I was saddened to read that big money appears to have stomped all over another aspect of representative democracy.

I recently sat on the main Southwark Council planning committee which heard the Eileen House planning application. After a long session hearing evidence for and against this scheme the committee voted 5 against with the chair abstaining. The reasons for refusal were many (I’ve added the parentheses for clarity):

“The proposed development is contrary to strategic policy 10, saved policies 3.20 (Protection of Amenity), 4.2 (Quality of Residential Development), 4.4 (Affordable Housing) of the Southwark plan, strategic policies 5 (Providing new homes), 6 (Homes for people on difference incomes) and 7 (Family homes) of the Southwark Core Strategy, and policies 3.5 (quality and design of housing developments), 3.11 (definition of affordable housing) and 3.12 (Affordable housing targets) of the London Plan.”

It was a rubbish scheme versus Southwark and the London Mayoral policies. I’ve never read a report whose recommendation was so at variance with the body of the report. Stupid things like the applicant not properly taking into account Cycle Superhighway 7 going along Southwark Bridge Road.

Personally it looked like the ugly younger brother of the council housing block at the southern E&C roundabout. Southwark has surely had enough of such blocks to want to avoid having more built. And I’m not a luddite having voted to approve other better designed supertall buildings at other locations.

So why would Boris call in this planning decision for a relatively small scheme of 335 flats that fails to conform to his policies and is not strategic?

My hunch is that the developer has somehow encouraged this. Whatever Boris decides it speaks volumes for his view of representative democracy. It also seems a strange scheme for the first time ever for these powers to be used by Boris against Southwark’s residents.