Kingston Society: Trams and Trolley Buses

I have always been a heavy user and a fan of public transport so a Kingston Upon Thames Society public meeting on the local transport history was unmissable.

I was not entirely sure what to expect in terms of the range and depth of the topics covered and in the end I was slightly disappointed in both, we did not get much of an insight on when trams are a better option than buses and we did not see the details of the various plans for tram/light railway proposals that had been discussed over the years.

However, it was interesting to hear about the proposed schemes, some of which I had not been aware of previously despite my ongoing-interest in local issues over the last forty years or so.

The Q&A session was good too, bringing up topics (like trams v buses) and details of old routes that had not been covered in the main talk.

It also got me thinking more about trams and where they could be used locally and in doing so I thought a lot about Prague which has an excellent public transport system of buses, trams and metro (I lived there for a while so know the transport infrastructure well).

The speaker seemed to approaching the issue with the idea that all trams are good and we should have lots more of them but we need to think about where they could apply in London which has extensive Rail, Underground and bus networks.

The big advantage trams have over buses is that they run separate from other traffic while buses are in that traffic and run slowly with frequently delays as a result.  This puts trams in direct conflict with cars which is probably why politicians are against them.

Clearly trams provide the same sort of services as trains, for example when I go to Wimbledon (which is several times a month) I catch a train from Norbiton. I could catch a 57 bus but that is much slower. That means trams only really make sense where there is no equivalent rail or underground options and as these are both extensive networks in London that means the gaps to be filled need some work to identify.

These gaps are covered by buses, even if changes are required, so what we are looking for is routes that are busy enough to justify the capacity and long enough to justify a faster option with fewer stops.

I am not sure what information TfL has to help them to plan things like this as (as far as I am aware) they only count when people get on buses and so they do not know how long individual journeys are. For example, on the 65 route do they know how many people travel from Kingston beyond Richmond. 

The obvious place to look for gaps in the network for trams is radial routes where these do not currently exist. TfL is obviously aware of this and the Supper Loop bus is part of their solution.

Looking closer to home, I am struggling to find a need for trams in Kingston which, thanks to an accident of history, has a radial route of sorts that goes to places like Richmond, Twickenham, New Malden and Wimbledon.

North of Kingston is a different story but while I might like an easy route to places like Hayes or Wembley I would be surprised if there were enough people like me to justify laying tracks.

While this speculation is fun there is very little prospect of any significant transport projects in Kingston because there is no real problem that needs solving.

My final act as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society

It was not an easy decision to make but after a year as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society I descided to resign.

The reason was simple, there were many things that I wanted to do as Chairman but I had not found the time to do them and had, on more occasions than I would have liked, had not even found the time to do some of the basic things like setting agendas and reviewing minutes.

My final act was my report to the AGM and that was another symptom of the lack of time (and/or my ability to manage it) in that instead of reading a typed report I made some quick notes in the pub immediately before the meeting.

These were only a guide and I said a lot more than is written there. One of my colleagues in the audience took notes and from these wrote up the report that I should have written. Thanks, David.

I am pleased to say that it was well received.

I have since done a grant application (it is mentioned in the report) and that asked for a copy of our last annual report and this was the closest thing that we had to it so I took David's notes and added to them slightly. This is the final report, my final act as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society.

Chairman's Report for 2015

Matthew Rees opened his report by saying that was not standing for re-election because of pressure of his full-time work which meant that he had not been able to devote as much time to the role as he had hoped and the role deserved.

He intended to still actively support the Society as manager of its website and would be involved with Julia Rees in the running of Heritage Open Days.

Planning Applications

In his review of the Committee’s scrutiny of planning applications, Matthew thanked Howard Shepherd for his timely and professional contributions.

While mixed views had been expressed on some of the applications, a consensus whether or not to give support generally had been obtained, sometimes after lengthy discussions. There had been several major schemes to consider during the year.

