Very pleased with the result at Brent Council's planning committee last night. The proposed block of flats at 147 to 153 Harlesden High Street got turned down. This site has a long history, and I spoke against the application refused last night, just as I voted against the December proposal and the proposal of a couple of years ago.
Surprisingly, for a site with such a long history, a new issue has emerged in the past few days. 139 Harlesden High Street has two windows that abut the site and which would have had a severely restricted outlook. No one worried about these very much as there was an impression throughout the various applications that they were not the windows of habitable rooms. Planning policy makes a sharp distinction between "habitable rooms" like bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms, and non habitable rooms such as bathrooms, corridors and stairwells. It turns out that they are actually kitchen windows, and the only windows those rooms have. That dramatically changes the wieght they should be given in the decision, which in my view was the right one.
However, isn't it worrying that the error over whether they were habitable rooms persisted through the original application, the appeal, a subsequent outline application, and only got uncovered with the planning application refused last night?
No comments:
Post a Comment