Concerns over "Tidal Wave" of Planning Applications

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"A significant part of Hammersmith will be consumed"

Local campaigners are expressing concern about the number of large planning applications coming before Hammersmith and Fulham Council.

These include the Hammersmith Town Hall redevelopment, Fulham Reach on Hammersmith Embankment, the NCP car park redevelopment in Hammersmith Grove, the redevelopment and Earls Court and plans to redevelop Queens Wharf.

An exhibition for Queens Wharf was held last week, showing the public plans to create 200 flats on the riverside site.

In addition, Riverview International Investments have submitted plans for a redevelopment of Riverview House in Hammersmith, which would involve change of use from office to student accommodation, and would provide 98 self contained units together with alterations to the fifth and sixth floors and the construction of a new seventh floor.

Local resident Una Hodgkins, a member of the Save Our Skyline and Save Our Cinema campaigns, describes these as an ""extraordinary number of very large planning applications for tower blocks which are being submitted to, and indeed encouraged by the current administration in Hammersmith,
especially in sensitive sites by or near the Thames."

And she adds: " The scale of Stephen Greenhalgh's ambition comes as a terrible shock to me and perhaps to others in the borough?

" A significant proportion of Hammersmith will be consumed and transformed into high-rise islands, each one a mini-'metropolis' in the next few years.

" This process has accelerated and is being waved through the Planning Application Committee despite the protests of every resident and amenity group.

" Our MP Andy Slaughter has drawn attention to the gerrymandering which this produces, but the wholesale change in the identity and composition of the borough has not been discussed."

Do you have a view on this spate of planning applications? Comment on the forum or email editor@hammersmithtoday.co.uk.

March 31, 2011