Backland building blocked

This morning was my East Acton Estate advice surgery at Old Oak Methodist Church, and was a chance to give some good news to residents. The planners confirmed yesterday that they would be refusing an application to build a house on the back garden of 10 St Andrews Road. Neighbouring residents had contacted me, rightly concerned that this would be an overdevelopment, and I’d taken the issue up with the planners. The planners were admirably robust in recognising that building like this would be a clear breach of Council planning policies. I also popped a letter with the good news in the door of the main objector, who could not make the surgery, and he was nice enough to leave me a message of thanks on my answer phone (not a common phenomenon).

This application was the latest example of a growing phenomenon of ‘backland development’. Driven by the booming housing rental market in West London, developers are increasingly seeking to build ‘infill developments’ in these kinds of small landlocked sites. In a number of cases, they have built (or converted) without planning permission, and the Council is having to take planning enforcement action.

We had a similar ‘backland’ problem locally in the early 1990’s, worsened by a weakening of the Council’s planning policies on backland by the then Council. I and others campaigned for tougher policies, which we introduced with the change of Council administration in 1994. However, the main weapon against inappropriate building now has got to be effective enforcement, and this is currently being examined by a scrutiny exercise being expertly led by Cllr Tony Brown (Ealing Common). The scrutiny documents should be on the Council’s website at http://www.ealing.gov.uk/services/council/committees/agendas_minutes_reports/
scrutiny/planning_enforcement_ad_hoc_panel/index.html

Incidentally, although I live in St Andrews Road, I was able to talk about it this site because I live hundred of metres away at the other end of the road and am personally unaffected. If I’d been a near neighbour, I would have been unable to object or get involved as either a Councillor or resident. When people sometimes claim that “action would be taken if this was next door to a Councillor”, the reverse is true – Councillors lose their civil rights to object to issues affecting them with which the Council is dealing when they have a direct “prejudicial interest”.