Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is facing lasting Environmental damage due to proposed development at the old Bow Common gasworks – PA/19/02379. Below is a draft template letter to be sent to planning ([email protected]).
Dear [See Contact List for Names & Details],
Re: Bow Common Lane Gas Works – PA/19/02379
My name is […insert name ] and I live at [… insert address] in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
[Please feel free to pick from the list below or write your own wording along similar lines]:
As a resident of Tower Hamlets for over […] years who will be directly affected by the impact of … or … As a Friend of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park whose beloved local park will be adversely affected by … or … As a regular visitor to the Cemetery Park who will be negatively impacted by the overshadowing caused by … or … As a keen bird watcher concerned by the damaging impact to local wildlife created by … or … As a dog walker whose dog regularly enjoys playing in the meadow planned to be overshadowed by … or … As a parent concerned by the impact upon educational opportunities for children in THCP caused by … or … As a concerned teacher of local school children whose opportunity to learn science outdoors will be significantly limited by … or … As a… etc.
[the following paragraph MUST BE INCLUDED IN SOME FORM as it is crucial to register an objection that specifies what you object to in the application]:
…the proposal for the Bow Common Lane Gas Works, I would like to put on record my objections to the mass, size and bulk of the scheme in its current form. The proposed development will cause considerable environmental damage to the surrounding area, local residents and the natural habitats of the Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park (also designated as Metropolitan Open Land).
[the following paragraph COULD HELP DELAY THE PROCESS if you choose to include it because it highlights a material issue with the planning application evidence documents]:
I would like the Daylight, Sunlight and Overshadowing appendices submitted with the application to be noted as incomplete and requiring resubmission. The overshadowing studies are cropped too close to the development and cut off shadows cast by the proposed buildings which clearly extend far further than shown. These documents fail to fulfill their purpose of showing the full impact of the overshadowing on neighbouring properties and the neighbouring SINCs at THCP and Old Fairfoot Road.
[Insert comments on the damage caused by the development from the WHAT YOU CAN ADD LIST provided here. Please add in a few of the issues which you care about and highlight how they affect you, please edit and adapt]:
[Copied in Comment 1 e.g. shadow on local homes & gardens]
[Copied in Comment 2 e.g. local health]
[Copied in Comment 3 e.g light pollution]
[Copied in Comment 4 e.g. local health]
[etc]
[the following paragraph COULD HELP SUPPORT THCP by recording the disregard of the park’s protections in the planning application evidence documents]:
I would like it formally noted that the protective designation of SINC was omitted from references to THCP in the Landscape Strategy document submitted with the application. This misleads the reader on the importance of this site as part of the wider London Green Grid.
[the following paragraph MUST BE INCLUDED IN SOME FORM to make clear what we are asking the council to do with our objections – please feel free to add to or edit the text below to suit your personal opinion]:
I urge the Council to reject the proposal in its current form as outlined in PA/19/02379. I would like to see the proposal for the Bow Common Gas Works site reviewed to significantly reduce the heights of the tower blocks and dramatically reconfigure their arrangement. A great deal of the damage created by the development can be avoided by reconfiguring the layout of the tower blocks to move taller towers as far away from the edge of THCP as possible, reducing the height of the taller towers and densifying the lower levels further into the site. This would mitigate the devastating impact the current form of the development will have on Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, neighbouring residential properties and the local area as whole.
Yours Sincerely […name and sign here]
Rumi
It would be a shame to see such a nice park in our borough to be constantly overshadowed by such tall builds that are completely out of proportion with its surroundings.
Hope the scheme does not pass in the current form!
Every economic model which drives growth over the last four hundred years has followed a pattern of identifying a resource , exploiting it, depleting it, and creating hitherto unseen wealth for a tiny amount of people. It has proceeded without any regard for the surrounding environment, the people and communities within its boundaries. I refer to:
Child labour, whaling, fishing, ivory, fur, oil deposits, gas deposits, rivers and industrial effluents, subterranean water reserves, rare metals, diamonds, silver, gold, forests for palm oil, forests for beef production, intense farming, and most poignantly slavery; the appropriation of land for resources, for whatever reason, for the generation of profit persists at the expense of every consideration. In each generation the resource may change but the pattern never changes. In each generation this process is made palatable by disguising it as beneficial, the natural way, philanthropic or caring.
In all the above examples, the victims are always animal and plant species, poor nations, the atmosphere, the oceans, the rivers, biodiversity and the masses of humanity.
Every moral, spiritual,societal and communal opposition to these economic models has met with parliamentary, political, financial and institutional resistance. Never once did moral considerations come from within the model or from those who drove it of and by themselves. The model , each and every time, saw such considerations as hindrances to its single goal of maximising profits, at any cost that could be conceived of.
Economics will allow us to make some of the most appalling decisions in relation to the way we treat others and the world. This economic model is not racist or prejudice, its goal is profit accumulation . The equation is amoral.
Land is a resource which we sell off at the immiseration of our community.
