Transcript

this evening's meeting. Just as a bit of housekeeping before we kick off, please note that we're not expecting a fire alarm, so if the alarm is sounded, please follow instructions from me and evacuate the building. To begin, I'll start asking my fellow members of the committee and officers to introduce themselves, starting with members on my right. Council, I'll include Peter's and Council outside board. Councillor Heather Staff, Ollie Gottch board. Paul Gondry, Col. Doney & Ward. Okay, and officers. And Nat Baker, Head of Development Management. Paul Gondry, Plan Applications Team Manager. Mark Davis, Planning Officer. Laura Avery, League Advisor. Thank you. I've received apologies for absence from Councillor Gunnery this evening. We have two substitute members on the committee, Councillors Cluked and Staff, who are substituting for the two vacant posts on the subcommittee. Do we have any declarations of interest? I will just say in the interest of transparency from my personal perspective, whilst this is not a personal pecuniary interest on item B3, the Ray Crescent application, we have received representations as committee in support of the application from the Tollington Ward Councillors. I will just make clear I am married to one of the Tollington Ward Councillors for the take of full transparency. Onto the order of business. As chair, I have a discretion to bring forward items or vary the order of the agenda, where there's a lot of public interest. So if there's any many objectives to an application, I will request that you choose a spokesperson. So can we just do a show of hands based on what items on the agenda people are here for? Would you please raise your hand if you're here for item B1, Victoria Primary School? Thank you. If you're here for item B2, Toffee Park? Thank you. Or if you're here for item B3, Ray Crescent Pavilion. Okay, that's clearly a majority of people here for that. So we will take that item first, thank you. First, to note, this is not a public meeting, it is a meeting of the Planning Subcommittee held in public and as such, all remarks should be addressed through me as the chair. The procedure for business is as follows. The item will be introduced by a Planning Officer. Subcommittee members may then ask questions of the officer. Objectives will then be invited to speak, followed by the applicant. The objector and the applicant will normally be allowed to speak for no more than three minutes each and where we've got a number of objectives registered and I do propose to give you two or three minutes on this occasion. After the objector has spoken, the applicants will have a similar length of time to apply. The subcommittee will then discuss the application and only those invited to speak at this stage will be able to do so. When the subcommittee has finished its deliberations, I shall read out the officer recommendations and proceed to a vote. Once the vote has been taken, there can be no further discussion of the item. So without any further ado, we'll move on to item B3, the Ray Crescent Pavilion. I'd like to invite the officer to give their presentation on the application. Thank you, Chair. This is presentation for item number B3 of the evening. There's one. The famous clicker. There we go. So in the time since the publication of the report, just a note at the start, a further step comments have been received from Sport England on the 18th of July. So as a statutory consultee, Sport England have not raised an objection towards the replacement of the pavilion building, as they're with the view that it broadly accords with the Sport England playing field policy and also paragraph 103 of the National Planning Policy Framework. So the comments regarding the non-statutory ECB and Football Foundation design requirements and there's two main points that have been raised here. The first one is that there's a preference for there being no direct line of sight towards the cricket pitch and the second is to ensure the official's changing room has benching outside of the shower area for a minimum of two people. So since we've received these comments, we've discussed a potential solution and we believe that we can address these tonight with the applicants who are in attendance for the meeting. Some further neighbouring comments also received and this included a list of preferred conditions and a preferred layout for the building and needs to be acknowledged and also being shared with members of the committee prior to the meeting. So moving on to the presentation, the sort of site relates to ray crescent open space and this is in the Tollington Ward of the Borough and this is bounded by toll rate close to the east and ray crescent to the west. The proposal specifically relates to the existing pavilion building and the location of this can be seen by the red line boundary there. So this is an aerial view of the site where the location of the pavilion building is marked by a blue hour, which I'll put this in. So in terms of designations, the pavilion building itself sits just outside of the Tollington Park Conservation Area and that's seen on the left photo there. The conservation area boundary is shown in green on that photo. The pavilion building on wider site also forms part of a site of importance for nature conservation or sink for short and the right-hand side image there shows the sink boundary and that covers the entirety of the open space. So as mentioned, a pavilion building currently exists and this sits on the edge of the park. This has been unused since 2018 and has previously served a sports use. This can be seen in quite poor condition, both externally from a parent's point of view and also internally, as can be seen in some of the photos there. And these are some longer views of the pavilion within the open space and as I mentioned, the pavilion is sighted on the edge of the open space and that can be seen in some of the photos there. This is an existing layout of the pavilion that's in place at the moment and it can be seen that the building accommodates currently, even though it's not in use of several changing spaces and showers and again these were designed to accommodate the sports use. So this is a CGI of the replacement building that's been proposed. The building would be positioned in the same location and would also continue to be a single story in height. And this is a second CGI of the proposed building as well as remaining single story in height. Its footprint of 222 square meters would be almost identical to the existing building which is 226 square meters. Okay, I'll do that. So in terms of materiality, the building would be constructed in a very toned grey brickwork and would incorporate some contemporary style windows and doors of that same colour. A key feature of the design here is the biodiverse green roof and I'll touch upon that a bit further in the presentation. So moving on to the elevation drawings, so as can be seen, A and B at the top there show the side elevations and elevation C is showing the park facing elevation whilst D is showing the elevation which faces toe very close. And this is the section drawing, again just sort of demonstrating that sloping roof that has been proposed and it gives a bit of an indication as well of the internal head height space that would be incorporated. And this is just a comparison of the existing and proposed, again this can be seen the location massing and height has been retained here and again a second existing and proposed comparison is there, you know, worth the view that what's been proposed demonstrates visual improvement from the current situation. So moving to the internal layout that's been proposed, so the most significant new feature is the introduction of a new community space and this can be seen towards the left hand side with the plan on the screen there. So this would also contain a kitchen area as can be seen and an accessible toilet which would be accessed from the community space internally. So to access the pavilion building, this would take place from the park facing elevation as can be seen on the plan there with the opening sort of face, the main openings facing out woods onto the open space and towards the right hand side the sports facilities and these consisted of two equally sized separate locker rooms and these, within those locker rooms would have showering toilet facilities and then just finally to know the other rooms which are included are the externally accessible toilet space, there's two on the left hand side and one on the right hand side and then also a parkkeeper's office and a plan room. So who at careful attention has been given towards inclusive design here and that includes this diagram within the committee report but it just gives a brief overview of some of the accessible features that have been proposed and this could feature such as ramps, level access and external hand rails and also wheelchair turning spaces internally and then also crime and security just ensuring that security measures are in place to comply with the relevant secure bike design standards and also it's worth mentioning that a gate would be created that's not there currently to the side as an improvement from a crime and security perspective and I just included a snippet out on the plan. So turning to an overview of the wide row overview of the post site so the image on screen includes some annotations to show the differing features which form the proposal, I think the most notable thing here is the new gated external storage area and this is proposed to the southeast inside of the building and would be designed to store equipment that's associated with the sport use. I think it's just important to note that the new storage feature would be separate to the parks depot which can be also seen there and that's to be retained in its current position. I'll touch more on that shortly. So to accommodate a new external storage area a total of 6 trees would be removed and these are seen with the red teas on the plan here so the height of the trees to remove ranges from tree T4 which is 16 metres in height to T21 which is 4.5 metres in height. In addition to the 6 trees part of a tree group would also be removed and this consists of