Transcript

Good evening and welcome to the development committee meeting. My name is Councillor Iqbal Hussain and I will be chairing this meeting. This meeting is being held in person. Committee members and key participants are present in this committee room, in this meeting room. Only the committee members present in the meeting room will be able to vote. Another person may be also attending remotely. Committee members and others who have chosen to attend remotely have been advised by the committee officer that should technical difficulty prevent their full participation in the meeting, it may proceed in the absence if I feel it is necessary. I will ask everyone to introduce themselves shortly but before I do this, I would like to briefly confirm the protocol for addressing the meeting, including the virtual meeting procedure. Participants must address the meeting through myself as chair. If you are participating online and you experience any technical difficulties, you must contact the democratic service officer as soon as possible by email. However, officers may not be able to respond to such - all such requests. You should not keep your - you should keep your microphone and camera switched off at all other times. Please do not use the meeting chart facility. Any information added to the meeting chart will be discarded. If you experience any technical difficulties, you must contact either myself or the democratic service officer as soon as possible. I will now ask the committee members to present, to introduce themselves. Please, can you also state any declaration of interest that you may have in the agenda, items and the nature of the interest? Can I start from my right? Thank you, chair. Good evening, all. Councillor Farooq Ahmed from Whitechapel Ward and I have nothing to declare, chair. Councillor Gulam Kibri at Chaudhry, Popular Ward, I have no dps. Councillor Mohamed Chadri, Milan, nothing to declare. Councillor Ahmed Rahman, Premier of West, nothing to declare, thank you. Sorry, I'm a feeder busting Councillor for Island Gardens, nothing to declare. Good evening, chair. We have no apologies for the evening. Thank you. Item 2 is the minutes from previous meeting, can we - good evening, chair, due to officer error, my error, the minutes were not on the agenda and they will be presented at the next meeting. Apologies, everyone. Thank you. That's absolutely fine. Thank you. Item 3, recommendations and procedure for hearing objections and meeting items. I will now ask Jerry Bell, the area planning manager, to present the guidance, please. Thank you and good evening, chair, members and members of the public and officers. Item 3 on the agenda sets out the process for considering the reports with recommendations and the procedure for public speaking, I will outline this briefly. The procedure for considering the reports on these applications for decision will be as follows. I will introduce the item and with a brief description of the application and a summary of the recommendation, officers will then present the report and then they will register the speakers this evening. Members will consider the recommendation, including questions and then debate. The committee will reach a decision based on the majority vote and I will confirm the decision to the chamber. Should the committee propose a change, certain aspects of the officer recommendation, such as to add, delete or to amend planning conditions, obligations, informatives or reasons for refusal, the task of formalising those changes is delegated to the corporate director of place. In the event that the committee do not accept the officer recommendation, they must clearly state their reasons and then propose and agree an alternative course of action. The committee may be adjourned briefly for further planning or legal advice. The task of formalising the committee alternative decision is delegated to the corporate director of place. In circumstances where the committee proposes to make a decision which would go against the provision of the development plan, the item may be deferred from officers dealing with the committee's proposed course of action. There is an update report that has been circulated to the committee dealing with a late objection that has been received since the publication of the agenda. The report is published online. And finally, if the fire alarm rings, please follow the instructions of the facility staff who will direct you to the exits. And finally, can I please remind everyone to show courtesy at all times and denying throughout the meeting. And please ensure that your mobile phones are turned off or turned to silent during the meeting. Thank you. Thanks, Jerry, for presenting the guidance and procedure. We have no different item tonight. Agenda item 5 are the planning application for decision. We have only one item, one application to consider this evening. With this regard, I would like to -- for memory permission, I would like to bring this to your attention. This application was considered by the development committee on 3rd of October. The committee resolved that planning permission should be refused. However, before the council issued the decision notice, the applicant amended their application to try to address the committee reasons for refusal. The amendment had been subject to further public consultation and assessment by the officers. The agenda is about Montgomery Square, Montgomery State and Water State, London. And I invite Jerry to introduce the application, please. Thank you, chair. As you previously stated, the application has been before members previously. And the members were reminded not to support the officer recommendation to approve. And we've gone away and spoke to the applicants to see if we can resolve some of the concerns that members thought, you know, felt that was an issue with the application. So the application site is Montgomery Square on Montgomery Street and Water Street in the Canary Wharf ward. The proposal is to remove the existing permanent structures. There's going to be alterations to the existing landscaping and the provision of hard and soft landscaping, some public realm improvements, a flexible event space in the retail pavilion. There's also the provision of road amendments to Upper Bank Street and Montgomery Street and some layout enhancements to Water Street. The recommendation, chair, is for the grand plan conditions with conditions and planning obligations. Thank you, chair. I will now invite Nicholas Jan, planning case officer, to present the application to Nicholas. Thank you, chair, and good evening, members, members of the public in the