Northbrook Action Group (NAG)

Dear Sir Stephen,
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I understand that a barrister has been appointed by Lewisham Council to review the Northbrook School application, in order to test its compliance with planning regualtions. The barrister has also been requested to review the application to establish its potential for challenge under Judicial Review. NAG would be grateful if you could let us know what you estimate the legal costs of this particular course of action to be and which Council department will be paying these costs.

Dear Sir Stephen,Â
I understand that the Northbrook School planning application is likely to be presented to the Strategic Planning Committee on 2 October. NAG would like to raise a point of order regarding the application’s submission to this Committee. As you may know, Councillor Bentley (councillor for Lee Green) has decided to withdraw from the committee during its consideration of the application, due to a clear conflict of interest. The result is that this has left the Committee unbalanced with a Labour majority, and therefore it fails to accurately reflect the democratic make-up of the Borough. I also understand that the Committee will comprise two of Lewisham Council Cabinet members. It is NAG’s contention that the Cabinet members, as the application is made on behalf of the Council, will have had prior knowledge of the application, presenting a clear vested interest. NAG requests that the application be withdrawn from the Strategic Committee and placed back, as originally intended, with Planning Committees A, B or C. Given that the Committee is due to take place soon, I would be grateful for an early response.
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I have received the following update from the office of Bridget Prentice:

I have received the following update from Lewisham’s Planning Department:

The correct number of objections logged on the system is 163 although the numbers given are per address rather than individual letters. The number of individual letters as of this morning is 226.

Lewisham has also confirmed that the committee will be informed of NAG’s petition, logged as one objection despite containing nearly 400 signatures.

Every objection counts so please, if you disagree to any part of the proposal (such as its size, design, impact on the Manor House Gradens or on parking and congestion), please raise an objection with the Council. Either e-mail emma.talbot@lewisham.govouk, or write to Lewisham Council, Planning Service, Laurence House, 1 Catford Road, London, SE6 4SW.

NAG has received the following e-mail from Lewisham’s Planning Department

Councillor Bentley has published on his blog his views on the Northbrook proposal. The Councillor has now decided, after originally being against the development, that he is actually 100% in favour of it. For the reasons behind the Councillor’s U-turn, please follow the link at the bottom of this page.

A small snippet in Private Eye which deserves wider readership.

It appears that Ed Balls, our esteemed Secretary of State for Schools, has written a letter, dated 31st July 2008, to the to the Mayor. He says;

‘…We have been impressed by the approaches taken in Lewisham to achieve imporvment in standards in schools…’

Yes the spelling mistake is as the original letter, and goes to show that Ed clearly needs to spend some more quality time in learning how to use his spellcheck!

More importantly however, quite why the Mayor felt in need of such elevated support is not clear. I suppose it is possible that among all the other things Ed Balls has to do in any given day, that he took special notice of goings on in Lewisham in the schools’ programme.

Possible, but not likely!

Much more likely is that someone decided they ought to get some much-needed ‘backside cover’ in place, just in case the Lewisham schools’ programme hit a glitch, and wrote to Balls accordingly!

Of course, this is probably all just mere sophistry and Balls is just a bad speller!

We have finally, after much pushing, received a short answer from the Mayor regarding certain aspects of the use of the Manor House Gardens and their relationship to the School planning proposals. The answer is of its own nature, unsatisfactory, as it fails to deal in detail with a number of issues we raised, but its contents do reveal some interesting answers when extrapolated.

To clarify any uncertainties, I spoke to Steve Gough yesterday and we discussed some of the points in more detail.

The first, and most important aspect is that the Mayor has finally agreed that ‘…there are no proposals for the exclusive use of any parts of the park…’

This is a vital admission, as it begins to dismantle the original written (and continuing) proposals put forward by Chris Threlfall when these discussions were first begun, that the ‘…School would have exclusive use of the hard court area for 12 sessions each week…’, plus their use during break times and lunch times. Members will be aware that our calculations determined that such a series of timings would effectively give Northbrook almost unfettered use of the hard court areas during term times.