a total of 24 smaller trees and shrubs and the approximate location is demonstrated by G8 on the plan there again it's to the side of the pavilion building and just also a hedge row at the front which is H15 so not the front but the street facing elevation is H15 that would also be removed whereas the trees aren't highlighted and red there would be retained and so the image on the left sort of gives an overview of the canopies that would be removed as part of the proposal on the image on the right just gives a slight overview of the area in which the trees are located as part of the application documents a tree report has been submitted which has considered the trees that have been removed as being either low or poor quality and this has been reviewed also by the council's tree officer and as part of the recommendation from the tree and also the ecology officers in line with council policy we've included a condition with the recommendation which requires the applicant to submit details of tree replanting for each of the tree that's to be lost and this would include sort of the new location of the trees within the park and would need to be fully complied with by the applicant sort of prior to occupation of the new building. Just in addition to the trees replanting condition a new landscaping, a few new landscaping features have been proposed I think most notably the green roof to the building as well as one or two planters to its perimeter but just to clarify we've included a condition with the recommendation for landscaping details. Energy and sustainability again the building has been designed with us in mind so in addition to the green roof which I previously mentioned the building's primary source of heating would be a source heat pump and that's located in the area shown in blue on the plan and the sustainable design and construction statements have been submitted also and suppose the main outcome of that is that the building would achieve an onsite carbon reduction of 10% against part of the building regulations and again this has been reviewed by the council sustainability officers and deemed acceptable and then just finally a new, to regulate the new community facility how it's used an operational management plan has been submitted and just as I just put some of the key points on there but they're also listed in the report and this I guess confirms the hours of use the occupancy and also maintenance arrangements and we've included a condition, a compliance condition to ensure that this is adhered to throughout the course of the development and that concludes my presentation, thank you. Thank you, questions for the officers? Councillor CLINKed. Could you just confirm for us the nature of the trees and shrubs that are intended to be removed in terms of the tree survey, how exactly were they classified? We've got only four castifications on there, yes, Chair. So the trees are classified as individual trees are all classified as C2 other than one that is you and the group has got a value of C2 as well and C2 under the British standard is and not an impediment to development. I was just slightly confused on the one hand you mentioned six trees to be removed but then you mentioned a large number of other trees and shrubs which is part of the group. But are there other trees involved or are there the rest of that group really shrubs? So it's my understanding that the shrubs and the trees form part of a vegetation group which is a collection of smaller vegetation within the area, but as I said, we do have the tree officer in attendance today who might be able to clarify that further. Would you like to start with a question towards the tree officer, Councillor CLINK? There's sort of six what you'd consider trees that are proposed to be in the most. The rest of that group of the 20 plus trees are sort of more un-storey, overgrown, shrub type species, whole-thorn-private, laurel, and under the sort of the National Industry Guidelines, you'd consider that as a group rather than an individual special tree. The trees that are identified in the tree are all about C-plus. Yeah, they're all again, under our planning policies and the National Industry Guidelines, British standards, 5, 8, 3, 7, those trees would be considered low quality and of lower amenity for various reasons regarding condition, proximity to buildings, proximity to each other because they were mutually suppressed and not being allowed to grow to their full sort of maturity and things like that. Thank you, though, that's very helpful. Any other questions, Councillor COMBRIEN? And then just related to that, can you just give us a clear idea so now that we know the number of trees that we need to go plus shrubs, the group, what's the proposal for replacement planting then? I'll answer. So we've got a replanting condition and that proposes to replace the canopies of the trees that have been removed and that's, as the tree officer has confirmed with me, that's sort of in line with what's in our policy in terms of replacement trees. The details of that would need to be submitted to us prior to occupation of the building, so that's sort of the condition we've included with the recommendation. Yeah, it's just condition six and it is true that it doesn't say specifically how many trees, which can be amended to be more specific, which says replace the canopy in a more general term, doesn't say definitively we want six replacements, but that's within the gift of Councillors if they so choose. I think Martin and I've asked both sides of the same kind of question because most objections that we've observed seem to be about the rules of trees and this sort of thing crops up a lot and we tend to get into tree counting in quite a big way, so take down six, replace it with 18 or 100 or whatever, I think we might want to get a bit more specific. Okay, thank you, can I answer that, sorry, yeah we wouldn't really look at exact numbers of trees because obviously you know you could have 10 small trees and one large tree and one large canopy tree would provide significantly more benefits than a small canopy tree. So as has always been said within the condition we would require a full canopy cover assessment of what's exactly there and then we as per our policy we would actually require an increase canopy cover being provided in line with you know vision 2030. Some of the certain veterans of planning application concerning Dixon Clark Court for example, which involves people deciding to live in threatened trees for a while at enormous expense. So numbers kind of matter and you're right, but your trees will be replaced by small trees. We might want to ask you what age would the sapling replacements be and so forth to get an idea about how quickly that canopy could be replaced or said to be fully mitigated and replaced essentially. We ask for tree sort of replacement canopy cover to be done within about 10 years. It depends on different situations but our policy says requires 10 years. Thank you. It might be a topic we return later in discussions. A couple of questions from me, the accessible toilets on the left hand side of the plan presumably they will be publicly accessible not just ancillary to the community use all the sports use. Now that's correct, but it's my understanding that it's proposed for them to be used by both users in this case. So yeah, from the sports use for when that's in use and also from members of the public. Thank you and a number of representations referred to the design of the storage unit at the site of the proposal. Do you have any detailed images of the storage unit in question? I don't as part of the presentation but I think the applicant might be able to give some further detail on that as part of, you know, noted in the report from our perspective from a design point of view. We didn't have a raising objection to that so it might be better for the applicant to clarify that one for you. Thank you. Any final questions for officers before we move on to objections? No? Okay, thank you. Could you raise your hand if you are hoping to speak in objection to this application? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, are you all intending to, hoping to speak? Okay, I had five registered speakers so my proposal was to allow 15 minutes of objections. I'm happy to still take 15 minutes but if all of you wish to speak I would suggest that you have a quick huddle and divide the 15 minutes up amongst yourselves. Well only five speakers registered to speak so in which case if you don't, if you're not willing to have a huddle and discuss amongst yourselves how you divide the time I will just take the five registered speakers so it's up to you which you prefer to do. We consider a whole range of applications and we normally only allow three minutes per objector for registered speakers. No, is it the chair's discretion so I'm afraid if you're not willing to divide up the time then I will just go to those who registered in advance. I understand what you're saying. Okay, well if you're not willing to discuss amongst yourselves who's speaking I'll take speakers who registered in advance of the meeting in order that they registered. So on that basis have we got... That would absolutely be acceptable yeah we'll put a total of 15 minutes on but I will stop you if you go over the 15 minutes. It would be useful and as you make your remarks if you could introduce yourself and your relationship to the proposal as well and you're interested in it. My name is Emma I live at 12 Tell Road with my two children. The trees in Ray Crescent form the structure of my garden including the Hawthorne. I bought my home in March 2022 moving in during a traumatic divorce and after the death of my father I bought the flat specifically for the woodland garden which created a safe haven and support of my healing. My garden is my sanctuary and the trees and the birdsong are vital to my mental health and well-being but it's not just me who values these trees. The other residents of Tell Road depend on this mature dense woodland for privacy, shade, biodiversity, birdsong, soundproofing and the very character of our gardens and extra protection from flying cricket balls for children such as Marxes playing in their