The answer may be written in the wind, but here in Vauxhall wouldn’t you rather read it on paper? Are the Mayor and Lambeth/Wandsworth council planners too happy to take developers’ word for it that clustering tall buildings at Vauxhall Cross/Nine Elms poses no wind turbulence risk? The district’s unusual, Thames-induced wind conditions are ripe for international academic study, not least because tall buildings may pose a security risk to the new US Embassy at Nine Elms, suggests a...
Thanks to The Friends of the Tate South Lambeth, the Durning and other Vauxhall libraries and community groups such as The Vauxhall Society, Lambeth’s politicos and officials at last seem to have got the message that closing libraries is both a legal minefield and an election-loser. Jo Cleary, who runs Lambeth’s Adults and Community Services, has now put together a useful guide on how you make yourself heard on the libraries issue between now and when consultation ends on...
8 July 1944: Fifteen fire engines fight the blaze as a V1 pilotless flying bomb scores a direct hit on a gasholder at Montford Place, Kennington Oval. Eight houses are demolished. Other properties damaged include Hayward’s Pickle Factory (now the Beefeater Distillery). Miraculously, nobody is killed, but it was not to be so on many other days and nights in wartime Lambeth. See and hear more of that terrifying time in local history by joining us on the Vauxhall...
Can anybody help Sylvia Pargeter find a Pre-Blitz photograph of her childhood home at No 10 Kennington Lane? Miss Pargeter was 12 when in 1939 she became one of the thousands of children evacuated from London to safety in the countryside. The next time she saw her family home, which was above the family business, Pargeter and Harvey, Bedding Manufacturers, it was a hole in the ground. In 1941 No 10 Kennington Lane was hit by a mine and...
What is it with Lambeth Councillors? Why is it that, on anything beyond their own obsessive social engineering, they seem to know so little and care even less? Take the ‘Thames Tunnel’ (or Thames Tideway Tunnel), a vastly expensive 20-mile sewer that the EU wants built through Vauxhall from Acton to Becton but does not want to pay for. Thames Water’s current consultation period ends on 10 February. The sewer is be built by Thames Water, to whom ‘consultation’...
Department of Communities and Local Government Minister Andrew Stunell is inviting community and voluntary groups to apply for a share of the £100 million DCLG is to spend to ‘help revitalise communities and bring the empty homes blighting their areas back into use’. Applications close 17 April 2012. Details : www.communities.gov.uk
Kylun: there’ll be a site visit by the public inquiry to the ‘handkerchief of green’ in the week beginning 27 February. The Kylun Inquiry opens on 6 March, is scheduled to close on 21 March and the Inspector is due to report to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government by 25 May. After that, it’s politics.
Already beset by corrupt players and match-fixing, could cricket be in for another buffeting? Surrey County Cricket Club is reported as asking its planning consultants Savills for advice on whether, as well as stopping play at The Kia Oval at Kennington, wind turbulence generated by massing skyscrapers at Vauxhall Cross could pose a greater health and safety risk to players and spectators than local planning officers may realise. Cricket administrators already want to know if the Mayor, Boris Johnson,...
Vauxhall-based property company CLS Holdings has applied for planning permission for its ambitious ‘Vauxhall Square’ redevelopment plan at Vauxhall Cross. CLS Chief Executive Officer Richard Tice stresses that the project does not depend upon the Northern Line extension from Kennington to Nine Elms being built. ‘Vauxhall Square’, would occupy the whole of the CLS-owned block bounded to the north by Parry Street, to the west by Wandsworth Road (with the exception of a terrace of listed houses), and by...
The 32-storey student skyscraper proposed for 30-60 South Lambeth Road, would ‘overshadow’ Vauxhall Park and so further disadvantage people in an area of social deprivation that is short of open space. This and more is what the Friends of Vauxhall Park say in their objection to the scheme, sent to Lambeth planner Jonathon Fullelove and copied to Oval Ward councillors Ishbel Brown, Jane Edbrooke and Jack Hopkins. What the Friends of Vauxhall Park say: Dear Jonathan Fullelove, Ref: 30-60...