The Old Post Office (TOPO) application had taken up much of the Committee’s time and in Matthew’s view, while the latest revision of the plans was an improvement, the 16-storey tower block was still too tall.

The Eden Walk proposals were good in many respects, and the developers had put a lot of skill and effort in producing the proposals, but he felt that the buildings also were too tall and too massive for the site.

The Committee generally had supported Tesco’s proposals for the old government buildings site at Tolworth as housing was an appropriate use for the disused site but now that a new owner was involved, its future was unclear.

While the proposals for the Tolworth Tower area generally had gained the support of the Committee on architectural grounds, it was steadfast in its opinion that RBK needed to address the very real concerns of local residents.

Mixed views had been expressed on RBK’s ongoing Mini-Holland proposals, especially on the Boardwalk project, and it remained to be seen what the final scheme would be like.

Members

A wide range of public meetings had been organized in 2015, and Jennifer Butterworth’s efforts on this were much appreciated.

He felt that the modification to the format to allow more time for discussion with members had been a success though that did not mean agreement was always reached and there had been some robust debates, particularly over the Tolworth sites. Matthew welcomed this as he wanted more people to be more engaged with what was happening in Kingston.

He also welcomed the emails that he had got from members during the year either to comment on applications or to make suggestions for the Society.

The website had got better with more information but it had been a struggle to keep this up to date. Matthew hoped that he would have more time to do this in the coming year.

Heritage Open Days

He regretted that, because funding from RBK was not available in time, it had been impossible to produce a printed brochure for the 2015 event. Despite this, the number of people visiting the various sites was about the same as in previous years and the feedback was encouraging. Matthew hoped that a leaflet would be available for the 2016 event.

Matthew also hoped to be able to expand on HODs next year though he was not yet able to confirm what these might be.

Townscape Awards

It had been worth running the Townscape Awards again this year and six awards had been presented, following nineteen nominations from the membership. Brian Godding and George Rome Innes were to be congratulated for the great deal of effort they had put into the selection process and presentation event.

Matthew said that with the Society spending much of the year opposing large schemes that would change the character of Kingston it was good to be able to celebrate some of the good things.

Closing Remarks

Matthew thanked all the outgoing members of the Committee for their work in the past year and wished them well for the challenges they faced in trying to protect the Borough from inappropriate developments.

He said that his main concern was that lots of extra housing and shopping was proposed which would bring more people in to the main centres but no new  infrastructure was proposed to accommodate this. A lot of hope was being put in Crossrail2 but that had limited scope and was many years away. There were also things like schools and hospitals to consider.

These major developments did little to accommodate the needs of existing residents. They provided no new facilities for them and were changing the character of the Royal Borough, which is the reason most of us moved here in the first place. 

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.

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.

Discussing 2050 Infrastructure and Transport Developments at the London Forum

One of the groups that the Kingston upon Thames Society is affiliated to is the London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies who, amongst other things, hold some interesting events.

The event on 2050 Infrastructure and Transport Developments interested me both as a heavy user of all forms of public transport across London and as somebody interested in the future of London and of Kingston within that. Relatively poor transport is one of Kingston's enduring problems, particularly when compared to neighbouring Richmond and Wimbledon both of which have main-line trains and the tube with Richmond also having London Overground and Wimbledon the Tramlink.

The presentation was given by two officers of TfL, Geoff Hobbs talked about tracks and Helen Cansick about roads. In opening the talk Geoff also talked about how London's growth is anticipated to fuel demand for journeys and the set of plans that respond to this. The key document (for this meeting) was the London 2050 Infrastructure Plan, which was also the furthest looking of the current documents.

I found Geoff's presentation on tracks (tube, railways and trams) very informative and was only saved from the task of taking mountain of notes with the promise of a copy of the presentation afterwards.

It was a story that ranged widely in time (today to 2050) and geography (Zone 1 to Brighton). The overwhelming impression was that an awful lot was being done and more would carry on being done for some years.

The chart below summarises the line modernisation programme.