gardens and our windows. I've lived right next to the park since 2007 and I know just how much this woodland means to this tight-knit community. Just read the comments of some of the 400 people who sign the petition. Others have applied to the Council of Tree Preservation or as for these trees. Locals can't understand why they're being asked by the Council of sponsored trees or support wider park improvements whilst it also plans to cut down the trees that they value and love to prepare to create a new storage area. They worry it'll be as much of an eye for saw as a current depot. There's been no specific consultation with Tell Road residents who live day to day with these trees. Indeed in even the application states no assessment of visual impact from local residence point of view and there are no photos from the point of view of our gardens. The project should be deferred until the residents of Tell Road have been properly consulted and the impact of the loss of trees and the storage area considered from the points of view of those whose lives will be changed by these works rather than sports people who only use the site for leisure. For the residents of Tell Road specifically there is also risk of ground movement due to loss of trees and introduction of an underground water, storm water tank both increasing ground water so the risk of ground movement and structural damage. Form a request to the applicant for structural advice on this have not been responded to nor have guarantees that future damage caused will be covered by Council insurance policy. The project should be deferred until these conditions are met. I welcome meanwhile the fencing of this hidden area between the pavilion and my boundary living right next to the site I'm subjected to antisocial behaviour daily including people urinating on the fence and drug use. This area can be managed via fenced off area like elsewhere in the park and by opening the adjacent space to create a woodland walk that's visible from the park. It's unclear how the security defence at the side of the building will work. It's also only about a metre high and can easily be climbed. The project should be deferred until this detail is clarified. Finally despite repeated requests the applicant is unable to list the specific equipment to be stored in this area. They've suggested this is for future proofing but there's no reason why the trees have to be cut down now. The project should be deferred until the applicant provides a full list of the specific items that we've stored in this area now and in the future. When the future space is needed the applicant can follow the due process for clearing the necessary space or allocate an area within the adjacent depot. Hello I'm Lois Harvey. Hello my name is Lois Harvey I live in Toreau next door to Ray Park. I'm a member of the Friends of Ray Crescent Voluntary Group and we have worked hard to promote an implement the Council Biodiversity Policy which pledges to protect and enhance biodiversity to identify priority habitats and species and set a programme of action for their conservation. We cannot believe that the applicant proposes to clear a woodland area of approximately 90 metre square for an equipment storage area. It is to fell 30 trees and shrubs including three beautiful trees a Norwegian maple a white willow and a birch tree all playing an essential part in the ecosystem of the park providing habitat for our birds, bats and our resident woodpecker. The bats are under survey which is not due for completion until September. The cleared ground will have plastic crates and gravel and the negative biodiverse ripple effect across our little park will be huge. Thirty trees and shrubs being felled and replaced by young saplings makes no sense. They are not diseased and neither is the earth they are rooted in. There is no mention of disease in the independent tree report. Policy G4H states that biodiversity should be preserved and only lost if demonstrably unavoidable. Yet we have been given no clear indication what sporting equipment is going to be stored in this space. We have persistently asked a recent answer was running equipment. The loss of woodland is demonstrably avoidable as there will be availability in the depot space for equipment storage on top of the drainage tank that requires regular access. There is no justification for the loss of woodland. Indeed the council's management plan 20 to 25 clearly states the wooded area adjacent to the pavilion will have measures put in place to protect and enhance habitats for both bats and bees, bats and birds. What happened to that? The planning document page 96 says the proposal does not match the stated policies around Islington's own strategic and development management policies nor the commitment to protect sites of importance for nature conservation which Ray Crescent Park has been deemed to be. We request that no removal of 30 trees and shrubs. We request that this project should preserve and the visual immunity, biodiversity and history of Tollington according to policy. We request that no decisions about this small woodland are made before September when the bat report is due as we're concerned the council doesn't have all the information about that at this moment in time. This must not be approved as currently proposed. If it is decided to allow the loss of woodland then the approval should be deferred until the applicant has provided drawings showing where the replacement woodland habitat will be created. Noting that like-for-like habitat replacement is proposed in the preliminary ecological assessment and by the ecological officer. In proposing the loss of the woodland the applicant is bluntly ignoring biodiversity policy and the council should ensure that this is adhered to. Good evening Rachel Halliday. I've lived in Tollington place for 19 years and my house shares a boundary with Ray Park. The Equality Act 2010 means that public bodies must consider all individuals. SC1 policy for social and community infrastructure section H similarly and I don't believe the plan is fully compliant. I don't believe there's been adequate inclusive consultation with our community. The consultation was restricted in that you had to be able to read, comprehend and write English and be computer literate to view the documentation, plans and pictures. The in-person public engagement was over three years ago online during the pandemic. There's been ample time to arrange post-pandemic in-person community meetings that would have enabled the wider community to be included and have their say. The planning report states multiple times the primary use of the pavilion would still be for sports use. It admits to include that football has been played in the park for over 40 years actively supported by the council who mark out the pitches. A community use agreement is required and should be a condition. Without one it's clear commercial cricket is prioritised which would disenfranchise other community activities and sports. The accessibility needs in the redesign do not comply with policy or maximise the safety for users. The council mitigates the danger from cricket balls by installing netting to protect park users. Being able to access the community space directly from Tilray Crescent would avoid the risk to community room users while cricket is being played. Neurodiverse people can quickly become overwhelmed or dysregulated by noise and activity. Many people with restricted mobility or reduced senses feel vulnerable in public spaces. To have to enter the community space via the park side of the building disregards vulnerable and differently-abled people and doesn't support women to feel as safe as a street door would. If you visit the park you know how dark the open space is after sunset even with lighting accessing the building from the park side would mean that people in the open space will clearly see visitors but lighting would be reduced the visibility of the park to those accessing the building increasing feelings of vulnerability. The position of the accessible shower toilet some means that some of the most vulnerable members of the community have to come furthest around the building to use it. Through a locked gate so needing a key code or official to get in past an office up a dead end to the furthest public area of the building. The mobility scooter charging point is located where if the owner is unable to transfer and walk inside the building it leaves them stacked with no protection from cricket balls during a game. Safety, security and full consultation don't meet policy requirements for inclusivity and equality until they do the decision should be deferred. Thank you. Good evening, I'm Jonathan Ward at Tollington Residence. This project will provide a valuable facility for Ray Cresham Park but the proposal rides rough short over many aspects of council policy and is a missed opportunity for shining beacon of environmental and socially responsible design. The core plan sets a high design standard to ensure quality development. They can often be pressured to approve projects which depart from this policy because the council is wary of the possible cost from appeal but this is not the situation here. This should be deferred until the proposal is improved. Seeking to engage and be proactive I've submitted alternative conditions and a slightly modified layout that will lead to much improved community environmental and economic outcomes. This proposal fails to consider neighbours preserved by diversity or possibly engage with the community but there are further failings and non-compliance with policy. In terms of the appearance of the building we should know that the council's own design and conservation officers object the materiality of the proposal. While concerning the proposal does not correctly illustrate the proposed appearance of the building with metal security grills all over it. The computer generated images don't show the impact of the metal grills when closed nor do the drawings. The images are also incorrect because they show the woodland area of 30 trees that is proposed to be nigglessly cut down and they don't show the new area of replacement woodland. So without these drawings the committee cannot correctly