 |
The Sevenoaks Society | News |
| for the conservation and improvement of the town | ||
Mr. Alan C. Scott
National Planning Policy Framework
Department for Local Communities and Local Government
Eland House
Bessenden Place
London SW1E 5DU
September 24th 2011
Dear Mr. Scott,
Draft National Planning Policy Framework
The Sevenoaks Society is a local amenity society with some 850 members dedicated to the conservation and improvement of Sevenoaks in Kent. The sub-committee that reviewed the NPPF was drawn from the architectural, legal and quantity surveying professions
We see little change from the previous planning arrangement where there was a presumption in favour of development in accordance with the development plan to one in which there is a presumption in favour of “sustainable development”. However the use of the word “sustainable” introduces uncertainty as the definition given is very unclear as to what it means in practice. It is considered that such uncertainty may give rise to an increase in appeals which are not only costly to the planning process for both local authorities and developers, but which will have the effect of slowing down the planning process which is clearly not what the Government is intending. Our request is that the definition of sustainable be carefully considered and then explained into order to create greater certainty.
Our view is that “sustainable” should encompass buildings, infrastructure and an environment which are well designed in all aspects, good to look at, safe, and work efficiently as well as promoting a lifestyle and economy which encourage local employment, reduced commuting, and reduced carbon footprints for those living and working in the community. We particularly welcome emphasis on good design.
There are frequent mentions of “where practical” in the NPPF which add to the difficulty of refuting a development proposal for local bodies. This allied to the presumption in favour of “sustainable development” coupled with the incentives for new house building places, we believe, too much emphasis on development without providing suitable mechanisms to block harmful and inappropriate proposals. We request that the “where practical” phrase be eliminated from the document and that harmful developments ,which under any reasonably objective planning analysis should be refused, must be expressly mentioned as not having Government support.
We would strongly support your acceptance of the recently adopted Sevenoaks Local Development Framework ( Core Strategy) as the Sevenoaks Local Plan and trust that you will be issuing a certificate of conformity as soon as possible into order to avoid uncertainty, the approval of harmful proposals and additional cost.
We are concerned that there is not enough guidance in the NPPF as it stands regarding heritage assets and ask that this be expanded to provide greater certainty.
We consider that one of the main problems affecting local communities is the too early demolition of perfectly satisfactory unlisted buildings following the granting of planning permission for redevelopment when those buildings could have continued to generate rates and sometimes employment and ask that consideration be given to legislation which would prevent demolition until approval was obtained for all relevant reserved matters. In addition to the statutory list of buildings we believe there should be local lists of buildings of historical and architectural interest to guide planning decisions in favour of their preservation.
We applaud the protection being given to the Green Belt in the NPPF and the intention to reduce the time spent in getting planning permission.
We trust that the Minister for Planning will take due note of our concerns when re-drafting the NPPF as a result of the public consultation exercise.
Yours sincerely,
David Gamble
Chairman, The Sevenoaks Society.
Little Brittains, Brittains Lane, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 2JW
01732 458898
cc. Rt Hon Michael Fallon M.P.
Mr. Peter Fleming Leader Sevenoaks District Council
Mrs Margaret Crabtree, Sevenoaks Town Mayor
Mr. Alan Dyer, Policy Planning Officer SDC.
HGV ban
From October 2009 the Society, working together with the Sevenoaks Chronicle, launched a campaign to ban HGVs above 7.5 mts from the Upper High Street from Sevenoaks School to the Red House.
The Upper High Street according to John Newman in Pevsner guide to the Buildings of England “has more worthwhile buildings than any other street in the county.” It is far too narrow to accommodate large trucks and several have hit buildings causing serious damage. The footpaths are very narrow a certain points making it very dangerous for pedestrians.
After a public meeting in November 2009 a resolution to ban HGVs in the Upper High Street was passed.
Over 2000 people signed the following petition in support of the proposal by the end of December 2009:
“We, the undersigned, call on Kent County Council, Sevenoaks District Council and Sevenoaks Town Council to work together to put in place a ban on all Heavy Goods Vehicles above 7.5 mts from using the Upper High Street, Sevenoaks from the Red House to Sevenoaks School Main Entrance.”
KCC carried out a survey of the traffic flows and after enquiries from the Society KCC Councillor Nick Chard, who is in charge of transport for KCC ,advised on August 13th 2010 as follows.
“From the information collected to date, and in order to implement the scheme as soon as possible, we are proposing to introduce an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) in early October 2010 for a weight restriction covering the Upper High Street/London Road and the High Street in Sevenoaks.”
