Committee Meeting was fairly typical with internal affairs to consider as well as some planning applications.

The main points of the Annual General Meeting had been settled previously but there were several smaller details to sort out, such as who was going to provide the drinks and nibbles. I offered to issue a press release about the meeting but given the recent history with the local papers I was not expecting it to be published. That was one of the many things that I wanted us to work on in the following year.

The first step in this year's Heritage Open Days (HODs) was to apply to Kingston Council for a small grant for the printing of the brochure. I explained that although HODs was a Borough-wide activity we had to apply to one of the Neighbourhood Committees and would apply to Kingston as most of the HODs properties were there. After a short discussion it was agreed that we should keep things simple and apply for the same as last year and not go for anything additional like posters.

We discussed possible speakers for our Public Meetings. February (Andrew Sutherland on the former Surbiton Police Station) and March (the new Chairman) had already been confirmed. We were hoping to get a speaker on Parkleys and on the new proposal for New Malden.

Our finances were alright but falling year-on-year meaning that they will need to be addressed at some point. Some of the ideas that will be considered by the new committee after the AGM include more visits and some socials. This is in addition to the proposal to charge non-members a nominal sum for attending our Public Meetings that will be voted on at the AGM.

The Old Post Office

We had arranged to meet with the developer the following Monday. There would be another exhibition on at The Old Post Office before then which most of us would visit to get the latest on the development.

We had also been ploughing through the planning application as well and the visual impact assessments had proved to be the most interesting, and controversial.

We were a little sceptical of the way that some of the views had been presented as these seemed to be chosen from vantage points that best suited the developer. I agreed to write to the Council to ask how the vantage points were chosen.

Mini-Holland

The first tranche of work under the mini-Holland was due to go to the Infrastructure, Projects and Contracts Committee the following day. Out of a total of some £30m, about £13m was to be allocated and of that £6m was for the Kingston Station scheme.

We were keen to find out more about the proposals and the way that they would be approved. These were likely to be through traffic orders rather than a planning application so this would be an unfamiliar process for us.

I agreed to write to the Council to establish what the process and timetable would be.

University Town House

We had had a presentation on the University Town House in May and the planning application had been in one of the recent weekly planning lists. Howard had circulated some comments by email and these had been held to allow for a discussion at committee.

The new scheme was broadly the same as that we had seen in May but was one storey lower and the interior space had been remodelled to reduce the amount of circulatory space.

I took yet another action, this time to submit our comments on the proposal.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: October 2014

October's Kingston upon Thames Society Committee Meeting started to address the wave of significant planning applications that we knew were coming.

As always, these are my personal notes of the meeting, they do not cover everything that we discussed, I've reordered the items, I've added some additional comments, and they are my views (and errors), not the Committee's.

Student Accommodation

The very brief summary of the Society's meeting with the University was that they were unable to provide accommodation for their students and they had to rely on the private suppliers to do this but they are not generally happy with what is being proposed. They have objected to some schemes, such as that in the High Street, on the grounds of their unsuitability.

We accepted the need for student accommodation, and welcomed the freeing up of former family homes that could happen as a result, but had concerns about some of the locations and the quality of some of the proposals.

With the University playing no role in the location, size and number of student blocks this was left to RBK to decide through the planning process.

I offered to write to RBK to establish which policies they had on this.

Heritage Opens Days (HODs)

HODs had gone well with more places open and more visitors.

The later closing date for submissions (set nationally) had caused us a problem with getting the leaflet out in time and we will take this as a lesson learnt for next year.

Organising the Committee

We discussed the yearly calendar that I had prepared. The initial purpose of this was to schedule the Townscape awards so that we allowed proper time for consultations with members and to make the final formal decision in Committee, but I had added to this and had included all of the Society's activities (Public Meetings, HODs, Newsletter, etc.) to try and show how they could all hang together. This was based on similar calendars that I had developed for The Mount Primary School and for the British Czech and Slovak Association when I was on their governing bodies.

This was generally well received and it was left to the new Committee that would be formed in January to use and enhance it. I was happy with that.

The pursuit of a new Chairman had produced a few names but only one of them felt that they could commit themselves sufficiently to the job. And that was me. So I'll be the Committee's nomination for Chairman at the AGM in January, other nominations may be made.

