So you think you live in a democracy? Look again at Transport for London’s Transport and Works Act Order (TWAO) application to the Secretary of State for Transport for permission to build and operate ‘NLE’ Northern Line Extension that is be pushed through Vauxhall. You can have a hard copy of all the documents for a mere £850.There are more than 75 of them, detailed and highly complex, and will have taken many highly paid “experts” many months, if...
Businesses moving into the Vauxhall Nine Elms ‘Opportunity area’ will have their business rates payments channelled directly into paying for the Northern Line Extension, the Vauxhall Nine Elms Partnership (VNEP) says. When businesses start paying, how much and for how long VNEP (i.e. Wandsworth and Lambeth Councils) do not say. No mention is made of dipping into Council Tax money. Lambeth Council leader Lib Peck is the ‘co-chair’ of VNEP and has put her name to the VNEP statement...
Transport for London’s draft application to Parliament for sweeping powers to push through the Northern Line Extension is a stinker, The Vauxhall Society has told TfL (details below). TfL asked for comment by 9 April, but isn’t publishing those comments (as would happen in a planning application). Nor will TfL recirculate the proposed final draft. All that’s happening is a cynical PR stunt in which TfL will ignore or twist unfavourable comment to kid MPs that there is universal...
Martin Stanley of TVS affiliate the Fentiman Road and Richborne Terrace Residents Association has come up with three questions worth Vauxhall people asking at the public meeting on the Vauxhall Nine Elms ‘regeneration’ and the Northern Line Extension that Lambeth is holding at 7pm on Wednesday 20 March at the Wheatsheaf Hall, Wheatsheaf Lane, SW8 2UP. Does Lambeth’s requirement that ‘all development proposals must demonstrate that they will have reduced or at the most a neutral traffic impact’ apply...
Vauxhall Society affiliate the Fentiman Road, Richborne Terrace and Dorset Road Residents’ Association attended the Society’s AGM, and reported back to members that VNEB planners ‘do not expect to attract many families’, adding ‘There will be no new secondary school and only one new primary school. Families will be expected to travel outside the immediate VNEB area for schooling and to access green spaces – mainly Vauxhall and Battersea Parks, both of which will receive funding’. Also noted: ‘There...
The public meeting on the Northern Line Extension which Lambeth Council and its consultants Ramboll are holding at 6 pm – 9pm on Tuesday 4 December at the Tate South Lambeth Library (180 South Lambeth Road) suggests that NLE is emerging as a political hot potato that could cost Labour dear in the council elections due 18 months from now in May 2014. By then, there’ll be a public inquiry under way, to be followed later that year by...
One point that came out strongly from The Vauxhall Society’s well-attended AGM on 26 November is that if you have any ideas on what you want or do not want to see done about the traffic at Vauxhall Cross, then you should do something yourself, indeed two things, and now. One is: Respond before 26 November to the current Lambeth Council consultation on what should happen at Vauxhall Cross, http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/Services/HousingPlanning/Planning/PlanningPolicy/VauxhallareaSPD.htm The other thing to do is: Check out the...
Fans and foes of the VNEB development area alike bandy about the word ‘ Manhattan’ to describe the glass canyons now going up in Vauxhall. But Manhattan, unlike VNEBland, has opera, theatre and museums as well as skyscrapers. In her report to Stockwell Park Residents Association on the Vauxhall Society AGM, Jacqueline Laughton-Scott notes VNEB’s Helen Fisher as admittingd that the (VNEB) development will be ‘very dense’. There’ll be an average of 2% open space, compared with 20% for...
Residents group IMPACT doubts Transport for London’s claims (see email below) to have distributed 40,000 of the latest TfL consultation leaflet on the Northern Line Extension. That’s partly because many Vauxhall householders say they have yet to receive this latest leaflet, and partly because it’s the anniversary of a previous TfL consultation claim that involved TFL’s publicists, a now-bust property company, in a humiliating climbdown, having claimed to have contacted many thousands of homes when they had done nothing...
Wednesday 14th November, 7pm-9pm Montgomery Hall 58 Kennington Oval London SE11 5SW Vauxhall Liberals are giving a platform to the all-party DATA transport community group to question the Lambeth Council/Transport for London decree that Vauxhall needs a Northern Line extension so badly that Vauxhall should help pay for it. That’s the Labour position; can anybody tell us what the Tory one is? Maybe you can find out at the public meeting, which was organised by Cllr Ishbel Brown, Lib...