The main work being done was on signalling to allow more trains to be in service at the same time and so to increase the capacity. This was all very good, and needs to be done, but once it has been done the ability to get more throughput on the existing lines will be severely reduced. And the increased capacity only, at best, matched the anticipated growth and so would do little to ease the severe overcrowding that we already have; it will just stop things from getting worse. At some point we are going to need more tracks somewhere.

Geoff talked about potential new projects, such as Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo Line extension to the south, which would provide more tracks but only a few.

Helen had less to say on roads but that was understandable. We are more or less stuck with the roads that we have and their is limited scope to remodel them.

I liked the way that she structured a lot of her talk about one particular problem, the morning peak, and the various kinds of measures that could be used to manage this.

The first thing to note is that, as with the tracks, is that this is a stand-still plan, i.e. the aim is to stop the morning congestion from getting any worse despite the growth in journeys, not to reduce the current congestion.

This section of the talk was rich with ideas some of which were no more than that and many of which would have uncertain impact on traffic. The plan was to try lots of things and see which ones worked best. For example, freight traffic in the morning is an issue and things that could be tried to address this are to limit the times that deliveries can be made and to consolidate deliveries to an area being made by multiple suppliers to multiple destinations (i.e. to solve the tricky m:m problem when the 1:m and m:1 problems are easy).

After the talks, and the first long round of applause, Geoff and Helen fielded our questions and they both impressed me with their knowledge (there was none of the usual, "I'll get back to you on that one") and with their enthusiasm for the subject.

The question time ran for quite a while before the curfew fell with many hands still in the air, and then there was another long round of well deserved applause.

The talks were excellent but I was left concerned that the ambition of the plans was to maintain current levels of congestion and that there was little in any of this for the residents of Kingston.

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.

Kingston Society Public Meeting: RBK issues and challenges

The Kingston upon Thames Society Public Meeting in June saw Viv Evans, the recently appointed Head of Planning and Transport at the Royal Borough, give us his views on current issues and priorities.

After a good and well received talk he then spent a lot of time answering the many questions from the floor. There were some arguments over some of what he said but there were none on his knowledge, honest statements on how we saw things or his willingness to engage with the audience. It was an excellent session, even if we did not always like what he said.

What follows is a mix of stuff from the talk, the Q&A and my subsequent thoughts. None of this is attributable to Viv, RBK or the Kingston Society. The mistakes are all mine.

Shopping

Kingston wants to remain a top retail destination. It is currently one of the top thee retail destinations in London and one of the top ten in the country. It faces threats both from new centres, particularly the Westfield coming to Croydon, and from the ageing and tired looking parts of Kingston, e.g. the Eden Walk Shopping Centre. Doing nothing is not an option while other centres, e.g. Guildford and Woking, are making improvements.

There are several major opportunity sites that are due to be developed in the next year or two and most of these are close to Kingston town centre. RBK is trying to address these as one programme under the Kingston Futures umbrella.

Consultations on Ashdown Road (The Old Post Office) and Eden Walk are due to start in a few weeks.

Transport

Kingston is dominated by the car. This means that busy roads bisect the centre and that pedestrians and cyclists are always given a lower priority. This makes it harder to move around the town. This despite the fact that cycling is more popular in Kingston than it is generally across London, though this may be distorted by the presence of Richmond Park.

Mini-Holland is bringing in a minimum of £30m to improve cycling facilities across the Borough. Most of the attention has fallen on the proposed pontoon, which most people hate but I like, but it is important to remember that this is just one of many schemes in the project.

A major traffic and transport study is under-way.

Planning policies and procedures

Some town plans are getting out of date, the are around 6 years old and a lot of changes have been made nationally in that time.

RBK has no policy on building heights and does not have a dedicated conservation officer, though some staff have had training in this.

Housing

RBK aims for 60% affordable housing, usually gets 35%, sometimes only 16%.

Most of the new student accommodation is used by students who commute to universities in central London. Some people seemed to find this troubling but that is to ignore the fact that most of the family housing in Kingston is used by people who commute to jobs in central London.