Section 4 Changes

RBK were proposing to ask the Government for permission to require proposed conversions from commercial to residential in some areas, e.g. town centres, to require planning permission. A recent government change had removed this requirement and while the change was seen as useful way in bringing some empty buildings back in to use it also meant that some commercial areas could lose facilities, especially the sort of small offices required by start-ups, to the detriment of the local economy.

The proposed change would not stop the conversions, it would simply require them to seek planning permission so that each could be assessed on their own merits.

We agreed to support RBK's proposal though we were sceptical over their chances of getting it approved by the Government.

Tesco site in Tolworth

Having given up on the idea of building a supermarket on the site of the Former Government Offices site in Tolworth, Tesco were now consulting on a large residential-led scheme.

The most obvious feature of this is the large tower, mirroring the famous Tolworth Tower on the other side of the A3.

This was only an initial consultation and so we only made some broad comments. We will go in to the scheme in more detail in the next stage of the consultation (if there is one) and when the planning application is submitted.

We felt that residential use was appropriate for the site, were happy with the tower and we liked the open spaces between the blocks. We wanted the site to have good access to public transport (Tolworth Station was on the edge of the site but buses needed to be considered too) and we also wanted the public provision to include a school.

The members of the Committee were to send me their comment on the proposal so that I could respond on behalf of the Society.

Tolworth Girls' School (14/10306)

Tolworth Girls' School was an unusual site, as the map shows.

It sat on the north side of the A3 which automatically meant that traffic would be an issue.

The site itself had three zones; the school (grey) was next to Fullers Way North which provided access to the site, the playing fields (green) sat behind the school, and the area of land bounded by industry and housing (yellow) had been left unused for several years and it had a distinctly unloved look when compared to the managed playing fields adjoining it.

The school was proposing to make some changes to the school buildings and to pay for this by selling of the unused area of the fields for housing.

We had mixed view on this but after some healthy, and polite, discussion we reached a consensus.

The changes to the school buildings consisted of demolishing some parts and building others. We agreed that a popular school should be allowed to expand and that selling (genuinely) surplus land, while regrettable, was an appropriate way of funding this.

Our concern was with the proposal for the new housing.

This would bring extra traffic on to Fullers Way North which already had a traffic problem due to it's access from the A3. We did not like the way that the access road to the housing was a narrow track that curved around the school. We were concerned that this would be the only access road to the site which would put it at risk of being isolated if there was, for example, an incident in Fullers Way North. We would rather have seen either the existing access Chaffinch Close used or a new access route built through to Selbourne Avenue.

We also felt that the developer was being a little greedy and was over-packing the site.

I took the action to submit our views to RBK.

Ashley Motors, Penhryn Road (11/12942)

This was a proposal to demolish an existing garage and replace it with a block of student accommodation.

As the site was adjacent to the University we agreed that student accommodation was an appropriate use for the site.

We also quite liked the look of the building.

But we did not like the scale of it, both the height and the bulk were significantly out of scale with its immediate neighbours, as this elevation shows.

We agreed to oppose this application on the grounds of over development of the site.

The Old Post Office

This was the second round of consultation on The Old Post Office site, following the first public consultation in July.

We discussed the scheme only briefly as the developers, St. George, were presenting at our Public Meeting later that week and we would have the opportunity to comment and ask questions then.

The one comment that I did make was that much of the publicity focused on the small public space in the north-west corner of the site and, while this looked reasonable, I was concerned about the dense, impenetrable and tall housing proposed for most of the site.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: September 2014

September's Kingston upon Thames Society Committee Meeting led me to one very significant insight (I think!) and we covered some other useful ground too.

Cycling

The topic of the proposed changes to cycling provision funded by the Mayor's Mini-Holland scheme continued to excite the Committee. A letter had been drafted to the Council calling for the emphasis to be put on safety measures like repairing pot-holes but this had not yet been sent because of internal procedural matters (e.g. holidays).

There had been a story in the Surrey Comet about a possible short-fall in funding, apparently RBK wanted to spend £41m having agreed a budget of £34m with TfL having originally bid for £30m. This increased the uncertainty over which of the suggested schemes would or would not, be included in the final proposals.

With nothing tangible to respond to we agreed to wait for RBK to announce what it was planning to do.

