Posted on Tuesday 9 June 2009
Tower Hamlets Labour Party continue to abandon all guidelines and ignore local residents, as they push ahead with turning our borough into Concrete Hamlets. Time after time, out-of-context plans are approved, despite objections by local people and opposition from other councillors.
Most recently, the City Pride plan was approved on the Isle of Dogs, with a record level of density that will see 430 apartments and a 200-room hotel squeezed into a tower block on the site of an existing pub! Conservative Cllr Phil Briscoe spoke against the proposed density that is almost 4-times that of the council guidelines and said “This level of density even far exceeds cities such as Mumbai, Shanghai and Sao Paolo.” At the same meeting, Labour councillors re-affirmed their support for building a tower block on the current Roman Road supermarket site.
Tower Hamlets has only 50% of the green space required for so many people, yet the Labour Party are intent on building ever more, regardless of our quality of life. Local people are rightly fed up with this and are saying “enough is enough”!
In the latest twist, Labour councillors have changed the start time of planning meetings from 7.30pm to 6.30pm, without any proper notification for the public. Local residents turning up to the meeting last week were justly outraged to find it was already over. Conservative planning committee member Cllr Shirley Houghton said “This is just another cynical attempt to keep residents away from planning meetings. At a time of so many controversial schemes, the council should be making it easier for residents to attend meetings, not more difficult.”