assess the visual appearance so they should defer the decision until they're available. In terms of energy use the proposal fails policy S1 requiring lean design. The installation of the air tightness are unambitious failing to use passive design principles called foreign policy. The building systems are nigglessly complex and oversized including cooling systems, whole building ventilation systems, an oversized centralized hot water system and underfloor heating. None of these are suited to simple a simple infrequently occupied building. So the proposal is minimally compliant with the council's energy policy. The forecast future performance is only 10% better than the outdated energy target set in 2021 by our now thankfully ousted Tory government. This fails to comply with policy S1 requiring energy efficiency to be maximised. Policy S3 requires renewable energy to be maximised and so solar panels should be proposed in conjunction with the green roof as is policy. So instead of a net zero carbon target with broken policy results in high capital costs, high running costs and high carbon emissions for a lightly used building. Policy S2 calls for applications to address the impact and efficiency of building materials but we see no strategy here from the council using materials that are recycled or reused, low carbon or ethically or responsibly sourced. All these objections call for deferral of the proposal to allow modification and improvement to be made and a committee to be given full information. Ray Crescent deserves better. Isling deserves better. The planet and its people deserve better. Hi, I'm Johnny Evans. I live very locally to Ray Crescent. I haven't got much time. There's lots of things I was going to say but let's talk about consultation first. The original consultation took place during the peak of Covid with a couple of Zoom meetings. Now the thing about some Ray Crescent is while it's a wealthy little place with lovely houses, not everybody had Zoom particularly at that time and some of the biggest park users were immediately excluded from that one piece of consultation that took place for two Zoom meetings. They are the important people in this park. They're the people who most need access to green space and they therefore never had a voice. The plan was delayed. The second consultation was that involved some letters to 393 addresses. There were 42 objections and seven comments of support. A later brief series of consultations took place. There are 12 objections to in support. It's clear that there is opposition to this. There is a petition with 428 people there. The opposition is not about cricket or no cricket. The opposition is about let's come up with something better. When reasonable compromises such as a community use agreement, a separate entrance or a desire to keep the trees alive are suggested no compromise seems to us to be offered. It is also I think a little bit sad for us that we've had any political representation in this from our three elected local councillors who don't seem to have put themselves out to find a middle ground. There is a middle ground to be found. Landscaping. The planning permission for this site should not be provided pending the development of a landscape design strategy in line with Eastington councillors. Oh no. Can I ask you to bring your remarks there please. I'll do it very quickly then I'll try and find a way. The applicant is only now consulting on the landscape design strategy and yet he is making Council's own SDMP management policies as strategic and development management policies say and I quote, landscape design is integral to the design and functioning of the whole development and the wider area and is not something that can be considered after a building has been designated or built and this building has been designed and will be built without that and that can't happen. Thank you. Thank you for all of your comments. I'm afraid not. We've had 15 minutes and we've heard from I believe from all the registered speakers so thank you for that. We will now give the members of the committee wait, may come back to objectives for questions after we've heard from the applicant. If I could ask the applicant to speak it will be very useful if you could direct your comments to some of the points raised by objectives. You can have up to 15 minutes and likewise members may also have questions for you afterwards. Thank you Chair. My name is Barry Emerson I'm the Head of the Park Service. We understand and we have listened to the concerns raised by the objectives we've been in discussion with with them for a number of years now and I believe we have made changes to the building based on some of the consultations sorry we've had so I'll talk to you Chair. We need to re-provide certain facilities with this building which does constrain us in terms of the overall design and outcome. It is a sports facility that's part of our strategic sports provision plan and it's our only crooked field in the borough and we are looking to re-provide those facilities as part of this and as part of those requirements we need to adhere to sport England requirements which we believe we've now done with subject to a few changes to their request. In terms I'll address the point with regards to the storage area. The storage area is being created to deal with a number of issues. One is a direct result of the consultation the request for storage was required. The people who responded to the consultation we have existing storage requirements on site as mentioned by some of the objectives. There is a community football that does happen at the site that's both for male and female players. We store goals for them on site at the moment those are just propped up against the building. We want to make sure that there's a proper space for them for that. We have constant requests for extra storage space for bibs for different sporting provision. We also have requests for storage for where we have other facilities where we have users of our buildings. Let's say that there's going to be an exercise class or a stay-and-play, a forest school program, all of those facilities, all those types of activities that we hope and we expect that this facility will accommodate will need storage capacity. We can't fit that within the building because we are constrained by the size of it. Hence the compromise of using the area to the side of the building where we have existing ASB issues that were mentioned earlier. We want to make sure that there is more secure. The fence height is not one meter. It's at least 1.5 I believe if not a bit higher. In terms of what will go in it, it will be goals, secure storage containers and it will also have the heat pump for the building. Some of those trees regardless of the development will need to be removed to facilitate the development because of their proximity to the building to make sure it is usable and those trees do not impact the building going forward. In terms of the consultation, the consultation did happen during COVID which restricted our ability to hold public meetings for obvious reasons. We did let a drop over 2,200 local residents as well. There were posters put up in the park for people to be able to respond to. We did have Zoom meetings. I'll accept in an ideal world we would have had more public meetings but we didn't have the opportunity at that time to do it. We listened to the feedback we've made adjustments and we believe we are delivering a community facility that will facilitate not only cricket which is an important element at the fields but also other sports such as football, sports activities to local schools and ultimately what we'd like to see is a huge range of community activities happening in the park in that building as well. Just to say our ambition is not to turn right-class into commercial sports activity. I think we've shown over the last couple of years with our reduction of the commercial use of the facility for cricket. We've limited last-man stance. We play a commercial league of the fertility to two nights a week. We've made specific provision for community activity in the fields. We've promoted and pushed the use of it for youth and junior programs and that's ultimately our ambition. We really want to work with our sporting partners to provide more community output and access. In terms of the trees we will obviously commit to whatever requirements are set for us as part of this. We're happy to replace two-for-one trees but I think the key thing is obviously about canopy cover and making sure that we re-provide that across the fields and we will do that in line with any conditions that are set. I'll hand over to Alex just to comment on the sustainability limits. Thank you and thanks, Chair. Alex J. Yedden, I am a sustainability consultant working for McBain's and responsible for the sustainability elements of this project. There are a couple of comments but I think just to address a higher level the sustainability strategy for this project has been developed based on site constraints, the size and scale of the project and to respond to that and also to be compliant and with business and local plan policies and national policies and also to go above and beyond those where we can and where practicable. One of the comments addressed passive design features and for a project of this scale we've proposed high performance fabric elements, high performance glazing specifications, enhanced air tightness, minimisation of thermal bridging as part of the project. It should also be noted that the existing pavilion building is not for purpose and this is a significant betterment of what is on site. There was also a comment I think about the energy system and systems and being oversized. Ultimately the strategy in terms of the energy systems proposed for this were based on information provided by the council in terms of other similar uses and potential maximum levels of occupation. That's what the systems have been sized to to accommodate for that but as the design process progresses there will be more thought given to whether or not those systems can be made more efficient. There was also a comment about circular economy, again one of the key constraints of this site is that we