Public Toilets

This topic started with the refurbishment of the Market Place and had simmered at the Committee every since; having Matters Arising on the agenda can give small topics long lives. We regretted that Kingston did not follow Richmond in having a public toilet scheme, where some pubs, cafes and shops open the toilets to public use, but did not propose any specific action.

New Quaker House

The visit to the new Quaker House on Fairfield had gone well and had won over some doubters to the merits of the building. Actress Sheila Hancock was said to be the star of the day.

The committee

The Committee has somebody responsible for administering the membership, e.g. collecting subscriptions, but nobody was responsible for growing our membership or for making sure that they got the service that they wanted.

It was agreed that we would look to appoint somebody to this role when the new committee was formed after the AGM in January.

We also discussed the appointment of a new Chairman. Some nominations and suggestions had been made by members and these were still coming in. The next steps to be taken would depend on the number of viable candidates and one options, that I strongly favoured, was to ask the candidates to put their case to our membership at the AGM who would then make the decision.

The gathering storm

A number of large planning applications were due, or overdue, and the committee was expecting to be busy over the next few months. Plans were expected for The Old Post Office, Eden Walk, Tesco Tolworth, North Kingston secondary school, Tolworth Hospital, North Kingston development zone and Tolworth Girls' School.

The planning process

The prospect of a meeting with Councillor David Cunningham, scheduled for later that week, led to a long and useful debate on how we work with the Council, officers and members.

A range of views were expressed and there was no firm consensus on how we should proceed (other than to see how the meeting with Cllr Cunningham went) but some useful ideas were generated that could lead to something meaningful later on.

This is where I had my insight. I suddenly realised that we were the experts on how the planning system in Kingston works from the residents' perspective. This meant that we were best placed to suggest improvements to the process that would help us, and everybody else, to participate in the planning process.

A range of problems with the process had been raised previously that could all be covered in this approach. These included the difficulty in finding out about applications, the poor quality of information on the planning website (e.g. out of date statuses and drawings filed as lots of documents with meaningless names), the information gap between residents (experts on their locality) and councillors (usually novices), and the very limited opportunity for residents to participate in the decision making committees.

I think that there is a real opportunity for the Society to lead in the democratisation of the end-to-end planning process in Kingston.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: August 2014

August's Kingston upon Thames Society Committee Meeting was mostly concerned with internal affairs and we made good progress on most of them.

Reviewing Planning Applications

We spent some time discussing my proposed changes to the way that we assess Planning Applications.

The main changes were to send the weekly lists to all Committee members, and some others, to give them a chance to comment on any that interested them and for the Planning Secretary (me!) to co-ordinate the Society's response from all the inputs received. The aim was to get input from people who live across the Borough and also from people with specialist skills and knowledge.

It was already recognised that time would be a constraint as the weekly lists are quite long and it would never be practicable to look at more than a few of them in any detail. The problem was working out which ones these should be.

We will also be tracking committee meetings more closely to see when key applications are coming up for discussion.

Development Control Committee

I gave some feed back in the previous Development Control meeting which had approved both variants of the Latchmere House proposal and also the controversial fortress on the former gas holders site.

I described the meeting as laughably bad as these meetings floundered to make a decision without the key information available, i.e. a map of the new access road for Latchmere House and in-context pictures of the fortress to show the impact of its height.

I will be asking the Society to follow up on this as bad decision making leads to bad decisions.

Cycling

We discussed a proposed letter to RBK re how some of the mini-Holland money should be spent. As usual when we discuss cycling I was something of a lone voice defending the rights of lycra-clad louts to mow down pensioners, or that is how it seemed.

In the end we got some words that while I did not agree with I was happy for them to be sent under the Society's name.

New Chairman

Our efforts to find a new Chairman were not proceeding that smoothly and every name suggested to date had attracted some strong opposition.

After some discussion it was agree that we would write to all our members asking for their suggestions, which could include nominating themselves.

Public Meetings and Visits

There was a full programme of activities lined up with a visit to the new Quaker Centre in August and the monthly Public Meetings starting again in September. An additional meeting had been scheduled for 10 December because of the number of topics that we wanted to cover.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: July 2014

July's Kingston upon Thames Society Committee Meeting was mostly concerned with finding a new Chairman and the process we follow for assessing Planning Applications.

New Chairman

With Jennifer having announced that this would be her last year as Chairman, the Committee had started the process of looking for a new one. It was generally agreed that we should seek somebody from outside of the current Committee to bring a new viewpoint to our work.