The Sevenoaks Society welcomed this proposal as it covered the Upper High Street.
However at the Joint Transportation Board (JTB) Meeting in September 2010 the following proposal was made.
“The Joint Transport Board (JTB) are advised that an Experimental Traffic Order is to be implemented to impose a 7.5 tonne weight limit, except for the purposes of loading and unloading, along the High Street, Sevenoaks between the junction with Pembroke Road and the junction with A224 London Road. “
At the JTB Meeting the proposal was thrown out as not being fit for purpose as it did not protect the Upper High Street. The KCC officials claimed that the police were not in favour of the ban because they would be unable to use the Upper High Street in event of an accident on the A21 –this does not seem in the Society’s view an insuperable problem, as the police have powers to override local regulations in event of a serious incident. Also at that meeting there were strong representations from Riverhead residents that the traffic would be diverted from the Upper High Street to the A25 for vehicles trying to access Sevenoaks Town Centre. Whilst the Sevenoaks Society would argue that the UHS is carrying close to 5 million vehicle movements a year the 75,000 HGVs which would be re- routed along the much wider, straighter and saferA25 through Riverhead are undoubtedly a matter of concern.
Thanks to Adrienne Rogers
At the Society’s AGM on October 6th Adrienne Rogers, our President of many years standing, stepped down with a gracious speech remembering some of the important issues the Society has faced. The society gave her a framed print of Montreal House as drawn by Thomas Sandby in 1840 as a small token of our appreciation for everything she has done for the Society over so many years. Adrienne was elected a Vice President as was Rob Harcourt, Chairman until 2009, who has also retired from the Committee. Both have given great service to the Society and we are very grateful.
New President
We are delighted that Sir Michael Harrison a very distinguished High Court judge and formerly a QC specialising in planning matters has agreed to become President and he was duly elected at the AGM. Sir Michael has for many years been the Chairman of the Sevenoaks Conservation Council. From 1996 – 2004 he was Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission for England .
Approval of Oak membership
The AGM approved the byelaw amendment to the Constitution to close the category of Life membership to any new applicants and instead to offer a 20 year “Oak” membership.
HGV
I regret to advise you that the following proposal from Councillor Nick Chard a letter to the Sevenoaks Society dated August was not followed through:
“We are proposing to introduce an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) in early October 2010 for a weight restriction covering the Upper High Street/London Road and the High Street in Sevenoaks except for loading and unloading”
This would have met the Society’s objective of having a ban on HGVs above 7.5mts in the Upper High Street and we welcomed this with the Sevenoaks Chronicle, which had campaigned so hard for this outcome.
However, when the Joint Transport Board met in October to review the proposal it had been watered down to a ban just in the lower High Street between Country Casuals up to Waitrose. As this did not achieve the aim of reducing the HGV traffic through the Upper High Street, which has always been our aim, neither the JTB meeting nor the Society was able to support the proposal. Reasons given for the change of heart were the opposition by the Police who considered that they could not control access to the Upper High Street and that they would not be able to re-route traffic through the Upper High Street in event of an incident on the A21. Neither of these problems is insuperable.
More difficult to counteract is the understandable opposition by Riverhead residents to having more Heavy Goods Vehicles being diverted by the ban along Worships Hill. Worships Hill, however, is a wider and straighter road than the Upper High Street and therefore more suitable to take heavy goods vehicles. The Upper High Street will still be expected to take somewhere close to 5,000,000 smaller vehicle movements a year. We will continue to press for a Ban, but don’t hold your breath.
Events
Since the last newsletter the Society has organised visits to Highgrove, Riverhill House and a second visit to Lloyd’s of London. The first two were particularly well attended. The Garden Party was re-instated into the Society’s calendar and we were blessed with fairly good weather and made a useful profit. The AGM was followed by a fascinating talk on Otford and Shoreham’ architecture by Jonathan Fenner, full of lots of insights – do you know where the Lutyens’ building is in Otford?
For 2011 we have assembled a very interesting list of speakers and visits and we hope you will be able to join us. See separate list and the green card inserts.
2012 Diamond Jubilee Book
In discussing what books, postcards , tea towels and other items we might produce for the Society we decided to focus on having a book to celebrate the Society’s 60th anniversary in 2012. That gives us around eighteen months to decide just what format such a book might take. Any suggestions from the members will be most welcome.
Website
The re-design of the website is proceeding apace and we expect to have it complete by the end of January 2011. We intend to create links with many other sites because we hope that local schools will find the site a useful source of material for students’ projects. (See the report by Tim Pearce on Schools’ Competition.).