I have read a good many reactions and responses to the proposals to build homes on the former Bow Common Gas Works site, next to the woodland park cemetery in Mile End. This area was designated a ‘Local Nature Reserve’ in 2001. The first consultation for the proposed ‘town’ recommended reductions in height of up to 19.9 metres on several of the buildings. It is surprising that St William Homes, the developers, should have needed to be reigned in by this recommendation. Why had they not demonstrated their own solicitude and due diligence in this project?
I have seen the scientific evidence which graphically demonstrates the extent and effect of shadowing of this area by extremely high buildings. The threat to wildlife (bats, species of birds, butterflies and other insects) and plant life has been clearly explained and is inevitable. The despoiling of this environment by an upsurge in the human population, some 3 – 4 thousand people, is clear. The fact of thousands of garden-less homes will further negatively impact this woodland park cemetery.
St William has a commendable greening policy for this development. I would argue that it has because of decades of struggling, arguing and fighting for the environment. It is always a struggle for moral and long-term considerations. Concessions that come are trifling compared to accumulated, long-term, irretrievable loss and unexplored damage. I also think that greening policy is the commodification of an an idea of green space. They take it and then ‘sell’ it back to us as goodwill gestures.
In 2017 the borough’s Green Grid Strategy was updated to ensure that unique green areas such as this woodland park cemetery continued to receive protection from overdevelopment and despoliation. This strategy surely embraces direct as well as indirect threats. Two blocks, A and B, cast an area of wildflower meadow and scrubland into perpetual shade. Plants and animals will perish in this darkened environment.
Yet St William ought to have carried out the necessary scientific studies to ensure that its commitments to the environment were honoured. It had instead chosen to build egregiously high buildings as if the environment were of little or no significance. This is irresponsible.
The plan is designated a ‘townscape’. This means it exists in isolation to the surroundings. It will be alien to the rest of the area, architecturally and socially . It will not blend in to the space it is built in. Its aim is to create a separate, zone, privatised in feeling. Architecturally it will resemble parts of Canary Wharf ensconced in Bow Common Lane, dominating and effecting everything around it, including the light, the shade, the nighttime and the lives of the people.
This woodland area, albeit small, is all we have in Tower Hamlets. Most children will never get to the countryside. (Even the countryside is inaccessible in its layout.) This asset is crucial for children and families and for thousands of school toddlers who visit yearly. Nowhere else can they be among trees and plants and small wildlife, raucous birds and buzzing insects. There is no where else where they can smell, listen to, and get a sense of the magic of woods. However dispensable some might consider this space to be, the undermining of its sustainability would be a crying shame for the borough.
Our densely populated borough needs to breathe. We already have some of the busiest road networks and transit corridors in the city. Our air is contaminated by car, lorry and motor–cycle carbon emissions.
During the six months of this health crisis in which everyone’s life has changed, I have come to appreciate even more the need to ‘connect with nature’, so to speak. The cemetery park is a vital resource to me and to everyone I see using this space, whoever they are. It is a unique place.
The overshadowing of the southern meadow will ruin biodiversity. The knock-on effect on the rest of the park will make it even more fragile and undermine its longevity. This ecosystem which has evolved over a century and a half looks to be irretrievably lost for the sake of high-end, ultra high-rise blocks of flats. The result is a great loss for people of this borough and staggering profits for St William. This feels an abuse of civic responsibility and citizens’ rights.
St William Homes wants to build the greatest possible number of homes here because they can, buildings which within short time will look dilapidated and shabby in spite of the beautifying computer generated images we have seen.
We must absolutely reconcile house-building needs with our commitments to the health of human city ecosystems. This borough has seen and continues to see hundreds of thousands of new homes go up in a handful of years. The Isle of Dogs is dense with new builds. The south and south-east of the borough (Blackwell, Leamouth, Leamouth peninsula , Aberfeldy village) has seen countless thousands of homes go up. Such construction programmes have not been seen in decades.
As I walk around the borough I am really taken aback by the sheer quantity of flats, thousands of them, currently empty, emerging from former wastelands. From where will the people come in their vast thousands to fill these flats? It is as if we have no imagination or ambition for London other than to build flats. Tower Hamlets has become one mega piece of real estate. People are as if confined to small flats while any access to open or green Space diminishes before them. Who are the real winners here?
I will mention something that others already have. Over 3000 volunteers dedicate their time to the upkeep of the cemetery park. The budget for the woodland cemetery is just below £32,000 per year. This is the service level agreement. The care of the whole woodland cemetery site, its litter management included , has to be managed on this sum. The additional burden on volunteers will be considerable. The additional burden on the borough will be considerable. It cannot be acceptable that builders build without substantially addressing ensuing problems that come with thousands of additional people in this part of the borough.
Lastly, I want to ask whose children will see their entire childhood overcast by this construction programme over a twelve-year period? Whose air will be filled with dust particles and noise day in, day out, for twelve years? We need reasonable, manageable and sustainable construction which reflects architectural pride and sensitivity. What we have in these proposals is mercenary and exploitative. More importantly these proposals will degrade the environment, undermine future sustainability and entrench the idea of a divided community.