have to demolish the existing building because it's not for purpose. That limits quite considerably some of the work that can be done in terms of embodied carbon and circular economy. We are having a very committed to ensuring that in the next design phase of this project we look at the reuse of materials where possible, circularity of materials and percentage of recyclable materials that can be used on this and some information about this is actually detailed in the SDCs. I think those are, excuse me, a final comment around renewable energy being a requirement and yes I think for most projects it will be a consideration and for this project it was also a consideration but we've been advised by the council that again due to their experience of similar projects and especially ones where it's next to cricket uses that actually the maintenance costs and associated responsibilities are quite significant especially from damage from cricket balls on solar panels and solar PV. That decision has been taken that it's not viable for this project from a sort of maintenance and ongoing maintenance perspective and therefore they've not been incorporated. However the overall strategy for this is based on a all-electric system that as the electricity grid decarbonises this building will be net zero carbon over time which is of course a central government and priority. I think I've addressed most of the comments raised but happy to answer any of them if there are any. So I just answered a question that came up from one of the councillors just to confirm the two disabled toilets will be publicly accessible access to be provided by the parkkeeper and the aim is to make sure those are open at all times as possible. Thank you. If your comments have come to a place. Members of the committee you've now got an opportunity to ask questions to objectors and the applicant. Do we have any questions? Councillor Plud. Thank you Chair. Two sort of relatively unconnected questions please. Firstly I think this is probably to our tree officer actually. There was a suggestion from some of the objectives that they had asked for the trees that are to be removed to be protected by a TPO. Had that application been made would a TPO have been awarded for the trees that are proposed to be removed. In short the trees aren't of sufficient conditional quality or a medical value to want having a tree preservation order set on them. Thank you. And then to the design team over here there's a suggestion that there is an element of commercial harm going on at the pitch at the moment. I heard you say the amount of time that takes place has been reduced but I don't see anything in the papers or conditions about regulating that and deciding what level of commercial use there should be. I'm wondering whether we need to be looking for some kind of a condition on that. What's your current position on the commercial use? I should just be clear about commercial use. The Ray Crescent is a sporting facility and like any facility it can be rented out by anybody. We've had a relationship with a company called Last Man Stans who run leagues across London and across countries internationally. They provide a very good outlet for sporting activity for the community. They're not a professional league. They provide opportunities for small groups of people who want to come on an evening, you don't want to play formalised cricket and have a cricket match in a structured way. That is not that's something we've listened to the community because they felt that at one stage they were using it four or five nights a week. We've listened to that and we've reduced their usage down to two nights a week and we promoted and provided more access to community use of the facility for cricket either that's for our casual bookings or through our cricket development program as well. I think I wouldn't necessarily want to specify who or who can't book. I think it's more about looking at the balance of use to make sure there's a wide provision of opportunities for different user groups but very much the ambition of the council is to have the facility used as much as possible by youth developments in particular and particularly young girls. We're also looking at creating, working with our partner Middlesex Cricket Trust, walking cricket for older generations and continuing to build on our youth development program. We have a number of schools that are using the facility and we want to build on that as well. Thank you, just a clarification. My question was in relation to the balance of use is not any particular user but the fact that you've taken a decision to reduce the number of commercial hires due of the course of each week's just to me that that number of hires was clearly an issue. It sounds to me that we'd probably need to reach a point where certain terms of balance of use we do actually specify the number of commercial hires there are each week. It's two the right number from your point of view. I think it is I think again we're just going to be careful about the term commercial use because it's not a not a commercial use in terms of it's booked by it. We have a special range with a company and they pay a huge amount of money to use the facility. They are a booker like anyone else. We have a range of booking slots because recruit centers are only cricket facility in the borough and what we've done is with the specific booker because we had some feedback from the community that that was causing issues for them and wanting to balance that and make more available slots for our actual community development program we've reduced that. What I wouldn't suggest would want to do is specifically say on that we would limit the number of bookable slots overall for the facility because we want cricket to be played there. You made in both of your responses to be a distinction between this particular nature of this particular organisation that was booked in five nights a week and it now reduced it's two. In what way are they different from any other booking slots during the week? Well I think in terms of the feedback out from some of the community they felt that they were they were quite boisterous and loud and in fairness it didn't keep them with our opportunities for young people to develop and use the facility so we wanted to provide more opportunities for different user groups which is why we then ended up restricting them and now we have more use of development cricket happening on side and other end casual bookers as well. Chair if I may if members were minded to recommend approval you may wish to consider something we've done on council end schemes before I was thinking specifically at Barnard Park when we had a sports use there for football pitches rather than cricket and a condition was added to that for a sports pitch management plan which required the applicant to detail exactly what the applicant was stating there in terms of how often things were used and who would use them the booking arrangements for those and any fees that would be required and what that would do I think in terms of what you were potentially suggesting would give comfort hopefully to the residents in terms of there would be an approved document online that people could refer to it would be enforceable from our point of view but also it would mean that that document could be updated in the future should there be a shift in what the council is doing in terms of use which would again be publicised and available for the look at. That sounds to be like a sensible way of resolving it but discuss that in a minute. And on a sort of later thing for question from me in terms of whether the community space and the cricket space can be used concurrently and distinctively has it been designed with that in mind so you could have a community meeting in the community space whilst cricket is ongoing at the facility. Yeah absolutely there are certain types of cricket bookings that will require the use of the facility so for instance if you're running a league cricket match you have to provide a community room for lunches and breakouts after raining you need to be a use of the kitchen and you also need to have the obviously use of the change room facilities. The majority of our bookers though don't require the use of that centralised community space. What we will look to do is develop a program of activity and make sure that there is a use of both spaces because that's ultimately why we're creating this as we want a wider use of the facility for a whole range of different uses from the community. Thank you I'm afraid we won't be taking any more contributions unless members have got questions for objectives. Any other questions from members of the committee? Councillor Conbury. Can I just press a little bit on the absence of solar panels because the council has approached pretty much every building that we own is to put solar panels on the roof especially if it's a flat roof. Now I get what you're saying about the risk of cricket balls and given that the solar panels will be facing southwards in other words of right angles to the building which in turn is at right angles to the pitch and I believe a build that might hit the solar panel would probably be an incredibly long deep square leg shot. At least I don't know if they might trigger I just looked it up in the Wikipedia. It would be deep cover if the boulder was going in the other direction. I mean seriously our cricket ball is going to damage solar panels on the roof. I think there are precedents for it happening. We've just suggested in terms of cricket balls damaging the solar panels. That's why the decision has been taken. There are other elements of the psych and strengths that lead to not ideal situations for those PV panels i.e. tree cover and also the orientation because the roof is pitched the opposite way but nevertheless that's a decision that's that's been taken by the council on the basis that the maintenance of those solar panels could prove a problem and could prove expensive especially given the payback period expected for solar panels and the upfront capital cost of providing those. The tree cover would be the trees that are going to be removed. Sorry there are still some trees to the front of that area