This week’s story was about a ‘60-acre mega-development around Wormwood Scrubs’. In fact this is an old scheme of the Tory council’s dusted down, to build a ‘city in the sky’ over the railway sidings at Old Oak Common (more here). A curious time to pitch this wildly expensive scheme, given the disaster at Gerrard’s Cross two years ago when a Tesco store being constructed above rail lines collapsed onto the track (full story here). But as the EG article and previous ones made plain this is only one of many schemes currently being promoted by Hammersmith Tories (details here).

The proposal to build 10,000 new houses in the Borough is raising eyebrows as I have written in my Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle column this week. So why have the Tories suddenly become keen on unrestrained development of this kind? During the 20 years Labour ran the council they opposed every housing scheme no matter how modest.

The answer came in this week’s other story, scooped by Inside Housing. Boris Johnson – against the professional advice of his own officers – has scrapped the requirement to build affordable housing as part of development schemes. Excellent news for the developers who will make more money from building luxury homes and for the Tories who believe – rightly or wrongly – that poorer people don’t vote for them. So now development can go on unconstrained. (more details here)

Obviously, it is bad news for anyone who can’t afford to buy in H&F – where average house prices are still almost £500,000 – or pay market rents. It’s a double whammy for the council’s own tenants, many of whom are overcrowded, as some of the development sites – like West Ken (see last eNews here) – involve the loss of existing council homes.

But it’s also bad news for other local residents who face disruption, overloading of local transport routes and services and all the pain of development without any of the gain.

As a footnote the Tories’ shadow housing minister came to Shepherds Bush last week and visited the Upper Room, a project that feeds and cares for homeless people. I admire his front - last year as well as banning the Crisis Christmas shelter the Tories tried to block a grant to the Upper Room because it encouraged homeless people to stay in the borough to get fed. He praised Boris Johnson’s abandonment of targets for affordable homes but was strangely silent on the plans for the 10,000 new homes in Hammersmith – but then he is famous for running the campaign ‘No way 10k’ against new homes in his own much larger constituency.

Westfield & Shepherds Bush

A more constructive meeting with LU last week (minutes will go here when they send them). They assure me everything – stations, bus stations, roads, crossings will be finished on time for Westfield’s opening on 30 October. London Buses are looking at revising some of their routes to maintain a service along the south side of the Green (ie past W12 centre and Charecroft Estate) rather than diverting them all into Westfield. But important routes like the 207 are still only serving Westfield customers.

Jane Wilmot of HAFAD raised serious concerns about provision for disabled, particularly blind people. The single crossing of the Uxbridge Road outside the station is too narrow and the footways are to be shared by cyclists and pedestrians.

Orin Miller of the Business Enterprise Centre is now working with local traders on rate relief for those affected by the station closure, and has promised to also investigate unspent money given by Westfield and the London Development Agency to help local traders.

The lift is still hanging in the air, say LU. More news at the end of August.

I have submitted a lot of complaints about noise, rats, rubbish and flooded pavements from residents in Macfarlane Road and Wood Lane to Westfield and the Council. I met separately with senior council officers and Shepherds Bush Place residents to talk about their unique misery – being literally feet from the 24/7 building work. After two and a half hours we had made some progress but I was shocked by how close the council has become to Westfield. When Westfield have failed to abide by planning conditions – eg agreeing plans for SB Place before they started work on the station rather than eight months later – nothing is done. When residents complain that the station has been built a metre too high, the council suggests Westfield do the measurements.

Congestion charge western extension zone

If Boris intends to abolish western extension he has my full support. But will he? Apparently it is raising £40-50 million for the Mayor and Kensington & Chelsea Tories – big Boris backers – are very much in favour of retaining it. Perhaps that’s why he is now consulting on something that before the election he was clear was a bad idea.

One thing he is determined to abolish however is the half-price bus travel for Londoners on Income Support. They probably didn’t fund his campaign, so will go back to paying full fare on 20 August – 2,068 people in H&F are affected.

Rubbish!

That was the verdict of the residents of Wormholt & White City on the council’s new private refuse and street cleaning service at a public meeting last week. Black sacks and garden waste not collected, flytipping everywhere, streets filthy, no supervision of the work – the list of complaints was endless. The council leader’s rather weak response was that at least they were getting new dustcarts that would collect refuse and recycling together. He omitted to mention that we will continue to pay for the old ones to sit in the garage until the lease runs out in two years’ time at a cost of up to half a million pounds. He also seemed to have forgotten that the old in-house service which most people were happy with put in a cheaper bid and offered to do twice weekly recycling collection – but was rejected. Still it was better than his response to another resident who said the privatised and reduced home help service was terrible - he didn’t have one. Cue retreat of stout party to south of the Fulham Road.