room and at home. The application site is shown here in red. It's in the middle of the or in between the Canary Wharf estate which is shown in blue and the Wood Wharf estate shown in green. The application site straddles the two estates and joins them together. The application site includes Montgomery Square on the west side and then Water Street heading down into Wood Wharf on the east side. The sites are part of a the application is part of a strategic vision within Canary Wharf to introduce a new green spine down through the whole estate running from the very western edge to the eastern edge with new found land shown here at the end, the western end, middle dock which is new green public realm works in the middle, Jubilee Park and then Montgomery Square and Water Street which are our sites and Union Square, timber key which are some meanwhile use landscape proposals and Harvard Square at the very eastern end. This is a strategic vision and the application sites fit in within that. So as mentioned, the application has been before the committee before and this was the results of the original public consultation. There were 1100 letters sent out, site notices and a press notice, 195 representations were received in total, 193 of those were objections which primarily related to loss of an existing business within Montgomery Square, there were highways issues raised and noise impacts. It's worth noting that only 10 of the objections actually raised highways issues, the remaining objections pretty much solely related to the loss of that existing business. There was one letter in support of the proposals and one letter which was neutral. Upon receipt of the amended proposals, officers undertook a re-consultation which involved sending out letters to all persons who submitted a representation on the first application or the application as originally proposed as well as anyone who was sent a letter. So it was actually 1,371 people who received letters as part of this consultation. A site notice was erected and a press notice was also published. As part of this re-consultation, only one objection was received. This was on highways grounds and the details of that are set out in the update report and the reasons why officers do not think the objections raised are relevant is also set out within the update report. So I'm just going to give a brief reminder of the proposals to members. So the application site is split into two and will be delivered in two phases. The first phase is Montgomery Square. These are the proposals which would come forward first and then there's a second phase which are proposals to Water Street, indicated in red here. The yellow site here are the Union Square and Timber Key, meanwhile used landscaping sites. This is an image of Montgomery Square, as you can see it's predominantly a large hard landscaped area with a few trees dotted around. This central space is an event space, there's the 640 East Cafe here as well as TFL entrances and this is an overhead view here. On the eastern edge here is the Wood Wharf marketing suite which is used to market commercial spaces within the Wood Wharf estate. The other elements are the event space, 640 East and then TFL tube entrances here and then also the one in Jubilee Park here. The proposals are to demolish all the existing structures and build a new pavilion building here which will provide a retail cafe/restaurant type space. As you can see the marketing suite will be demolished here and replaced by a significant increase in the amount of greening of the space. The event space will be retained here and there will be additional greening provided along the southern edge here. There will be some trees which will be removed, which indicated the historic edge of the Canary Wharf estate and the purpose of their removal is to open up views down that green spine and help integrate the Wood Wharf estate into the wider Canary Wharf estate. The pavilion building itself is located on the existing 640 East site. This image here just shows the footprint of the retail pavilion as against the 640 East site which is highlighted in blue. As you can see it rationalises the floor plate of the building and actually results in an increase in open space. This is a CGI image of the proposed retail pavilion. It's three stories but it steps back at various points as it increases in height. This has the effect of reducing the impact on the publicly accessible open space and aligns with design policies. The building would provide a restaurant use. This is a CGI of the square and the building looking west towards the Jubilee line entrances and Jubilee Park. So a lot of the objections related to the loss of the 640 East business within the square. It's worth noting that the applicant has already reallocated space for the business within Water Street and rehomed it within a unit which faces directly onto Water Street and is provided with outdoor seating areas which are pretty much the same sort of size as they have existing. So the business can continue to trade and will continue to trade in a very near location and so officers have no concerns about the loss of this business and in any event it's not for planning to control the occupants of a building and so the business could well occupy the building or another business could occupy the retail pavilion. So turning now to Water Street this is an image looking down Water Street towards Wood Wharf and taken from just after the junction. The original proposals were to have restrict vehicular access all the way down Water Street so that only the recent servicing vehicles and emergency vehicles, taxis and residents with blue badges could access the road and access properties in an eastbound direction. The yellow star here just indicates where the 640 East building is. Those proposals included and still include resurfacing of the road to demarcate it as a slightly different road and pocket parks as well as additional greening and planters. However there is a proposed change to remove the restriction to residents to access this road by vehicle. So residents will still be able to access or use the road in an eastbound direction and access their properties and the car park which is the entrance to which is located just down here. As I mentioned the proposals to include the pocket parks remain and this is in line with strategic policies in the London Plan and Local Plan policies to prioritise pedestrian movement and increase the quality of public realm. This is a CGI image of the proposals within Water Street. These are just some maps which I'll talk you through which show the changes to the transport