My view

My view, which I put at the meeting, is that Kingston is continuing to push two main themes; large prestigious retail developments that pull in shoppers from far and wide plus more housing and transport to get people to live here when they work elsewhere. What is missing was much consideration of what sort of Kingston is being built for residents who spend a lot of time here not working or shopping.

Kingston needs public spaces (the refurbished Ancient Market helps but we need much more) and more leisure facilities (not just cafes!), and these all need to be easy to get to and between on foot and bike.

Lots of European cities show what can be done, e.g. Hannover, Antwerp, Bremmen, Malmo, to name just a few, but I am not convinced that Kingston is heading in that direction.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: June 2014

June's Kingston upon Thames Society Committee Meeting had a lull-before-the-storm feel about it but I still managed to pick up quite a few actions.

Committee Roles

With the recent discussion with members on What Matters to Us? there needed to be some changes to the roles of some of the Committee members as we took on a slightly wider remit rather than just focusing on planning.

A small working party of just three people was set up to come back with suggestions and I was drafted on to this.

Tall buildings

Our Chairman gave feedback on a meeting she had attended recently on the growth of tall buildings in some parts of Central London. This was related to the London's Growing Up! exhibition that I had visited.

We had a short discussion on this, with no particular objective in mind other than to watch this space. I agreed to circulate details of the exhibition to Committee members so that they had the chance to see it before it closed.

Planning our year

Some months ago I had taken the action to propose a timetable for our Townscape Awards that gave sufficient time for full involvement of members and the Committee. When I got around to doing this I went somewhat further and tried to include all of our activities, e.g. Heritage Open Days and our AGM.

The draft that I had circulated had been generally well received apart from some readability issues due to the small font and the use of colours. The key point was hat it had to be readable when printed as some people still do that.

Protected buildings lists

I had circulated the various lists of protect buildings that I had got from RBK, and had chased RBK again for details of other lists.

The Old Post Office (TOPO)

Somehow TOPO had got some funding from RBK for a leaflet on their proposed community use of this protected building which as part of the large Ashdown Road redevelopment area. It was unclear how the new owners of the site felt about the proposal.

Crossrail 2

Crossrail 2 had recently issued a revised consultation notice. From the first consultation they seemed to favour the extended route that took in Kingston and the revised options being considered this time were on northern sections of the route.

Crossrail 2 would probably only be a slight improvement for Kingston but would be a significant improvement for some other areas. When other large rail schemes are considered, such as the recent extension of London Overground and the Thameslink Programme, then Kingston looks more isolated.

Kingston Society Public Meeting: University Town House

My favourite Kingston upon Thames Society Public Meetings tend to be those where we learn about specific projects and so it was in May when Sean Woulfe, Director of Estates Delivery at Kingston University, came to tell us about the proposed new Town House on Penhryn Road.

This building was proposed to replace the "temporary" buildings that were constructed by the junction with Grove Crescent in the 1980's. This was a prominent site and called for a landmark building.

The University used a RIBA design competition as they were  keen to show their interest in quality design. The winners were Grafton Architects of Dublin whose University of Limerick School of Medicine building was short-listed for the 2013 Sterling Prize.

The University established some guiding principles for the design to follow. They wanted to remove the staff car park in front of the current building and to create a public space there which links to Grove Crescent. Staff would be encouraged to travel by public transport instead.

There was to be a permeable edge to the building with colonnades on each level. The building was also intended to be freely accessible, e.g. no swipe cards. The University was aware that some members of the public used the University buildings as a dry short-cut to/from Penrhyn Road and they were happy for this to continue.

In the centre of the building it was proposed to build a multi-purpose auditorium (not a theatre) that could be used for all sorts of events. This would be bookable by the public when not in use by the University.

Like the open entrance, the auditorium was intended to be another sign-post location that would help people to find their way around the building.

Levels 3 to 6 (the top) would house the library with access to one of the planted roofs on the 4th floor that would be a reading garden. This would be open 24x7 and would only be accessible by students and staff.