This admission finally confirms what NAG has asserted all along, which is that such use of the Gardens by the school is disproportionate and inequitable.

A second important admission which has been forced out of the Council is that the ‘…school has always used off-site playing fields for supporting activities and these arrangements will continue…’

Many of us have known this all along, and has been a significant reason why we have so opposed the use of what are nothing more than ornamental gardens with limited space for a level of social sporting activity, by the hundreds of school children who would otherwise be crammed into the unsuitable space.

This admission paves the way for Northbrook to continue and expand its off-site playing field travel policies and to acknowledge once and for all, the unsuitability of the Gardens as a source of recreation for their pupils.

Finally, having now established the reality of the recognition of the complete unsuitability of the Gardens to be a repository for hundreds of children at strategic times of the day, should mean that we can finally dispense with the continued misrepresentations proffered by the Council, of the use of the emergency exit gate in the wall of the school as a primary source of access to the Gardens by the pupils. Dispensing with exclusive use need, and recognising the off-site use of legitimate sports field facilities should, once and for all, dispense with the requirement for the Council to continue to make the spurious and untrue assertion that the use of the emergency gate is a key component of their proposals.

The combination of the falsehoods that access to the Gardens’ playing surfaces has been afforded, through custom and usage, by the use of the emergency gate in the wall of the school, has bedevilled the negotiations throughout their entirety. The council representatives have been repeatedly rebuffed in their attempts to assert this feature, and every time a council statement has been published, asserting this right, we have vigorously refuted the assertion.

We have published a true statement of affairs on this website, and it is open for anyone to read and everyone to understand.

It will be of interest to you to know that I wrote a full letter to the Mayor on 1st August, bringing the rebuttals contained in the note on the website to his attention and asking for a statement from him as to why he continued to allow his officers to restate falsehoods and misrepresentations publicly. To date, I have still not received any reply to my letter, despite my continued prompting.

The Council officials have now been advised that if they want to come to the discussion table to negotiate any further usage of the Gardens for specific sporting usage (which is an issue which is on the table for discussion), they must come with clean hands and must discontinue this practice of pre-determining any discussions with lies and falsehoods such as they have continuously made since January of 2008.

These are only small achievements, but they are indicative of what we can do if we focus our attention on those issues that really matter. The devil, as always with issues such as these, resides in the detail.

Best wishes to all,

Rowan Bosworth-Davies.

Dear Jim, Rowan, Michael & Paul,

Thank you for your e-mail of 14 August.

I am pleased to hear that you consider that the public meeting was helpful for local residents.

My understanding is that there are no proposals for the excusive use of any parts of the park and that Council officers have agreed to continue to work with the school and User Group to reach agreement and any such agreement would include a published timetable for use. You also refer in your mail to “the absence of any plans for additional physical education and sports facilities” for Northbrook. This is not the case. Along with many secondary schools in the borough the school has always used off-site playing fields for sporting activities and these arrangements will continue. The plans for the school also include a new on-site sports hall.

I understand that Steve Gough is meeting the new Head of Northbrook next week to discuss local concerns. Should the school receive planning permission, I would expect discussions to continue with the school and User Group to discuss park use and I remain committed to find a successful balance between the needs of park users, the school and local residents.

Regards

mayor - Steve Bullock

I have read your response to a recent posting on the NAG blogsite. I note that you hope that ‘…Our new building enhances everybody’s lives…’

You will also be aware that I wrote to the Mayor asking him to answer some very important questions regarding a series of deliberate misrepresentations which have been made by his officers about the school childrens’ use of the Gardens in times past. In that letter, I also referred to a further series of misrepresentations made in a document purporting to have been written by representatives of Northbrook School in conjunction with the London Borough of Lewisham. You will be aware that I have subsequently published information on this site, clarifying the truth of the situation regarding the use of the Gardens by the school children.

