The twenty first anniversary of the day I was first elected to represent East Acton – 13th September 1984.
Spent the morning at the Virgin Planning Inquiry. The Virgin Leisure Centre are appealing against the Council’s refusal of their application to weaken the planning controls upon their site in Bromyard Avenue. They want to impose additional parking, in clear breach of the Council’s planning policies. Virgin have been consistently bad neighbours to the residents of Bromyard Avenue and the Vale Estate next door, and I’ve lost track of the number of occasions residents have needed to complain to my colleagues and I about their conduct. I was criticised a couple of years ago by some of the old fogies around the Council for repeating publically residents’ view that Virgin are “scumbags” - but I’ve rarely had more supportive comments for anything I’ve said in the Council Chamber.
The Virgin case was led by the luxuriantly named Christopher Lockhart-Mummery QC (yes, really) supported by the equally double-barrelled Ross Farragher-Thomas. However, the most revealing of Virgin’s comments were attacks made on cycling and walking by their transport advisor, the surprisingly single-barrelled Mr Bowman. On cycling, he said “you can’t expect families to cycle together” to the Virgin centre, and claimed that “a ten minute cycle ride is not reasonable”. On walking to the site he said “twenty minutes is out of the range for members to walk, and ten minutes is questionable in winter”. Remember, that these are people coming to a self-described “health and fitness centre”. Virgin’s representative concluded by describing East Acton as “such an inaccessible place”, to the laughter of local residents who were present.
To the credit of the Council, their barrister Richard Ground put up a very effective defence for the refusal of planning permission, as did the experienced Council planner Peter Causer. Left with some confidence that the Council had a good case, which had been well made.
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