Kensington & Chelsea Core Strategy: tick-box consultation, unjustified policies

11.13.00am GMT Thu 10th Dec 2009

The Kensington & Chelsea Liberal Democrats have made a formal submission to the Planning Inspectorate, objecting to the final version of the Council's Core Strategy, the list of policies that are supposed to guide the Council for the next twenty years. The Liberal Democrats argue that the Core Strategy fails one of the Inspectorate's key legal tests of soundness on at least three counts.

The legal test in question is the test of 'justification'. The Liberal Democrats say that the consultation process, the Council's housing policies and the plans for elderly provision fail this test.

Robin Meltzer, the prospective parliamentary candidate for the new constituency of Kensington and the outgoing Chair of the local party, said: "The Council cannot be said to have held proper and imaginative consultation that would allow this plan to be justified."

Portobello Court

In the submission, the Liberal Democrats used a case study of the lack of consultation surrounding plans for Portobello Court. In the second draft of the Core Strategy, the Council slipped into the document an entirely new plan to redevelop Portobello Court, a housing estate on Portobello Road owned by the Council. The plan identified the estate as one where "redevelopment" would see shops and market housing built on the site as part of "estate renewal" and "retail need".

Robin Meltzer said: "When this draft was published, not one resident in Portobello Court had been consulted on these plans, nor had the estate's own Residents Association been informed or notified about it. The policy had not been present in the first draft of the Core Strategy and it was not raised in any of the consultation sessions held between the first and second drafts. It simply appeared in the second draft, based on no public consultation whatsoever.

"In the consultation between the second and third drafts of the Core Strategy, residents attending consultations were expressly told by a Cabinet member that the discussion was not allowed to incorporate the (by then published) plans for Portobello Court. This was met with outrage but the rule was enforced."

The Liberal Democrats and others protested about the proposed redevelopment of the estate. Residents demanded meetings with the Council leadership and made their feelings known. Subsequently, the plan was quietly dropped by the Council (despite thousands of pounds being spent on a 'retail needs' survey of the area).

"Had community activists not drawn attention to the flagrant disregard for the future of the homes of the people concerned, this plan could have made its way into the third and penultimate version of the Core Strategy with no consultation having occurred," said Mr Meltzer.

The Lib Dems say that throughout the so-called consultation process for the Core Strategy as a whole, the only residents consulted by post or email were a select group of associations and individuals who had already expressed an interest in planning policy.

Mr Meltzer said: "As an example of a lack of notification, the Council failed to put up a notice about the Core Strategy on any of the many notice boards at the Kensington Sports Centre. They did not even inform the reception staff. All this despite the fact that this site features very heavily in the Council's regeneration plans for North Kensington so you could reasonably expect residents who use these public facilities to take an interest in its future."

The document is entitled 'Core Strategy with a focus on North Kensington', yet no attempt was made to reach out to residents beyond the Council's own very limited mailing list of interested parties occurred in North Kensington. Mr Meltzer says: "The Council could very easily have taken a stall in Portobello and Golborne markets on a Friday when the footfall is overwhelmingly local rather than tourist. The Council did put something in their own patchily distributed newspaper.

"Consultation meetings were rigidly controlled. During many (if not all) of the consultation sessions following the first draft, the document in question was not on display, nor available for people to read. Consultees were asked to draw things on maps and to 'brainstorm' about the local area. This was consultation for children, not for engaged members of the community. The Council went through the motions so that they could say they had done it, not to gather ideas and responses. This was tick-box consultation."

The Liberal Democrats did, however, have some positive feedback on one aspect of the consultation process. Mr Meltzer explains:

"The final set of consultation meetings about the 'Places' did result in some noticeable changes to the wording of those sections. In particular, the wording of the Portobello 'place' (the only 'place' which required two sessions because residents were so angry with the Council during the original session) is unrecognisable to the draft originally presented to residents and the improvements are many. This was evidence of the power of residents persuading the Council how wrong they had been originally about their vision for this 'place'. Sadly, this late effort at listening serves to contrast starkly with the rest of the process."

As well as the consultation process, the Liberal Democrat objection also listed problems with the policies themselves, specifically on the controversial new housing policy and on care for the elderly.

Related Link:

Read about the objection to the policies for new housing and provision for the elderly.