We would continue to ask members to let us have their email addresses so that we can let them know of any changes in plans as regards events.. My address is gamble@riskrisk.com – please make contact.
Thanks to Committee
My thanks once again to the Committee for all their support for the Society over the past year.
Note from the President
I am delighted and honoured to be appointed as President of the Sevenoaks Society. I have been a life member of the Society for the last 30 years but I have not thus far played an active part in its affairs. The Society is, however, a constituent member of the Sevenoaks Conservation Council which I have chaired for the last 16 years and, in that capacity, I have become aware of the important role that the Society plays in the town. I look forward to doing whatever I can to help the Society in the future.
Sevenoaks Society Schools Prizes
In order to involve younger people in the activities of the Society, the Committee has agreed to award three prizes of £100, one per school, to members of Knole Academy, Sevenoaks School and Walthamstow Hall, aged under 19 on October 5th 2011, for a project supporting the aims of the Society to preserve and enhance the heritage of the town.
The prizes will be awarded to a project studying any aspect of Sevenoaks, its past, present and future. The project may be in the form of an extended essay, a report, a series of designs or drawings, a photographic survey, or any other imaginative approach to the chosen topic.
We hope that the topics will include ideas about how to maintain and improve the town’s appearance, facilities, attractions, natural environment or indeed anything which would enhance the quality of life here.
Entries should be submitted before July 31st, 2011. The prizes will be awarded at the Society AGM in October 2011.
For further information, please contact Tim Pearce, 01732 465110
tim@timpearce1.wanadoo.co.uk
“The picture postcard is a sign of the times. It belongs to a period peopled by a hurried generation that has not many minutes to spare for writing to friends. …I can imagine a future generation building up by their help all the life of today – our children, our pets, our adventurous youths, our famous old people, our wild and garden flowers, our outdoor delights, our life of sport and of stress and strain, our National holidays, our Pageants and traces of the drama of our political life, are all to be found thereon”.
So wrote a most prescient Miss Margaret Mead in Girls’ Realm in 1900.
From time to time Sevenoaks Society has issued its own picture postcards including a set of 23 reproductions of old photographs of the town, from around 1860 to 1920. An inventory of these has been compiled and some of the stock will be on sale once more, available in the Tourist Centre. Unfortunately we do not have the full set and the origins of the cards, issued perhaps in the 1970s, are obscure. So if anyone has any information about them, please contact us (we are missing numbers 1 and 3-7).
The fist picture postcards in Britain, lagging behind the rest of Europe, were issued in 1894, 25 years after the first ever (plain) postcard appeared in Austria. 880 million cards were sold in Britain in 1914, regarded as the last year of “the golden age”. In the 1890s, a printing firm in Sevenoaks by the name of J Salmon was an early pioneer with 12 black and white photographs of the town and district. This was soon followed by coloured cards of local scenes. “Topographical” cards remain the firm’s core business, still thriving even in this age of mobile phones, email and Facebook. To quote the Guardian newspaper “Every tourist destination and major town, even places such as Northampton and Peterborough, are still covered”.
Some of the photographs reproduced in the Society’s cards were taken by members of the Essenhigh Corke family – renowned painters and photographers with studios in London Road - no 39, (it became Young’s large store, and is now the site of Zizzis), and no 43 (The Hardware Centre). Charles Essenhigh Corke was amongst those who at the turn of the century provided photographs for Salmon, as well as over 100 watercolours. His privileged access to Knole proved of immense value to them, and his work - and that of course of the painter AR Quinton (who produced 2300 views for the company until his death in 1934 aged 79) - helped turn them from local printers into an important national postcard publisher.
Although some of the Society’s archives, including part of the Anckorn collection of photographs, were passed over to Sevenoaks library for safekeeping, we still have many old pictures in our collection, as well as new images such as those of the Upper High Street, and Victorian postboxes. An electronic database is being compiled of old and new photographs, including “before and after” shots, as below, using our own material and that from other sources. There is a wealth out there, in archives, web-sites and private collections. Any contributions to add to the database will be welcome. We are now considering how to make best use of this material and make it more accessible. We see a revamped web-site as a key resource in this regard, but are also planning to commemorate the Society’s 60th anniversary with a special book showing the life and times of the town in words and pictures. (See David Gamble’s separate notice).
If the Society were to revive its tradition of publishing cards, then a number of themes come to mind, consistent with the Society’s aims and activities. These include not just depictions of places and buildings, but also our notable trees, street furniture, and artists associated with the town - amongst others.
