Neighbourhood

One unwelcome aspect of this otherwise welcome scheme for redevelopment has surfaced, which is why we are seeking residents’ views in our online survey.

Land Securities are preparing a scheme for the redevelopment of the 21 Moorfields site and recently presented this scheme to local residents at a public exhibition held at St Giles’ Cripplegate. Overall, Willoughby House Group and the Barbican Association too think that the development is welcome. It preserves – and enhances – highwalk access across the site, and the increase in height is stepped away from the Barbican. We are hopeful that most other concerns can be addressed through planning conditions.

One serious concern has recently surfaced. We have learned that the developer would like to clear the way for the roof terraces facing Willoughby House to be available to for their office tenants to use both early morning and late evening, especially if they are used to host receptions or social events.

Your house group thinks this has the potential to cause a lot of disturbance to residents. Almost all the rooms facing the site are bedrooms, but many people also use these rooms for other purposes too. Though amplified sound would not be permitted on the roof terraces, the noise from an excited group of people attending, say, a drinks reception in the evening on one of the terraces could be very loud and intrusive – especially due to the way sound reverberates around the street and facade of our building.

Planning won’t be able to prevent the use of the terraces during the daytime – planning guidelines don’t allow them to be that restrictive. But we can seek curbs on their use in the evenings or early morning. The developer would like to give their office tenants unrestricted use up to 10.00 pm and from 7.00 in the morning. We think that is too much, and that the hours should be cut back to something more reasonable.

We have created a short survey to capture people’s views on what they think reasonable usage is.  Willoughby House residents can access the survey by following this link. All information will be treated in confidence, and the findings will only be presented in aggregate.

The developers intend to proceed with a planning application towards the end of this year. We will let everyone know when that planning application is open for comments.

At Tuesday’s AGM, Tim Macer, WHG Chair, was able to announce that two of three recent planning applications with a direct impact on Willouguhy House, which many residents had objected to, had been withdrawn by the respective applicants. Last week, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama had pulled their request to vary their earlier consent so that they could hold public events at the new GSMD Milton Court site, under construction, until as late as midnight. The permission they had limited them to occasional use until 11pm, and had strict conditions about the acoustic insulation required to ensure there was no noise leakage. Over sixty objections were received.

The second application was the variation to the Telephone Exchange redevelopment, and this was withdrawn earlier this week. This would have moved the delivery and refuse bay from by Moor House to a location on Fore Street overlooked by flats at the South end of Willoughby House. Many residents wrote in to object to this one too. This means the scheme will be built in line with the original application, with servicing at the other side of the building, well away from residents. Demolition of the old telephone exchange is now well advanced (see picture above), and considering the bulk and scale of the building, disruption to residents has so far been relatively minor.

There is a third planning issue at present which many Willoughby House residents are also concerned about – for the Heron Sales Pavilion under the parapet of Willoughby House on Moor Lane to have its temporary permission for three years extended by another 18 months – something Heron explicitly said it would not do, and would have no reason to do when applying for permission. The difficulty now is that, if an extension is granted, it is almost certain to delay the long-awaited Moor Lane streetscape improvements. This work was programmed to start when the Olympics are finished, in the Autumn, but as it includes the site occupied by the sales unit, and will involve planting trees etc right around it, the work can only be done when this temporary building has been removed.

You can find the Heron application, and make comments on it here on the City’s Planning Portal.

New committee for 2012/13

We welcome Nazar Sayigh as our newest elected member to the WHG Committee. Naz has been an active supporter and co-opted member of the committee in recent years. He joins Simon Ebbins, Tim Macer, Valerie Mills, James Prentice, Petre Reid and Caroline Swash, who were all re-elected to serve for a further year. The AGM also passed two resolutions: that membership subscriptions remain at no cost (£0.00) for the coming year, and that all residents are granted membership for the year, unless they inform the secretary that they do not wish to be members.