that are still being retained. Some rather large trees as well. Sorry we're not taking any further contributions from the floor. Sorry if you could we're not accepting any more comments from the floor. If you could please be quiet. We're not taking any more contributions from the floor. If members have questions for you they will pose them to you but we've heard 15 minutes from objectors. No. Do members of the committee have any further questions? No. In which case the council staff. Yeah I have a point of clarity and just regarding the trees say you said that some trees would have to be removed because they would impact the new building coming in. In what way specifically would they impact the buildings? I'm just trying to get to my why exactly you need to be removing those. Thank you. That's the tree roots as well. I think I'm not an expert but I think it's the tree roots that are so close to the building when we have to build the new foundations also remove the existing foundations. It just has to facilitate the development. Well the trees are also not growing straight. They continue to go in different directions which is in the direction of where the building is. Some of them. I think that's right. In that case I want to ask a follow-up question to the residents themselves and that is coming back to your point about the direction the travel of any cricket ball which I'm busy with is what you're trying to say. So if they were to remove the trees on ground of impact is that the gap you would be talking about? So thank you. you [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO]

Yeah, I'm afraid the planning committee's >> Sorry, I think we've heard enough now, thank you. I would remind members of the committee that we're here to determine the application before us, not to determine whether a cricket should be played on very present, to begin with. Thank you for your comments. Any final questions from members of the committee? In which case we shall move on to deliberations. And we would discuss a number of conditions if members of the committee are minded to move to approve the application, which I think would be eminently sensible. Firstly, around having a sports pitch management plan and adding a condition to require that. Yeah, seconded, thank you. Sports pitch management plan submitted and agreed. I think there was also the question of conditions raised with regards to reconfiguration of the layouts, to address the objection from sports England. So I have a second to run that. Are there any other, I note that objectives did raise the question of a bat survey ongoing, and I note that we do have a condition already within the report that would require that to be concluded and submitted before the commencement of any works? Are there any other outstanding issues which members would like to make proposals to address? No? Councillor COMBRIAN. Sorry, I'll learn myself, be distracted by something else here. The number of trees, I have a fig recollection that in a throwing conversation with one of the board councillors, there was a discussion about a significant number of replacement trees and so forth, but I can't remember that exactly. I mean, two for one, a replacement of a canopy within 10 years is the bottom expectation. Generally, we kind of go up a bit from that. So if there are, what was it, six or eight trees in that group? Now hold on a second, can you not button? I don't really just put your hands down, we're not going to call you to speak. It's not a public meeting. I'm a tree officer. Did you say eight specific trees in that group, including shrubs? There's six what you would consider trees. The rest is just sort of understory, overgrown shrubs. Okay, well if the policy requires 12, I kind of sense that's not enough. They don't necessarily all have to be right in that same place, however. I'm looking at maybe four to one or something like that. I mean, remember some of it, well, let's double the minimum and perhaps go for some trees which will replace canopy cover a little bit earlier than 10 years, let's say, seven years. Very easy to do, you just put it out of just. You put in some large saplings, are we right? Yeah, we, as I say, we don't really consider numbers because, for example, one large plain tree, one of the squares we have provide infinitely more benefits than most of the trees. Yeah, no, you're saying something to me which you don't understand. There's little trees, what I'm suggesting is that we have a four for one replacement and that you achieve a replacement canopy and we'll yield to your professional judgment how you do this, replacement canopy using suitable species to get that replacement canopy within seven years. Yeah, we can measure those metrics, it wouldn't necessarily be numbers of trees, as I said earlier, we've got the policy and we did, you know, there's the Fish and 21 2030 strategy. I'm just, just for four to one, which kind of means you can do more than four for one. Yeah, absolutely, the advice you've given is obviously very much the planning policy position. It's within your grace as a committee if you do want to go along those lines to do it. And hopefully noting what their officers said we can do a four to one. If that's what you have to end at seven years, if that's what the committee wants to do, I would note you need to second it and can I just clear up that every single one of those conditions, if recommended for approval would be delegated to officers. That's correct, the exact wording of the dedicated to officers. And we've had a proposal, the second is on the previous two conditions. Councillor Convey, would you like to propose your amendment to the tree? Yes, I would like to suggest that we specify that within conditions five and six, there's a four to one replacement and the replacement canopy be achieved within seven years. Seconded. We come to deliberation then. I think reviewing the scale of proposals and the introduction of improved community use to go alongside a sport use. I would find it very hard to find reasons to reject this application. And I think a number of the issues raised by objectives and through all the representations that we've received and reviewed have been addressed in terms of conditions, but also in terms of what the applicant has said. But I would welcome any other views from members of the committee either in support of that or to the country. Councillor COOK. Thank you, Chair. I agree with you as it's clearly an improvement to provide these facilities. I think it's also a normal practice for many applications that things such as that survey's tree replacement plans are conditioned to be provided following an approval. So I think what's been sort of suggested as being emissions from the documentation that is actually a fairly normal position for this stage of a planning application that they're on. I don't think there are any points in there where more of any of the points raised as being information that's not presently complete would fundamentally change the scheme. And so I think we can be content with that. But also with regard to the trees and the shrub area, it's been made very clear to us that it is all those quality planting. And certainly the Council of the Conference amendments to the tree condition that will obviously not increase short term, but more quickly than was originally anticipated to make more than amend for the loss and obviously that we will have the opportunity to consider the location of the tree so that they don't encroach on each other in the way that the trees are there at the moment. So I regard that overall as an improvement as well. So yes, I would like to support this application. Thank you, Councillor. Any other thoughts from members in which case we will proceed to a vote. So the officer's recommendation is to brief this application subject to conditions and subject to three additional conditions, which we delegate the exact wording of two officers. I can see all those in favour of approval. Thank you. That's unanimous. That is the end of deliberation on that item. We will now move on to item B1. We'll just give members of the public a moment to move around. If you wish to make representations. If you're here for item B1 either as an applicant or an objector, if you'd like to come and sit on the seats further forward. Okay, my mistake. Sorry. You'll get your turn. Okay, thank you. Over to officers for the presentation. Thanks again, Chair. This is the presentation for item B1 evening. So just to start off with, there was just one clarification from the officers report to note. So the body of the report notes that there's a landscaping condition that would not, sorry, a landscaping condition would not be included with the recommendation. But upon review of the report, we did decide to include that in the end. I believe that's condition seven in the officer's report. So this site, it's an overview of the site. It's Victoria Primary School. So it's understood that schools occupied the site since the late 1800s. And the original name of the school was Copenhagen Primary School. But it did actually change the name last year to Victoria Primary School. So the sole access to the school takes place from Treaty Street, as you can see there, via a sort of access way, which leads into the main school site. And we've got the Regents Canal to the south there and Thornhill Bridge Wharf, which is a residential street to the east. So this is an aerial view of the site. So the main three-story school building is located in the centre there. And that building is actually locally listed, but doesn't actually form part of this proposal. The caretaker's property, which is the main part of this proposal, I've located there with a blue arrow. It's located at the east of the site there. And this is an aerial view of the caretaker's house. So it's a standalone building. It did actually form part of a former terrace of Edward Square, I believe. But the rest of the terrace was demolished, but it's understood that caretaker's house was retained as a purpose to serve the school. I think the important thing to note with this house is it can't be accessed from the public realm, so the only access to it currently is within the school site. These are just