It was also hoped that we could attract somebody already active in the public realm locally so that they could use their existing contacts to help to promote the Society's views and to raise our profile. One potential source was the councillors who had recently lost their seats in the local elections. Some specific names were mentioned (but I am not going to name them here) but no obvious candidate emerged.

All of the Committee were charged with coming back with ideas at the next meeting.

Assessing Planning Applications

I presented a proposed process for assessing Planning Applications. The main changes from the old one was that the Weekly Lists from Kingston Council would be sent to all Committee members and certain individuals would be responsible for identifying applications worth considering according to their local or professional knowledge.

In my new role as Planning Secretary it would be my duty to manage the activity rather than to be the main commentator. Planning Applications would be managed from initial assessment through to final decision. Previously we had sometimes lost sight of applications after we had made our comments and we did not know whether they had been accepted, rejected or withdrawn.

I also wanted to do more publicity on our decisions. This could include, for example, notices to our members, announcements on our website, Facebook and Twitter, or press releases.

The broad idea was approved and it was accepted that a lot of the detail will fall out of actually trying it. Things that had yet to be resolved included the use of paper copies of the plans and the possible need for separate meetings to consider applications.

Other business

A visit had been arranged to the new Quaker House.

The Gas Holders' site came up again in response to correspondence received from the public. This generated some heat but no action. The letter on the original (taller) application stood and no response was made on the revised application.

It was decided that we would not as a Society comment on the current consultations on Eden Walk, Ashdown Road Car Park and New Malden but Committee members were encouraged to comment individually.

It was agreed that a priority for the mini-Holland scheme should be safety and a letter to this effect was to be drafted for consideration at the next meeting.

There was some dissatisfaction with the way that the Ancient Market had turned out but it was agreed that there was no need for immediate action and that we would continue to monitor the situation.

Consulting on the future of the Eden Walk site

Eden Walk forms a significant part of Kingston's shopping centre so any changes there are of interest to anybody who cares about Kingston. Anybody like me.

The site currently is something of a disjointed mess and even the best bits look old and tired. The owners are aware of this and are consulting on making substantial changes. I attended their exhibition to find out what they are proposing.

I was pleased to see this map showing Eden Walk in context with the rest of Kingston. The blue areas are those that Eden Walk wants to connect to. Anything that improves the permeability of the centre of Kingston is a good thing.

The people running the consultation were keen to find out what sort of shops and facilities I wanted to see in the new centre and I had to explain that I rarely went there and could not remember when I last bought something there. That was another clue that Eden Walk needed a revamp.

The plans for the future were, I was told, very much up for grabs, including what could be demolished and/or built but there was an artists impression of the sort of thing that could be coming. The obvious features are that it was far more open and also taller.

Eden Walk is in a part of Kingston with little architectural or historical merit so, frankly, I do not care too much what goes there and I would much rather that tall buildings were kept to the centre than allowed to creep in to North Kingston.

It also looks as though Eden Walk will become another destination in the town, rather than just a collection of shops, and that is a good thing.

Consulting on the future of The Old Post Office site

The Old Post Office, and the Ashdown Road Car Park is another significant site in the centre of Kingston that is scheduled for redevelopment. It has only recently been bought by St George and they are already consulting on what they will do with the site.

The consultation included an exhibition in The Old Post Office (though a later addition to it) and I went along to see it. I was quite impressed in both the amount of work St George had done on the history of the site, I did not know that a prison was built on the site back in 1692, and the willingness of their staff to engage meaningfully with visitors.

I also liked their Design Principles. Not only is this the right way to do things (principles first and then the specifics) but the principles were good too.

Kingston needs more destinations and these need to be connected.

The basic plan was simple, almost to the point of being unimaginative, but that simplicity served its purpose. The Old Post Office would be restored and be the heart of a new public space while on the south of the site, next to the main road, would be the housing that would pay for it all.

The artists impression gives some idea of what could come and I approve. It reminded me of the little market house that I discovered in Brussels earlier in the year that was a vibrant and welcoming place.

The two caveats to watch out for were the possible height of the housing and the difficulty in connecting the site to the rest of the town when it is on the other side of the main bus route.

The planning application should be ready towards the end of the year and I am actually looking forward to it.