CONSULTATION (Closed)
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Developers should sent back to the drawing board - Kingston Council should provide unambiguous guidance to the developers prior to any application being submitted.
For full Developers Exhibition Website please visit; edencampus.co.uk Residents consultation response website: edencampusviews.co.uk The Surrey House Island site comprises five buildings bounded by Brook Street, Eden Street and St James Road. The buildings sit between the Kingston Old Town Conservation area to the East and the Fairfield/Knights Park Conservation Area to the West. Developers are proposing mix used development with approximately 150 new homes, a potential head offices for existing leaseholders, Unilever (not fully confirmed) and retail space and a 81 meter high / 22 storey tower similar height to Tolworth Tower. As it stands, the proposals threaten to overshadow important listed buildings, blight protected historic views and may cause significant harm to views and the related public realm by overbearing and dominating the surrounding streets and houses All Residents and Councillors were urged to review the public consultation as well as this review and send their opinions to the developer before August 24th. If you would like to comment please send your letters to Planning people at Kingston Council here |
KRA Post Consultation Communications with the Developers:
RE: EdenCampus (20/02495/FUL - 20/02499/OUT)
20 October
Eden Campus is one of the largest planning applications currently on the Kingston Council's Planning Portal and currently there are over 300 hundred documents with copious amounts of detailed data, graphics and illustrations. Unfortunately your consultation website is awfully inadequate. To top it all, much of it is difficult to download as the RBK site crashes regularly.
Given the size and volume of the documents, this is not surprising and in the past to this has been addressed by providing physical copies of documents at the library or the Guildhall. (see attached photos below). Residents were also able to see real display boards and good size architectural model prior to the comments deadline. This task was undertaken by the Applicant.
We understand that, under the current pandemic restrictions, bringing large numbers of people together inside an enclosed space is not allowed. However, that should not be used as an excuse to curtail proper scrutiny of the project by the public. Especially for those who may not be on a digital equal footing.
To help local residents, can you please address our requests below:
1. Provide hard copies of all Eden Campus planning documents on the portal available for viewing at the library and/or Guildhall. (As British Land did for Eden Walk and St George's for The Old Post Office.) For COVID safety, we can use pre-booking to arrange viewing.
2. Display your planning application in the town centre somewhere? E.g. old-fashioned printed display boards safely placed inside one of the empty shops in or around the affected area is surely doable even under pandemic conditions?
3. Display 3D model of your vision in the town centre similar size to those presented to us by British Land and Berkeley's.
No doubt you will be happy to help any resident who cannot access the Planning Portal or download hundreds of pages due to their inaccessibility but nonetheless wishes to contribute to the debate and express their opinion in due course.
We sincerely hope you will take our comments on board and respond to us immediately
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EDEN CAMPUS RESPONSE TO KRA
from [email protected]
Date: 22 October 2020
Dear Kingston Residents’ Alliance,
Thank you for getting in touch and for bringing the issues with the planning portal to our attention. We have raised this with RBK as a matter of urgency and hope that they will look to rectify this as soon as possible. We have also enquired as to the availability of hard copies of material in council run, publicly accessible locations.
I am sorry that you felt that the information on the website is not sufficient, to help address this I have attached to this email our latest presentation which includes plans as well as CGIs of the proposals in the context of the emerging Royal Exchange and Eden Walk. I hope that this is helpful.
Clearly, we have tried to consult at a very difficult time. We do regret that as a result of the pandemic we have not been able to hold in person events as even with all the digital tools available, it is very difficult to substitute for face-to-face conversations. That said, we have worked with RBK and the latest government guidelines on consultation during a pandemic to bring as many people into the conversation as possible.
Over the course of our pre-application process we held two distinct phases of consultation. For each of these phases we sent out over 1,400 leaflets to local residents, advertised in both the local papers (both in print and online), placed Facebook adverts geo-targeted to people in Kingston which reached over 30,000 people and emailed key stakeholder groups, such as yourselves, to try and maximise public feedback on the plans. As a result of this activity, over the course of the pre-application process we received 3,838 visits to the project website.
That said, we remain committed to keeping local residents informed of our plans. As discussed above, we have enquired with the council what availability there is to have material in Council buildings and I would be happy to let you know the outcome of this.
To address what we could do in terms of putting up boards/a model in the town centre, as I am sure you will appreciate, having just submitted our application we are in discussions with RBK and other statutory consultees about our application and further changes may emerge as a result of this. Therefore, there is a possibility what we would display would become outdated even before it was put in place. We would not like to present incorrect information as we feel that this could cause more confusion.
As an alternative to this, I would be happy to commit to sharing with you any development in the plans should this occur? Any changes would also be reflected on our website.
I hope that this assures you of our commitment to keeping residents informed of our plans and we would be happy to work with you to ensure your members are given the latest information.
Do let me know if you have any thoughts on the presentation attached and whether you require any further information.
KRA RESPONSE TO SECOND CONSULTATION