The plans for the site, particularly the floor plans were still being revised. New plans would be shown at the next public display due in July. It was expected that the pre-application stage would run from June to September with the final planning approval being given early in 2015. construction would take two years with the new building opening in 2017. The budget was around £30m.

The University was looking at the travel plans and was considering asking TfL to close one of the north-bound bus stops so that students and staff have a safe crossing place by the new entrance.

The University specified that the building must at least meet the "excellent" environment standard and they were hoping that it would be "outstanding". There would be solar (PV) panels on some of the roofs and there would also be some solar heating and a heat pump.

One design issue that had still to be fixed was the acoustic sealing for the dance studio on the first floor. With an open design (the University was keen on transparency) it was important to stop sound bleeding out of the studio. The concrete to be used throughout the building had been designed to dampen noise.

It was a very impressive presentation followed by an assured question and answer session. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into the requirements and the design of the building and this should produce a marvellous building. It is just a shame that we will have to wait until 2017 to see it.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: May 2014

May's Kingston upon Thames Society Committee Meeting got off to a bad start but it got better and in the end we reached one important decision constructively and took positive steps to improve the way that we make decisions in the future.

Twittering

The meeting got off to an odd start with me being criticised for using Twitter during the meetings much to the bemusement of the other Committee members who either had no idea how Twitter works or who could not see any problem with what I was doing. The upshot of all that was that nothing changed and we lost twenty minutes.

The Public Meeting that we had held a couple of weeks previously had suggested that we make greater use of social media to engage with our members and clearly there is a lot of work to do to make this happen.

Latchmere House

This had first come up two months previously but we had missed the opportunity to discuss it at that or the subsequent Committee Meeting and the attempt to consider the matter by email generated a lot of heat but not much consensus. Therefore it was good to be able to discuss it openly this time.

Once the bluster cleared it was obvious that there was more consensus than disagreement and we were also able to reach agreement on the contentious issue of the additional access road.

It was agree that we would write to RBK stating:

• We agreed that the site should be converted to residential use
• We thought the design of the buildings was a little unimaginative
• We liked the permeability of the site for pedestrians and cyclists
• We liked the retention and refurbishment of Latchmere House
• We were disappointed in the proportion of affordable houses in the smaller scheme
• We were against the additional road included in the larger scheme
• On balance, the smaller scheme had our support.

Hopefully next time we get an application like this the decision making will be easier!

A framework for decision making

The Latchmere House discussion and the Public Meeting on "What Matters to the Society?" led to another discussion on how we describe what it is that we do.

It was proposed (not by me!) that we revisit an outline presentation that I had prepared a few weeks earlier. This attempted to show what it is that we care about (appearance, amenity value, impact on residents, etc.) and to give some guidance on what we consider to be good and bad in each case, accepting that many decisions are subjective and so some of these guidelines would have to be quite loose.

It was also agreed that the framework should cover the development of planning policies as well as individual applications.

Previous Townscape Award winners could be used as examples of what we consider to be good design.

One of the other Committee members had already sent me some comments on the draft presentation and I agreed to consider these before issuing it again for discussion at a future meeting.

Heritage Open Days (HODs)

Good progress was being made with several sites agreeing to take part after missing out in recent years. These included Pizza Express and, hopefully, Warren House.

We were also working with Kingstonfirst on things to do with the Market Place.

Things for me to do

I agreed to circulate the list of protected buildings that I had from RBK and to chase for any additional lists they may have.

I will also circulate the statistics section of the last Development Control Committee Report.

We agreed that we wanted an elected member of RBK to be our Council representative and I said that I would write to RBK to confirm that.

I need to beef-up the "why join the Society" section of the website and the associated application form.

If possible, I should but the leaflet about the Kingstonians in Australia on our Facebook page and/or website.