routes. So currently residents are able to access the car park entrance which is down here via Water Street and then they are able to exit via Water Street. There is currently also only one other exit from Wood Wharf which is up here onto Cartier Circle via Charter Street. Brandon Street here is currently closed whilst developments are built out. So in order to access this end of the site there is an entrance point and exit point here. But residents obviously are not able to use that because these two access roads are currently closed. So under the previous proposals the eastbound traffic would only be allowed for service vehicles and emergency vehicles, taxis and access for blue badge parking. So most of the residents who have parking spaces in the basement down here would not be able to access their parking via Water Street but they would have been able to access it via Charter Street down here from Cartier Circle. It was proposed that the changes to the vehicle access on Water Street would only occur once this exit and entrance was two way. So the applicant has amended the proposals in two key ways. The first way is that everybody at all times will be able to access Water Street in an eastbound direction. There will be no restriction on the traffic in that direction, there won't be security cameras or anything, it will be demarcated by standard road signs indicating that it's a one way street. The second key change is that the idea that it won't occur until this exit entrance is two way remains but it also now will not occur until this exit entrance onto Preston's Road has also been fully delivered. That means that residents will have two ways of exiting from Wood Wharf instead of just one. So they'll be able to exit onto the main Preston's Road here to access the rest of the Islay Dogs in either a south or north direction and they'll also be able to exit via Charter Street onto Cartier Circle to access either the Canary Wharf Estate or, again, exit from Wood Wharf to the north. It's worth noting that the current exit route along Water Street involves residents going this way and then up into the Canary Wharf Estate and the proposed exit to access Canary Wharf is up here along Charter Street and then to the left. So this is no significantly larger than the existing arrangement and would not increase journey times or traffic in any material way. It's also worth noting that all of these roads are private roads and not adopted by the Council's Public Highways team as publicly maintained highways. In terms of obligations and still, these remain as previously presented to members so there will be still in the amount of roughly £70,000 payable in relation to the new commercial building. There'll be financial contributions to offset carbon reductions, development coordination contribution and monitoring contributions and there are also non-financial contributions to require tree planting offsite to offset the loss of trees as well as to secure public access to the square. So following the receipt of the amendments, officers are minded to grant planning permission subject to the conditions set out in the report as well as the obligation set out in the report. Thank you. Thank you, Nicholas, for presenting the application. As we have no registered speaker for this item, for this application, I will now move on to members' questions. Do members have any questions to the officers or applicant? Please indicate. Thank you, Mr Chair. My question to the officers. Following the new amendment, do you think the re-consultation period was enough because we received only one objection from objectives? Our statement of community involvement sets out the requirements for re-consultation following receipt of amendments and there's actually no statutory requirement to re-consult at all as a result of receipt of amendments, but we have within our statement of community involvement a requirement to consult for a period of 14 days, which is the appropriate amount to follow in this situation, so we have followed that and, you know, we're already going above and beyond statutory obligations in relation to that and we're just complying with the council's own self-enforce obligations. Just to add, we also take representations or if anybody wants to comment on the application, we'll take representations right up until the day before committee. So we don't. Sorry, I understand, members, because we know the application, so I think we can - if members do not have any questions, so you have - you can move on to the next step. Do you want to debate the application or your final thoughts? Not really, but apart from - I like how the applicant has made the quick changes. I think the changes do look decent, so it's really quickly. Thank you, Councillor Rahman, for your fair comment. Any other members? Do you have any comments or final thoughts? Can I see all those in favour of this application, please? I think it's irrelevant to ask anybody against. No abstentions? I can see it. Jerry, could you please confirm the committee decision? Thank you. Thank you, chair. Members have unanimously voted to support the office and recommendations to approve the application from Montgomery Square this evening. Thank you, chair. Thank you, applicant. I appreciate that you came with the dissent. Jerry Bell and legal colleagues, can you please advise the committee of the procedural? It's done, yes. Thank you. Councillor Rahman, vice chair, for your help. Thank you all for your time. Officers have made a note of issues raised by the committee members. Before I close the meeting, I have an ounce to make. I would like to mention that this will be Jerry Bell, our area planning manager's last committee meeting before he leaves Tarhamlet after 18 years of service for the community for the Tarhamlets. On behalf of all committee members, I would like to thank Jerry for his hard work and dedication to planning team in our borough and working for the communities and supporting our committees when we made decision on some of the most complex major development in London. I wish Jerry well for your new role in Westminster. Thank you very much, appreciate it. It's been an honour to work for Tarhamlet, I've had to deal with some very complex, very large applications. It's been a learning exercise, but I've loved working here. The staff and the officers I've worked with have been brilliant and working with you guys as well has been a highlight of my career, but thank you very much. Is it said? I beg your pardon, that's concluded business for this meeting. The next meeting will take place on the 9th of January, 2025, have a nice evening.