How Will the Development be Decided?

Building Design Partnership (BDP), the consultants chosen by the Council, will run the following timetable:

• The original timetable is now slipping as BDP are running more consultation exercises with ‘hard to reach’ groups. These are also those most likely to say they want to see a supermarket for example. This stage of the consultation may be over by the end of November. For details of the November 5th consultation for individuals, see Public Consultation.
• A partial draft scoping document was presented to the North Area Committee on 14th November. It will be completed once the extra consultation meetings take place.
• In theory BDP should be consulting on the scoping document but this element seems no longer to be mentioned in timetabling. If you wish to comment a copy of the document should be available at www.islington.gov.uk.
• The final scoping document will now not be presented to the North Area Committee until 9th January.
• After than the timetable gets vague. Working up two master plan options has been shifted from a deadline of 12th December to two months after 9th January.
• The options will probably be presented in March.
• The idea originally was to consult on the options for four to six weeks but this is no longer being mentioned.
• The final options should be presented in late spring.
• A final presentation would be made to Council’s executive in even later spring.

As Steve Hitchins has gone on record as saying that ‘major redevelopment is the only solution for Archway and the A1’, this is the solution the consultants will be expected to recommend.

Although the planning brief specifies that one of the two master plans should be for smaller scale and incremental development, the consultants’ irritation at unanimous verdicts in favour of the smaller scale scheme, and their prolonged efforts to find alternative views, indicate that the big scheme is the one they are working towards.

The reasons likely to be given are financial as these are the hardest for local people to argue against.

If you do not want a major redevelopment, lobbying your councillors and the leadership of the Council is absolutely vital. See What Can You Do?

There is a local Council election in May and the Lib-Dems do not have a large majority, particularly in Archway and the surrounding wards. If the current Council does not make the choices local people want, it will be very easy to vote them out of power.

However, while extension of the consultants’ work should in theory result in a more interesting and useful plan for Archway, in practice this may have been arranged to ensure that the choice of scheme will be made after the May elections.

The Council can make vague promises about the smaller scale scheme, but once back in power, revisit the issues and decide that in fact the bigger one was what was really required.