Youth centre comparison wrong
MAY I please get my point across as lead petitioner against not a youth centre in Harefield but the location.
I have been on this campaign since a consultation letter landed on my doorstep from Hillingdon Council in late December 2015 with the request for my input to the location of a youth centre in the middle of a housing estate in Ash Grove, Harefield.
The objections I provided over five emails and three phone calls were never responded to. However, on contacting the project department I was advised, due to the number of objections to the location, the council will no longer comment.
I contacted Jean Palmer and was provided with a standard letter quoting the properties that were inititally contacted for a residential consultation of which, to my puzzlement, advised more than 30 homes in the pre consultation, yet my address of the original 14 homes advised was not on her standard letter. All those who wrote in from the Ash Grove residents who never got the letter, had the letter appear on there doorstep in March 2016 with the excuse ‘sorry, you never got a copy?’
We as residents were quoted by our ‘elected’ ward councillor for Harefield, as did the Councillor at the Planning Meeting, along with several letters written into the Gazette.
Can I please correct this statement of a ‘new build’ in Northwood. The building has stood as a young people’s centre since 1911.
It was updated to a ‘state of the art centre’ in 2014 by the London Borough of Hillingdon, but my point is this is open once a week on a Thursday. So the residents of the residential road do get respite!
However, the fight we at Ash Grove have been concerned over is this is a totally ‘new build’, the first of this in over 30 years.
The youth centre will be open for borough-wide usage, to be open from 9am to 9.45pm 6.5 days in a week, with school holiday cover, with the capacity to be covering 52 weeks a year. We have 30ft gardens behind our homes, already overstretched parking with emergency vehicles and HGV delivery lorries already finding this a problem.
So I do not think our situation can be compared to the site in Northwood or anywhere else in London. The traffic situation is already compared with the West Drayton Youth Centre (next to West Drayton Police Station) with no immediate residential properties backing onto this.
None of the Ash Grove residents are against a youth centre, but we have asked for the planned location to be looked at carefully and with compassion on a small piece of land which directly backs onto Ash Grove Houses.
We as residents attended the planning meeting knowing the Conservatives had already decided this was a done deal as our own ward councillor advised in January 2016.
They passed the planning by a vote. Where was any compassion to the residents? But for the record, I would like it noted they cannot compare this building proposal to Northwood and should retract this statement.