Local News

28 May 2009 by Your Local London

Development protest, East Sheen

Last week was the War of the Roses protest that was held in Avenue Gardens in East Sheen. A small, quiet cul-de-sac that backs on to the cemetery, Avenue Gardens seems an unlikely place for such a battle. However this is the third protest that they have held in as many years. Two years ago they did a sit-in in the street bringing a tented city to the road and last year they turfed the entire road to show what would be lost.

They are protesting against a developer’s plans to change one house and garden (which currently takes up about 25% of the street) in to a development of 9 properties with no useable outside space. As Julia Bates (a spokesperson for SOS Avenue Gardens, the group who organised the protest said:‘ The message is clear this year, locals will not be pushed around by greedy developers attempting to destroy communities . We don’t want twenty five percent cent of our street given over to some monstrous development which serves no purpose for low cost housing, just another bundle of idle sub standard homes to add to the overload in Richmond.’

Having effectively won their battle twice by having the developer’s planning permission turned down by the local council, the residents of Avenue Gardens were horrified to hear that they had put in another application for high density housing in what is otherwise a Victorian/Edwardian terraced street. The Action Group, SOS Avenue Gardens, have had a two year battle to stop this development and have been backed by Conservative Party candidate for Richmond, Zac Goldsmith and local MP, Liberal Democrat, Susan Kramer who has continued to give the group strong support and has even written to the developers on behalf of the worried residents.

Zac Goldsmith was on hand last Monday, in Avenue Gardens to meet with residents and join in the protest, he very much supports the neighbourhood Action Group in its fight to halt the scheme that would mean the devastation of much of the character of their street (not to mention a haven for wildlife). In a speech he decried the developer’s plans for number 24 and asked that local people had a proper say in how their community was run.

The War of the Roses protest, involved two residents of the street, Robin Popham and Amanda Wilson, being made up to look like stone garden statues and they flanked a rose arch erected in the contested shrubs and flower beds that could be destroyed, to help highlight the issue of ‘garden grabbing.’ I went along to help support them and unfortunately it was not great weather - not actually raining but pretty cold, so I felt quite sorry for the ’statues’ - who must have been freezing!!

Garden grabbing protests often get a bad press, being labelled NIMBY (not in my back yard) - but I think this can be an important issue. I am a big fan of Victorian/Edwardian architecture and a lot less of a fan of most modern acrchitecture and whilst in certain cases these can be married together very well (did anyone see Grand Designs last night with the barn conversion?) much of the time these sorts of issues are not even taken into consideration. Buildings are simply erected in a modern style, wherever there is deemed space and within a tight budget.

My parents live in Portishead, near Bristol and in the last 5-10 years hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on new developments in the area. Some look good, some a lot less so, but the big difference there is that there was space for development and plenty of it. There was a large waterside marina area with not a lot going on there and now there is a thriving community with better amenities for everyone. The trouble with the Richmond borough is that pretty much anywhere that can be built on has been built on, so developers are looking for any opportunity to knock down old buildings and build new smaller and cheaper ones in their place. I know there is a need for affordable housing, but is this really the answer? I think not.