Disappointing redevelopment proposed for Latchmere House

Just over a year ago I went to a public meeting on the future of the site of the former prison at Latchmere House that straddles the Kingston/Richmond border and now the application has come in. Or rather two have as the developers have submitted two similar schemes with one slightly larger than the other and with a higher proportion of affordable housing.

Frankly, they are very disappointing plans. I was worried that we might get something dull and that is exactly what is proposed. 

These are my thoughts on the various aspects of the schemes working from best to worst.

There is one good point to the schemes and that is their permeability. Good pedestrian and cycle access is proposed through the site with access points in each corner. This was proposed in the original planning brief and I am glad that the developers have taken this idea on board.

The design of the housing takes bland to a new level and this a good opportunity to do something imaginative seriously missed.

The current site has lots of green space beyond the prison walls, particularly along Latchmere Lane, and most of this will be lost to housing under both schemes. While I appreciate that developers need to make profits I do feel that they are often too greedy and build more in to the space available than suits the area. There are open green spaces on the other side of the road too and it would be a shame to lose them on this side.

The larger scheme is the more controversial as it proposes building an additional exit on to Latchmere Lane. There are several things wrong with this idea. The traffic report says that the new housing will generate less peak-time traffic than the prison did so there is no need for any additional road capacity. If another exit was required then joining on to Garth Road (which is planned to be passable to pedestrians and cyclists anyway) is a better than option than taking even more green space for another road which would join Latchmere Lane where it bends and narrows.

For reasons that I fail to understand, these views are not shared by some of my colleagues on the Kingston upon Thames Committee and it is possible that we will be supporting the larger scheme with the additional road. Obviously I am doing what I can to stop this.

Unwanted Towering Heights in North Kingston

Kingston is changing a lot and nowhere more than the corner formed between the river on the west and the railway line on the south.

Two large towers, Kingston Riverside, are already blighting Canbury Gardens and two more have been approved for Vicarage Road. While these are both exceptionally tall and unwelcome developments they are least have the advantage of being right on the edge of Kingston, by the river, and so do not impinge much on the main residential areas of North Kingston.

That is now likely to change with a new proposal for a site that had a gas holder until recently. The proposal is to build a large block of flats of up to eleven stories.

I do not like it one bit.

Even the plans submitted by the developer indicate that the building would be much taller than anything near it. What the plans do not show is that North Kingston is predominately two storey Victorian houses with some of the buildings slightly higher but nothing like as tall as this. Most of central London is not this tall.

The north-side, shown above, is slightly shorter than the east/west sides and the south is about the same so this is a large solid block. There is just one small gap in the building towards the north-east corner and that makes the building relentlessly solid.

There is no path through the site so it will be a dead zone as far as the other residents are concerned. I greatly prefer areas that are permeable, i.e. it is easy to walk through in several directions, as these bring life in to the area. This will do just the opposite.

There is a courtyard inside for the residents of the development and a "linear park" around the outside for everybody else. These look reasonable on the plans until you realise that the tall buildings will greatly restrict the light that will not only make these not particularly pleasant places to be in but will also restrict the growth of the plants.

Several residents' groups locally are fighting against the scheme, including the imaginatively named Towering Heights in North Kingston (THINK). I wish them well.

Sadly the Kingston upon Thames Society is in favour of the scheme. I do not know why.

Kingston Society Public Meeting: What Matters to Us?

April's Public Meeting of the Kingston upon Thames Society gave members and the public an opportunity to discuss what it is that the Society should concern itself with. The appearance of buildings is one thing, but what else should we be campaigning on?

The debate was very open and deliberately unstructured so rather than report it verbatim I have tried to group what I thought were the comments in to topic areas which are presented in no particular order (I think that the last one is the most important).

Neighbourhoods

We should consider all aspects of Town Planning, not just Architecture. For example, which parts of the Borough do we think are suitable for tall buildings and how tall are we happy for them to be?

Other factors to include are amenities (i.e. things people use like schools, parks, shops, pubs, etc.) and utilities (i.e. basic services like roads).

