SPECIAL FEBRUARY 2017 NEWSLETTER
FORMER LONDON CHEST HOSPITAL
CREST NICHOLSON PLANNING APPLICATION
AMENDED DRAWINGS
At the request of the GLA and Historic England, the applicant is preparing amended drawings to address the Council’s concerns.
Following submission of the amended drawings, the Council may decide to hold a 21 day consultation for local residents and others to comment. I understand that this possible consultation will not invalidate all the comments made so far.
The GLA and Historic England have postponed their comments until they have studied the amended drawings.
The Council has received about 147 letters/emails objecting to the planning application (including letters from the Victorian Society, SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society and East End Preservation Society). A 38° petition objecting to the proposals has been signed by 679 people.
My two online petitions were emailed in on 23 January 2017 (first with 284 signatures, second with 125 signatures; and paper versions of the two petitions were taken in on the same day (first with 41 signatures and second with 34 signatures). Fortunately, the two petitions are still online (first now with 311 signatures and second with 144 signatures).
Both are in urgent need of more signatures (ideally both need to be signed by the same person)
- Please sign both asap and encourage others to sign
- If you have signed the first petition, please consider signing the second petition.
You may be encouraged to sign both petitions after you read my attached long letter of objection. It is written in a repetitive, quasi-legal style to:
- Support the two petitions (in the hope that the officer’s report would include more information than just the number of signatures)
- Provide more information and explain the several points being made in both petitions
- Explain that in 1991, English Heritage rejected a listing application from LBTH and did so by making unfavourable comparisons with the Brompton Hospital in West London (listed Grade II 1994)
- Suggest that, although the former London Chest Hospital was listed Grade II in 2016 by Historic England, there are those who probably agree with the 1991 decision not to list: including the applicant’s two heritage consultants (former EH/HE Inspectors) who wrote the report in support of the (failed) request for a Certificate of Immunity from Listing and (almost immediately after the April 2016 listing) received pre-application advice from a Principal Inspector that it would be possible to make substantial changes to the listed hospital building and its setting
- Expose the outrageous claims made in the applicant’s Heritage Statement (written by one of the two heritage consultants); and explain the superiority of the London Chest Hospital’s system of warming and ventilating for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis, in comparison with the three systems at the Brompton Hospital
- Reveal the extent to which the Principal Inspector’s pre-application advice has been ignored by the heritage consultants and the applicant
- Explain the relevance of the Victoria Park Conservation Area and the fact that the (now listed) former chest hospital is not only the principal named building in the conservation area but is also in the setting of the Grade II*-registered park.
- Indicate how the relevant paragraphs in the National Planning Policy Framework (2012) apply to each threat to the listed building and its setting; and in conjunction with NPPF para. 133 refer to Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) para. 17, which is about the demolition of key elements causing substantial harm to a listed building
- Indicate how the Planning Act 1990 (not mentioned in the two
petitions) applies to each threat to the listed building and the conservation area
Please therefore sign both petitions to stop fake heritage and make sure that the listed 1855 main hospital building is properly repaired and adapted for residential use as a worthy and honest memorial to the specialist hospital which served the people of North and East London for 160 years.
Tom Ridge
First online petition (Alterations to listed building)
Chest Hospital Second Online Petition (Proposed residential blocks)