You may not be aware, but since I wrote to the Mayor, I have not received the courtesy of any reply, nor has any official of the LBL sought to respond to my concerns about these consistent lies and untruths being peddled by them, lies and untruths which go to the very core of the issue regarding the fitness and suitability of your new building.

The council seems to believe that if it simply ignores important issues of fact and truth, they will ultimately go away. They appear to fail to understand that lies and distortions, if left unresolved, merely fester and multiply, and cause huge dissension. Such dissension seeks its own outlet, and in most cases, that is usually represented by polarised attitudes and deep resentment.

We have sought the help of our MP to obtain answers to our questions. So far, her requests to the Council have been ignored, indeed her own assistant has just written to me apologising for the lack of response from any officer of authority within Lewisham Council to reply to my requests for clarification. It seems that the Mayor is so grand, he not only ignores his constituents, but he ignores his own M.P as well.

You will further be aware of the planning review of the school design proposals which the NAG members have commissioned and which has been written by a highly qualified planning consultant and a professional architect, and widely published to all interested parties. You will be aware of its sweeping criticisms, its very serious allegations and its irrefutable list of serial planning failings of which the LBL stands accused.

You are now the inheritor of all these concerns.

You inherit a proposal which intends to unilaterally ’steal’ local community facilities provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund and reserve them to the use of a single group of children. The Council knows that to do this, they will need justification of significant proportions. Hence the reasons why they have had to resort to lies, distortions and misrepresentations as to the traditional usage of the gardens by the children of the school. You are an inheritor of these lies, and documents carrying your school’s letterhead exist, maintaining these lies. You have not sought to disassociate yourself from them, or to clarify your knowledge of their provenance. You would be well advised to do so quickly.

You inherit a building plan which is wholly and utterly flawed. The Council and their PFI consultants (who stand to gain the most from this project) have shamelessly ignored whole areas of consultation requirement in the process. You may be just a tad concerned about this, particularly after learning that the MACE representative publicly observed that such consultation requirements were only ‘guidance’ after all.

Of course the children and the parents of those children who will attend this building will not know that huge areas of ‘best practice’ guidance building consultation have been ignored, in an effort to get this building up and standing. However, if any child were to be injured or damaged by some likely failing in the building in the future, especially if through no fault of their own, the fact that it was built without the proper consultations having been undertaken would be a matter for a Judge to take into consideration when calculating damages. I am sure that the existence of the NAG planning review document would be of considerable interest to such a Court. As you are a VA school, this could well have significant implications for you and oher school officers and governors personally. Have you discussed this liability with your Diocesan colleagues?

The children and the parents of those childfren will not know that the proposed use of the Manor House Gardens’ Facilities as proposed by LBL and the Northbrook School document are based on lies and untruths. However, as suitable playing facilities, you have already been informed they are not fit for purpose. Any child who might be injured or hurt while in these areas could well have an action against the school for a failure to provide proper facilities fit for the purpose for which they were intended, and you would not be in a position to deny that you were aware that the whole premise was based on an untruth, as the existence of the alternative planning document would prove the point. Perhaps a chat to the Dicoesan Board might be called for?

Finally, you are an inheritor of the huge degree of anger and resentment which is being caused by the Council, the Mayor and his officers, in the way they have refused to treat and deal with the people of the community over these issues. The increased noise pollution, the parking problems, the increased traffic congestion, the criminal damage which will ensue, both to the property of local residents and to the fabric of the Gardens, all this now becomes your inheritance, and once you have the keys to the building, when you turn round to find support from the LBL, the Mayor’s Office, MACE or anyone else engaged in this disreputable affair, you will be completely on your own, you won’t see them for dust.

So, let us all hope that your involvement will mean that your ‘new building enhances everyone’s lives’, but if I were in your shoes, before I agreed to accept this project or anything to do with it in its present flawed and sorry state, I would be asking an awful lot of questions about my future liabilities.

Oh, and get the answers in writing, and signed by the Mayor!

Best wishes,

Rowan Bosworth-Davies.