The Society should consider neighbourhoods, not just individual buildings. For example, a concentration of student accommodation can change the character of an area.

Kingston has 20,000 students but the University does not have enough accommodation for all of its Year 1 students. Therefore there will be a significant demand for additional student accommodation for some time.

Working with experts

The issue of licensing is more complex. Clearly people leaving a pub/club late has an impact on a neighbourhood (which suggests that we should get involved) but these matters are subject to formal licencing procedures which includes all stakeholders plus experts (which suggests that we do not need to get involved).

The same issue arises with expert contributions to planning applications, e.g. the specialist reports on road traffic, environment and water.

The problem is that if we go with the experts then we say nothing new and if we go against them then we risk looking stupid unless we can find something wrong in their analysis.

Covering the whole Borough

The Society covers the whole Borough but this is not reflected in the Committee which is dominated by people living in Kingston. As a result, areas like Chessington, Tolworth and Worcester Park are not well represented.

We have members across the Borough so this is local knowledge that we could call on. At the moment we have no mechanism for doing so.

Involving our members

In addition to improving our geographical coverage, involving our members more would give more clout to our contributions. Some councillors see comments made by the Society as reflecting the views of just a few members on the Committee rather than the whole membership and that means that they carry little weight.

We should try to include members more in our discussions. We could run events on specific topics, e.g. the Latchmere House proposals, or have socials where members could raise any topics that interest them.

We should try to communicate better and if we can only send one email a month then it needs to include more news items and also let members know how that can join debates, e.g. via our Facebook group.

The Heritage Open Days (HODs) are something we run on behalf of RBK and so are not aimed at recruiting new members but we could use the event more to promote the Society and membership.

The lecture hall at Tiffin is very formal and does not encourage discussion. Perhaps we should consider other venues, at least for some meetings.

Social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) could be used more to engage with members who do not wish to, or are unable to, attend meetings and who use these tools regularly.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: April 2014

April was yet another quiet month for the Committee.

This time is was quite frustrating as there were some significant planning applications that we could have discussed, such as Latchmere House and the former gas holder site in North Kingston, but the Committee was not willing to discuss them.

Instead we spent a couple of hours talking about nothing very much and, as far as I recall, we made only made one decision of any sort.

However, I did manage to acquire, or carry-forward, quite a few actions:

• Circulate the listed buildings list.
• Make websites changes suggested in the recent review.
• Develop a timetable that covers the Townscape Awards and HODs.
• Circulate some of the Latchmere House plans and say why I do not like them.
• Publicise the planned visits on the website, London Walk and Quaker Centre. Take details from latest Newsletter.
• Publicise future speakers on the website.
• Find out more about the London Skyline Campaign.

My notes from the meeting give some idea of how pointless and frustrating it was. Normally I would expand these in to paragraphs and do some research to add further details but this time I have left them as they were to show how sparse they were.

Has North Kingston student accommodation. Been deferred? Have they appealed?

What is the status of Gas Holder site (14/12215)? And why does nobody at the meeting know?

Town House, why are we discussing this, what is the status?

We don't care about closing banks!

George to object to Six Bells change of use (our one decision on the night).

The planning application for the new North Kingston school should be submitted in the Sumner with the school opening September 2015. The existing building will be retained to allow this deadline to be met.

Concerned about the finish of the market stalls, did they use untreated wood? The grain end is open to the weather and the holes will let rain in.

Kingston Society Public Meeting: Cycling in Kingston

The Kingston upon Thames Society's Public Meeting in March addressed the often controversial topic of cycling.

Originally we planned to have speakers from the Council there to talk about their plans, especially the newly funded mini-Holland programme, but they made some lame excuses at the last moment and dropped out. We decided to keep to the subject of cycling but to make it a debate instead with two of us speaking briefly at the beginning to spark the debate.

I was on first to promote cycling.

