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...
The Dutch Embassy’s rumoured move from Hyde Park Gate to Nine Elms is now official. The Kingdom of the Netherlands has done a deal with Embassy Gardens developers Ballymore Group that will see the embassy move in 2017 a 50,000 sq ft site next to the US Embassy on Nine Elms Lane. For the PR hype: www.embassygardens.com www.nineelmslondon.com/news/dutch-embassy-coming-to-nine-elms
Want to know more about finding your way through the mess that is the planning system in Lambeth? The Waterloo Community Development Group is hosting a borough-wide consultation for community group representatives on Lambeth’s Local Plan on Saturday 20 April 11am-3pm at Stockwell YMCA, 40-60 Stockwell Rd, SW9 9ES . Oh, and there’s a ‘light lunch’ too. Lambeth is the borough with the fifth densest population in the country, some wards having over a quarter more people than ten...
The Vauxhall Society and Vauxhall MP Kate Hoey are among those backing the objection of residents of flats around the Albert Embankment to a planning application to build extra storeys on the Plaza Riverside Hotel. Lambeth has turned down the application before because this is a particularly densely-populated part of an overcrowded borough. The development would further deprive many dwellings – among them ‘affordable homes’ – of daylight and sunlight. But Lambeth Council now stands to pocket £220,000 or...
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...
The Royal Institute of British Architects/Vauxhall One competition for ideas to brighten up the drab arches and miniscule green spaces either side of the railway between Vauxhall Station and Lambeth Bridge has produced 100 entries from 21 countries, ranging, says Vauxhall One’s Chris Law, from the ‘brilliantly visionary’ to the ‘highly workable’. You can see the competition results until Friday April at the Garden Museum and along the ‘Outdoor Trail’ through the rail arches and ‘parks’. To see images...
Our news of moves to establish a Friends of Vauxhall Bus Station to stop Lambeth demolishing the station and scattering the bus stops has got people signing up at vauxhallcs@gmail. Critical mass is building quite nicely, so if you would like to hop aboard, just email your name, address and phone number. Issues to be aired at a forthcoming inaugural meeting of the Friends include: Bus station brings all stops together under cover and next to train stations: 100%...
In 2007 Stephen Bayley, design writer and Vauxhall Society member, forecast in The Observer that BT would sell its Keybridge House offices in South Lambeth Road when subletting and other contracts ran out in 2011. Bayley was right. He upbraided Ross Cook, BT’s director of media relations, for BT’s corporate arrogance in making Vauxhall people pay ‘an ugliness tax’ by allowing Keybridge House to fall into a ‘shockingly run-down state with filthy windows, broken blinds, stained concrete’. This ‘drab, grey...
The formation of a Friends of Vauxhall Bus Station is on the cards, as members of The Vauxhall Society and others come together to put a spoke in Lambeth Council’s plans to demolish the eight-year-old structure and disperse the bus stops. If you’re interested in saving Vauxhall Bus Station, please email your name and address (and telephone numbers?) to vauxhallcs@gmail.com. Lambeth’s happy to make people risk life and limb reaching bus stops scattered around the five-lane Vauxhall Gyratory, say...
