Meetings — Hyde Park Estate Association

Annual General Meeting 2020

 

Our Annual General Meeting took place via Zoom on 12th October 2020.

The minutes are contained at this link, which includes details of the Q&A session regarding the Low Traffic Neighbourhood. As requested, we have also published the additional questions that the HPEA asked to be added to the consultation response.

The Chairman’s presentation is available at this link, and is copied below for completeness. The Treasurer’s report is available at this link.

Chairman’s Presentation

The HPEA has continued to be active with its many activities despite the lockdown.

We have received >250 planning applications and Matthew Lindsay has taken up issues for residents regarding:

  • Unauthorised extensions

  • Unauthorised door fascias

  • Outstanding dining spaces

  • Air conditioning units

  • Property usage permission

  • Masts and antennae

We have reviewed an exciting new scheme by the Church Commissioners for revamping Portsea Mews, and for the rejuvenation of Paddington and St. Mary’s.

We have appealed to the Church Commissioners on behalf of businesses who approached us from Connaught Village – most of them were granted a three month rental reprieve.

We promoted local businesses during the lockdown and drummed up support for them.

We offered help to local residents with shopping or moral support.

We have continued our successful pub evenings throughout this period, by using Zoom.

We have also continued running our Ward Panel meetings with our local police, the BIDs, and the WCC, identifying key areas of concern.

We are actively exploring the appointment of private security teams to combat all aspects of crime.

We have assisted local building resident associations with some of their concerns.

We have continued to represent the Hyde Park Estate and make our voice heard at briefings by our MP, the Leader of the Council, and the Westminster Amenity
Society Forum.

We are actively engaged with our BID partners in the Hyde Park Paddington Neighbourhood Forum, where we are working steadily towards a Neighbourhood Plan, and are applying for CIL funding for identified projects.

Our Honorary Secretary, Andy Beverley, has maintained a steady stream of communications with members relating to our activities and suggestions.

We have maintained our focus on illegal short-letting and fly-tipping.

Our Traffic Subcommittee, chaired by Sally Martin, has been extremely active and engaged with the Council on issues of major concern relating to increased traffic and pollution as a result of the implementation of cycle lanes and the narrowing of major arterial roads around us. We have had minor successes, but have not resolved the problem. This brings us to the proposed Low Traffic Neighbourhood…

Low Traffic Neighbourhood

Overall, we have tried to work for the common good of our community, listening to all points of view, and trying to remain neutral where possible.

The proposed LTN threatens to split us as a community – we have desperately tried to avoid this by asking the Council to make amendments, unsuccessfully.

About two months ago, the Council approached us and other stakeholder groups for our suggestions about creating a Low Traffic Neighbourhood. We were given a Bank Holiday weekend in which to respond.

Our excellent Traffic Subcommittee, including our Vice-Chair, our Honorary Secretary and our two PhD traffic experts, spent in the hundreds of hours in total exploring every option.

Our first option would have been simply to create an access-only neighbourhood. The Council rejected this as being too difficult to police. Their reasons were acceptable, as too many people would have had to appeal against penalty charge notices.

We then made a proposal based on selected barriers to entrances and exits, and one or two one-way sections. The Council rejected this on the basis that, while it removed most major rat runs, it introduced another potential run.

The Council had one scheme all along, designed by NRP, and this appeared to be the only scheme they would contemplate. We asked them to modify their scheme to allow local and neighbouring residents and local businesses to be able to drive through the new proposed barriers.

We suggested using the existing scheme of “F” or “B” residents’ parking permits to enable this. The Council, after significant challenging from us, said that they could not do this, not because it was not legal or not technically possible, but because it was “too expensive” within the proposed experimental LTN scheme.

We warned the Council that their scheme, without that modification, whilst favouring cyclists and pedestrians, would be punitive to people who chose to or needed to use private vehicles and taxis.

The HPEA said that it could not support the Council’s scheme, given their rejection of our suggestion, without proper modelling of the effects of their proposed scheme on people in private or hired vehicles, in respect of entering or exiting from the Estate in all directions. We were promised the modelling.

We heard nothing for two more months, at which point we wrote to our Councillors to remind them that we were still waiting for the modelling.

A week or so thereafter, we were invited to a meeting with the Council’s Traffic Officers and NRP. They presented to us all the reasons why our scheme was not as good as theirs (a point we had conceded in principle, two months prior). We repeated our request for modelling information and were told that that was too expensive and time-consuming to do.

We were infuriated by this, but repeated our request for exemption from restrictions of vehicular movement for residents and local businesses.

We were then offered a meeting a week later, where we were presented with modelling data, based on Google Maps journey time estimates, using 12.5 mph (peak) and 15 mph (off-peak) travel speeds as averages.

But by then we had done practical journey time measures ourselves. Even on quieter roads than usual, most of our journey times measured 4 to 5 times as long as theirs. They then lectured us on how to take scientific measurements, implying that our data were suspect.

Remembering the Oxford Street consultation fiasco, we asked to see the questionnaire that the Council intended using for the LTN consultation. We were given three days to respond, again over a weekend. We were seriously concerned about bias, and made in-detail suggestions about how we felt the Council’s questionnaire should be improved. We removed none of their questions, but added some more questions.

Save for a few minor items, our points were rejected on the basis that the Council’s “communications consultants” had adjudged the questionnaire to be without bias.

We then realised, studying the Council’s intended plan yet again, that a potential new rat run was introduced by the Council’s scheme, this time running past the entrances to the gardens in two garden squares, entrances regularly used by parents and children. We immediately pointed this out to the Council.

The next we heard was when the consultation papers were posted by hand through our letterboxes. The Council had totally dismissed our serious concerns about
the potential new rat run.

PRO’s OF THE COUNCIL SCHEME

  • Reduced air and noise pollution for most.

  • Greater ease of journey for cyclists and pedestrians, (except along Gloucester Square South, Hyde Park Square, Hyde Park Street, and Albion Street).

  • Potential new exciting public space in Connaught Village (“Connaught Place”).

  • Reduction in north/south rat running and between the station and Sussex Place.

  • Experimental nature of scheme means that it can be changed/removed (potentially).

  • Some property values could increase.

CONS OF THE COUNCIL SCHEME

  • Significant new rat run is opened, with resulting air and noise pollution, passing by the entrances to two garden squares.

  • Reduction of freedom of vehicular movement for residents, neighbours and local businesses.

  • For some, their parking garages will be in different zones from their homes.

  • Increase in costs of taxi and private hire vehicle journeys.

  • Initial confusion created for delivery vehicles and service personnel, with increased journey time.

  • All residents will experience significantly increased vehicle journey times in and out of the Estate along increasingly congested and choked arterial routes, with more pollution experienced by streets adjacent to major arteries.

  • Traffic loads will increase significantly on Sussex Gardens, a supposed cycle quiet way.

  • Some property values could decrease.

  • Cyclists will have to travel in existing cycle lanes on the most congested roads.

  • Quick drives in and through Connaught Village will no longer be possible, except for vehicles entering from and exiting into Edgware Road.

  • Council barriers will not be continuously enforced, encouraging potentially increased law-breaking.

Despite our Councillors genuinely having tried to work with us, this consultation process has unfortunately felt like a sham. We urge you to study the documentation very carefully before responding.

While we remain neutral as an Association, it is our duty to point out to you that while life would improve significantly for those not using private cars or taxis, for those who do, the negative impacts could be significant.