some elevations. So you've got the front elevation there on the left-hand side and the side elevation on the right. This is just a longer view, sort of taken within the school. And yet to reiterate again, you have to access it from within the school site only. So as you can see from the photos, the caretaker's building is currently in quite poor structural condition. And the applicants confirmed it would require quite a significant overhaul to bring it back into residential use. And to add to this as well, with the building being constrained to a school site, we'd consider it would make it challenging to reintroduce the dwelling as a private dwelling house. So this particular application proposes to demolish the building in its entirety and replace it with new soft landscaping works. And the soft landscaping works, as can be seen now, would be in the form of a new sensory garden which would be used by pupils of the school and the layout can be seen here. And just to get an idea of what that would involve. So it would give the opportunity for nature-based activities, sort of food growing, ecological areas and also sensory areas which share a link to the natural environment. This is just some further layouts of the sensory garden. Again, just showing some of the equipment which would be incorporated on the left and just a key there to the different parts of where they'd be located. And also there's some wider landscaping works to the school. So as you can see on here, I believe phase one is towards the south that you can see there. That's my understanding that's already been completed. So this particular application relates to the sensory garden and then the landscaping works to the main playground which can be seen there in the centre of the slider. And as I mentioned before, we would seek to get the full landscaping details via condition. And then just finally, some works are opposed to the main entrance gate. Again, just to reflect the change of name at the school. And currently it's shown as Copenhagen primary school and it would change to show the Victoria Primary School which is the new name as I mentioned. So we recommend that planning permission is approved subjects or conditions. Thank you. Questions for members of the committee? In terms of the location of the house, correct everyone, but I think what you're suggesting is that the use of the house is effectively ancillary to the schools. So that's basically the reason why we feel comfortable for it to be lost. That's correct. Yes, part of our assessment, we considered it to be ancillary to the school. And that's, as I said, mainly because the only real way to access it is from via the school. So, you know, there's no access to it from external streets, for example. Any other questions from the committee? Council can bring? I've got two questions, but I think one will probably be for the applicants. The caretaker's house at the moment, it's North flank wall represents the south end of the Maltese games area at the school. How much of that wall is going to be retained or is it all coming down completely? So, as my understanding, I think we did clarify this during the application stage. I believe that the house would be demolished as part of the work, but I think the intention is to replace that existing boundary once the demolition is taken place and we have the new sensory garden there. So, I believe that would be retained in the same position as my understanding. And, you know, we can't condition that if need be as well. It is actually, in fact, already in condition seven party enclosing boundary treatments will have to get as part of landscaping plan. I have a second question, which may probably be better answered by the applicant. I think the, for many years, there has been an aspiration to move the tricky street gate closer to the tricky street, but that's not a feature of this application. I just wonder why that might be, if you know. Officers don't have an answer to that. I would direct that to the applicant, but I would clarify that we couldn't do it as part of this application because it doesn't form part of the website, but a valid question to us, the applicant. Thank you, in which case, I don't believe we have any objectives here for this item. So, we'll move on to the applicant. We will perhaps give you three minutes if you'd like to speak a bit about the proposal. My name is Matthew, I can age on the head teacher at Victoria Primary School. I just wanted to clarify why it is that we want to create a sensory garden for our children. Approximately 95% of our children at Victoria don't have outdoor space in terms of living space. And 25% of our pupils are an SMD register. 25% of our pupils are an vulnerable pupils list. And for us, well-being and mental health is absolutely paramount. By creating this additional space, it will mean that our children can be immersed in nature. Being able to have an additional space outside of our main school building will really enrich our current environment. Our parents and children have seen the plans and they're excited and keen on the plans that have been put forward. And for us as a local community, there's much that we can do not only for our children who are currently at Victoria, but for children outside and school hours, we've spoke about things like extracurricular clubs, holiday camps, and for us, the sensory garden is paramount. And we're looking forward to, you know, utilising the space for the good of our children. Thank you. Thank you. Questions from members of the committee, Councillor COMBRIE. Matt, can I just press you on that question about the opportunity to move the gate close to Treaty Street, so you don't have this kind of, almost like a no-man's land between Treaty Street itself and the gate. I mean, I say we, you know what I mean? We've always had this aspiration for years and years and years, but, you know, once there was a solid gate there, it seemed a little bit perverse to look it up and move it. But given the opportunity now, it is to have a new gate. I'm not advancing the correctly, essentially, the percentage of the school, sorry, the gate to the points where the percentage of the school actually starts. Yeah, my name's Judith Vampani. I head up the education asset management team and the council. The purpose of this program of the external development was put together when the schools amalgamated and we simply looked within the red line of the current school land. I don't, in terms of developing the landscaping, so I'm not interested to say why we wouldn't have extended the gate out into the land that isn't part of the school to Treaty Street. It's made me a conversation for elsewhere. It is an ambition, though, I will look at it. Yeah, because the school land starts at the junction of Treaty Street. So the, for example, the electricity substation is within school lands. The fenced-off section, we've got the bins, that school land. A little bit on the corner, which has now been balarded to stop Bandit Parking. That's part of the school land. So it just seems logical to bring the gate to the edge of the school land. And this would be the obvious opportunity to do that. It's an opportunity that's wasted otherwise, seems to me. We could have a look at that. We can also design team to have a look at that. Yeah, we don't have our construction team or design team here. Is that something that we could look to condition that is explored? We couldn't, unfortunately, because it doesn't fall within the village in the site. It's outside of the scope of this application. Understood. We couldn't determine the application before us. However, hopefully you've heard that there would be support from one of the local ward Councillors for that. If there's no other questions, I will move us forward to deliberation. From my perspective, clearly, we'd never like to see the loss of residential use within the borough. And given the acute housing crisis, we see. But I accept the reasoning from officers that it is ancillary to the school use. And there's no practicable way this could be brought forward as any other kind of residential use within the school site. So, on that basis, it seems an excellent use of the council, the school's land, in order to enhance facilities for people. So, on that basis, I'm very happy to support it. So, I don't want to switch to adding anything before we move to effect. Botanic direction schools, originally called the Buckingham Street School, but it was Copenhagen Street. It's a school that I know really well, my kids went there, was a governor, Martin was a governor as well. And I really support this approach. We took a very, very difficult set of decisions about amalgamating Victorian Copenhagen School on this site. And there's a really strong commitment by the local authority to make sure that the site was maximized in its use. And that it's very definitely here to stay, if you know what I'm saying. And I think it's a shame to lose a house, but I do know this house really well. I remember the last kid that lived there. I mean, it was in a bad condition when he lived there. And that was nearly 10 years ago, and it's not been used since. It was once upon a time, a sort of aspiration that maybe a couple of newly qualified teachers might live there or something like that. But I think that was a bit of a pipe dream, to be perfectly honest. And I do really emphasize what Matthew said about the physical quality of this school needs to be upgraded. There's a nursery there as well as a regular reception through to year six on school. And it is a site that needs softening and increased planting over the years. But this is a super idea and it would be worse to not grant permission. Thank you, Councillor Combury. In that case, we move forward to a vote. Officers' recommendation is to approve the applications, objective conditions, all those in favour. That is unanimous. Thank you very much. We'll move on to item B2. And thank you very much for joining us this evening. If you're here for item B2, if you'd like to move into the applicant seat. When you're ready for your presentation, officers, please. Quite wonderful. Thank you, Chair. This application relates to the provision of a new family hub building and the