Although some scenes of yesteryear are still instantly recognisable, Sevenoaks is changing, as any town must. A key part of the Society’s role is to record such changes, to help publicise the distinguishing features of our town and to influence future development. So please let us have your views about how we might best do this through pictures as well as word and actions.
Keith Wade
Riverhill House Visit August 25th 2010
We had an excellent turnout, despite a very damp day which limited our time in the lovely gardens. This enabled us to enjoy refreshments in the house’s recently refurbished restaurant.
32 members then enjoyed a conducted tour of Riverhill House in two groups, with the doyenne and chatelaine Mrs Evelyn Rogers. She gave us a real tour de force explanation of the house, its inhabitants and contents starting with a fine portrait of John Rogers the martyr, (not Sir John Rodgers, lately our MP). Rogers was prebendary at St Paul’s, appointed by Bishop Ridley who was burned at Smithfield in 1555 after Mary Tudor’s advisers disapproved of his sermons.
The Rogers family have been at Riverhill House since 1840, which makes them one of the longest standing families of note in the area. The house itself was built in 1713 and has been expanded and then contracted by the Rogers. The visit was especially interesting to those members who have long family histories in Sevenoaks. Tim Pearce made out his grandfather’s name on an illuminated address given to one of the Rogers by the local tradesmen, on his return from the Boer War. The general opinion was that the visit with such a special guide was a wonderful view on how life had been lived 100 to 200 years ago in one of the big houses in Sevenoaks.
If sufficient members show interest in attending, we will certainly arrange another visit next summer, when fine weather may permit full enjoyment of the gardens and facilities.
Richard Baxter
Frank Czarnowski talk to the Sevenoaks Society on Affordable Housing and the work of Housing Associations November 10th 2010.
Affordable housing, social housing , council housing were terms that were used interchangeably through this review of the development of affordable housing from the late 19th Century, through to the huge expansion from 1945 and then the selling off through the right to buy in the 1980s.
Sevenoaks District saw its first 6 houses built by a housing association in 1903 at Smart’s Hill near Penshurst and currently has 6500 affordable properties out of 47000 houses a proportion that is in line with the national average. Many of these were transferred over from the SDC council house stock. Over the last 3 years building has been running at 200 units a year, but this is expected to drop back to 100 a year for the rest of the decade. Sevenoaks is one of the least affordable districts in the country with a ratio of 15 times average national salary to price. The houses are allocated to local people.
The quality of design and build for many of these properties, well illustrated by Mr Czarnowski’s slides, is higher than for most comparable private sector developments and this attention to the long term viability of the houses makes them more cost effective to maintain and to heat. The range and sensitivity of the designs in this area is a tribute to the stewardship of the West Kent Housing Association.
Issues such as moving away from subsidy for life so that full economic rents would eventually be paid by tenants when they were financially able to pay were touched on. Although there is a subsidy for affordable housing the West Kent Housing Association claims that through their careful management of their housing assets they are able to generate sufficient income to manage continued development despite the budget restraints.
David Gamble (2010)
January 12th 2011
Jonathan Fenner’s expertly-presented topic ‘Darenth Valley village architecture’ was big enough to warrant two meetings of the Society, which underlines the abundance and variety of exciting historic buildings along the river from Otford to Farningham. Alongside Jonathan appeared to stand a host of historical figures who have made their mark on the valley, such as Baron Hore-Belisha, Admiral William Bligh, Edwin Lutyens and Peter Warlock, and added their voice to its architectural literature, notably Hilary Harding, Arthur Mee and Anthony Quiney.
In all the villages are fine examples of medieval timber-framed dwellings, too many to name, following the plan of the traditional Wealden hall-house. A combination of local materials and local ingenuity led to a great variety of resources and styles being employed.
Different ways of exploring the area over the centuries were outlined, following in the footsteps of Roman settlers in the Valley, which had one of the highest densities of villas and estates in the whole of Britain, jogging on horseback with John Byng as he conducted his Tour into Kent from Eltham, avoiding the toll on the turnpike road by cutting down Farningham’s Sparepenny Lane or venturing into London Country on the 21B Sunday excursion motorbus from Wood Green.
Particular curiosities included the octagonal font in Farningham, depicting the seven sacraments, the old Otford workhouse with mansard roof and QEII coronation ‘Peace in Her Time’ sundial and Henry Colyer’s impressive corn mill on the site of Anthony Roper’s and its Domesday predecessor.
Visitors from the valley brought to the gathering much local colour and information from their first-hand knowledge. The wealth of interest within the area can be only lightly sketched here. Described by the artist Samuel Palmer as the ‘Valley of Vision’ the magic of the Darenth Valley is still casting its spell today.