The main points that I made were:

• Cycling is a good idea and we should encourage it enthusiastically.
• Current provision in Kingston is limited, disjointed and poorly maintained – this needs to be fixed.
• Mini-Holland will help but it is not a magic bullet that will solve all the problems.
• We should be pushing for other schemes too, especially for destinations like schools, shops and parks, and in overlooked areas like Chessington.

If you are really keen then you can read the full presentation on SlideShare.

The two comments that I made that made the most impact were on the poor air quality in Kingston and my confession to regularly cycling on pavements and through lights. I also confessed to breaking the rules as a pedestrian, e.g. crossing roads when the red man is showing, but my crimes as a cyclist were considered to be more heinous, for reasons that escape me, and it would probably have been better not to have confessed to them.

There was a lot of discussion about the flagship project in the mini-Holland programme, the pontoon along the river to create a new route for cyclists. I had made the point that if we want to promote cycling and also keep cyclists away from pedestrians then either we need to create new capacity, e.g. the pontoon, or we take capacity away from other road users, e.g. dedicated cycle lanes behind barriers to stop pedestrians and cars from also using them.

We also talked quite a bit about Richmond Park. I said that the easiest way to separate bikes and people would be to restrict the space given to cars, e.g. we could allocate one Sunday a month as a car-free day where the cyclists would have full use of the roads and the walkers could have full use of the shared paths. Remarkably some people felt that they had a right to drive around Richmond Park whenever they liked, even though I pointed out that they did not have, or expect to have, this right in Kew Gardens.

I would like to the use of Richmond Park by cars severely reduced and see the occasional car-free day as a trial that proves that the Park would be a lot nicer for everyone, and everything, if we banned cars all weekend every weekend.

We also talked about other places and other schemes but, apart from fixing pot-holes, we came to no agreement on anything.

Everybody seemed to agree that cycling was a good idea but nobody wanted to give up any of their space for this. The new cycles schemes are going to upset a lot of people, at first, but they must be done. We have no alternatives.

Kingston upon Thames Society Committee: March 2014

March was another quiet month for the Committee with no significant planning applications to discuss, though there are several developments in the pipe-line.

Tracking applications

There is a tendency for us to lose track of applications once we have submitted our views to the Council and we do not usually know when/if they are coming up for decision. To try and improve this I have started to compile a list of significant applications, i.e. the ones that we have expressed an opinion on, with the intention of checking them all just before each Committee Meeting. We'll see how that goes.

Applications that I needed to add to that list were Gala Bingo, Latchmere House and anything to do with the North Kingston opportunity area.

Cycling in Kingston

RBK's Min-Holland bid had just been approved and the Council allocated £30m for schemes across the Borough. The details of which schemes would go ahead were not known though Mayor Boris had specifically mentioned the (controversial) pontoon when announcing the award.

With nothing specific to discuss at that time the Committee decided to wait for RBK to issue specific proposals.

Our website

The Committee was starting to take more of an interest in our website which I keep updated and I welcomed this. Some changes were discussed in response to comments from the public, e.g. people quoting our own Aims and Objectives back to us, and these were to be implemented shortly.

The Chairman and Secretary said that they would go through the whole website looking for other errors to correct.


Assets of Community Interest

A discussion on the market place redesign raised the question of whether we could get the public toilet in the Market House listed and so keep them in use.

I had asked RBK for a list of protection lists and for details of how to find out what was on each list. A reply was awaited.

Seething Wells

The long-running Seething Wells saga ended when the appeal against refusal was refused as the proposed development infringed Metropolitan Open Land.

Latchmere House

Various planning applications had been issued for the site of the former prison based at Latchmere House.

There were two separate schemes of differing sizes and the applications had been submitted to both Kingston and Richmond councils. The Kingston applications were 14/12144 and 14/12146.

It was understood that Richmond Council would make the decision and would take the views of Kingston Council in to account, though it was by no means clear how this would be done.

First impressions were that the schemes lacked imagination in the design of the buildings and used too much of the open land that was outside of the prison walls. This prominent site deserved better.

Latchmere House looked like it was one of the sites that would be keeping the Society busy for a while.