landscaping improvements to the existing Tuffy Park adventure playground and multi-use games area. The application site comprises the vacant King Square nursery building, a multi-use games area in the Tuffy Park adventure playground with associated timber cabin. The nursery building and the adventure playground are accessed from a long eye-monger row. Muguet is accessed from within the site and is also publicly accessible from within the adjacent Radness Street open space. The application site sits an eye-monger row between St Luke's Gardens and the Radness Street open space. The nursery building is a two-story 1960s brick and concrete building with the sleeping roof form. To the south of this building is the Tuffy Park adventure playground, which includes outdoor play space and a single-story timber cabin. The application site is currently surrounded by high-level mesh fence, which results in the height in the site having very little active frontage, which creates a hostile environment around the site and access points into the facilities at difficult to locate enough port quality. The view on the left shows the existing King Square nursery building and the view on the right shows the existing timber cabin within the adventure playground. This image shows the muguet. This image shows the muguet and the surrounding fencing. This is a council-owned application which proposes the extension and accomplishment of the existing King Square nursery to create a new family-held facility and internal space with the Tuffy Park adventure playground. Demolition of the existing timber cabin and associated landscape improvements are also proposed. And this is the proposed siteway layout there. The main issues arising from this proposal are related to land use, design conservation, biodiversity, collection trees, neighboring immunity, transport and highways and energy and sustainability. As previously noted, the existing use of the main building is as an nursery. This application proposes a change of use to allow for a new family-held facility to be provided. To support the loss of the nursery, the applicant submitted a community needs assessment which confirms with evidence provided by the council's children's services team that the nursery is no longer required and that there is sufficient spaces available in nearby nurseries to accommodate local need. The proposed family-held would provide a range of services for families and young people. It is considered that the proposals would extend the social and community infrastructure use of the site and the applicant application is therefore considered acceptable in large use terms. Through the addition of a two-story extension of the northern edge of the building and a single-story extension along the southern and eastern edges, the proposals would successfully accommodate the family-held and adventure playground internal space largely within the footprint of the existing building. The proposed additions are subtle and it's considered that they work well with the height and mass of the existing building. To the iron-monger row frontage, a new glazed reception area would welcome people into the building, signage of the entrance would guide users into the space helping to address the site's existing legibility issues. Across the site, the applicant proposes a revised boundary treatment. Fencing would be removed from in front of the main building and new fencing, including a new entrance, would be instilled along the adventure playground's iron-monger row elevation. The proposed fencing around the adventure playground would be at a height of 2.6 metres to meet the service provider's requirements. However, the applicant has successfully mitigated the visual impact of this high-level fencing through a good quality design, which results in the significant improvement of the existing condition. The applicant proposes a covered seating area, a self-planting and food-growing areas in the space currently occupied by the timber cabin. This area would have a more formal character than the remainder of the adventure playground, which is not affected by these proposals. The demolition of the cabin and the proposed new entrance would allow users into the site for mining-monger row, providing a new and more active frontage and clearly marking the entry into the site. To the rear of the site, the applicant proposes to resurface the existing mugat and make a number of interventions to improve the user experience. Proposals to introduce an additional entrance to the mugat from within the park would make the mugat feel safer for users. Furthermore, proposals for new signage, upgraded fencing, self-planting and a new seating area will make the space feel more accessible and inclusive. In addition to these changes, the applicant proposes a new ramp to provide step-free access between the mugat and the adventure playground, which is supported. In order to facilitate development, the applicant proposes to remove four trees, to ensure any canopy cover is lost. The applicant proposes to plant eight new trees across the site. The Council's tree officer has reviewed these proposals and raised no concerns. In terms of neighbouring immunity, the impact of the proposed buildings is considered to be limited due to the buildings being some considerable distance from the nearest residential properties. The applicant submitted draft operational plans, which are considered acceptable, subject to conditions, securing final details of operational hours and how potential disturbance will be minimized. Construction management plan would also be secured to minimize construction impact. It's proposed that delivery servicing waste collection for the site would be broadly carried out in accordance with the existing arrangements for the site. To comply with policy, the applicant proposes to provide an accessible parking bay within 50 metres of the family per pensions. It's recommended that these be secured through a director's letter. In terms of cycle parking, eight staff spaces and six visitor spaces are provided. This is in accordance with local policy requirements. Energy efficiency measures are proposed, including air source heat pumps, which mean that the proposed scheme would achieve a 23.9% reduction in regulated CO2 emissions against part of 2021 baseline. The applicant is considered water efficiency and final details as a sustainable drainage strategy would be secured by a condition to ensure that water attenuation is maximised. Greeneries are proposed and the applicant would be required by a condition to demonstrate that they've been maximised across the site. No PV's are proposed because of insufficient roof space and overshadowing. Officers consider this approach is acceptable. Through the proposed landscaping interventions, a wide-versed Jeanette gain of 12.27% is achieved. It's recommended that this be secured by the landscaping condition. For these reasons, it is recommended that the applicant application be approved subject to conditions and the director's letter. Thank you. Thank you. Questions from the committee? I've got one. In terms of the impact on neighboring amenity, I take it that a family hub use wouldn't be more intense than a nursery usage on the site. I don't believe it would be. It's proposed hours, I think, close at 5.30pm every day, so it would be very comparable. Thank you. Any other questions from members of the committee? No. In which case, I don't believe we've got any objectives here, but I would like to invite the applicant to speak up to three minutes and support the proposals. I think what I've been – I'm the architect from TPM Studio, a local practice just in New North Road. I think what's different about this scheme is the sheer amount of consultation that has gone before both the full application and the pre-application. And that consultation took the form of engaging both the family hub and with Toffee Park. The thing about the family hub that's slightly different from the various iterations of government initiatives is that this not only focuses on children up to six years old, but focuses on those to 19 or 25 with special educational needs and disabilities. So it supports families and young adults in what is quite a challenging part of the borough in the Bunhill Ward. So it offers something quite holistic for those beyond six years old, so I think that's a big positive. Toffee Park Adventure Playground is used hugely in the borough, and particularly in the Bunhill Ward, although people do come from further afield. The proposals will give it a long life. It will be a building that provides first-class indoor facilities and outdoor facilities for those user groups that use it also, not just in term time, but also outside of term time when their parents need support with child care. So that is also positive. The Bunhill Ward is undergoing significant changes with the Finsbury leisure centre proposals as well. And the proposals sit quite well within a master plan of improvements to the Bunhill Ward. So I think that should also be considered by the committee. I think that's all I've got to say. I'm welcome to take any questions. Thank you. Do you have any questions for the applicant? No? Thank you. Then, no questions. If you pop your mic off. In which case, we will move to deliberations. I think the proposals that we're seeing are quite straightforward. In design terms, they do appear to be a betterment of the existing, both the existing facilities and the existing design of the site. And it's really positive to see facilities for the borough's tutoring of people being upgraded in this way. And actually, the quite unique offer that a family hub brings being co-located with the eventually grounded this way. So I will be supporting these proposals. Any other comments before we move to a vote? Okay, in which case officers have recommended approval, subject to conditions, all those in favour of the proposal? As unanimous. Thank you very much. One item that we overlooked at the beginning was the minutes of the last meeting. Is everyone happy to agree the minutes of the last meeting? Thank you very much. In which case, I've got no urgent items for the end of the agenda and I declare a meeting closed. Thank you very much. You