Analysis and observation of the controversial planning decision to permit the Truman Brewery Shopping Mall.
“You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!“
Rod Sterling, ‘The Twilight Zone’
Introducing a Tower Hamlets Zone Special.
On Tuesday evening on the 14th of September 2021, I sat down to watch the live stream to the Development Committee. I had to cancel a scheduled public meeting due to an urgent personal issue, which meant I had to stay at home.
What I witnessed was a bizarre episode of local government decision-making. The highlight of the Development Committee proceedings are as follows:
- We had a Councillor prevented from speaking or voting at the meeting. Who later after the decision, in a comment to the Evening Standard, stated she was against the application. If she was allowed to participate, the application would have been refused.
- The Chair of the planning committee, asking for the decision to be deferred, but being overruled by officers. Perhaps in an attempt to have all four councillors participating in the vote.
- Another planning committee member, stating that if the application is granted, it would result in social cleansing, but then proceeded to vote in favour.
- Another planning committee member, doing a Chrisp Street Market production of ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’. Acting as a criminal defence counsel for the Truman Brewery. Cross-examining officers and then presenting final arguments. In doing so, rewriting the minutes of the last Development Committee meeting. In summing up, misstating a decision to defer the application as a decision to permit subject to conditions.
- Just before the vote. We had the spectacle of a committee member trying to wrest control of the meeting, from the Chair. A reaction to the Chair’s statement that the application threatens the 400-year history of the area. A tradition in welcoming marginalised communities. Starting with the Huguenots, then Irish Catholics, to the Jewish Community and now the Bangladeshi community.
- In the end, when it came to the vote. Three councillors out of the four were allowed to vote, The Chair voting against, while the other two voted in favour.
How did we get here?
Let them drink Latte? A case of insanity?
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein
The application is heard in the context of a local community disproportionately suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic. During the first wave of the pandemic, over 10% of all total deaths in London occurred in Tower Hamlets. With local cemeteries having to dig trenches to accommodate the dead.
Despite being the third-richest local authority area in the 6th largest economy in the world. Tower Hamlets has one of the worst health inequalities in the United Kingdom and the highest child poverty rates in Western Europe. A damning indictment of decades of failed regeneration policies and an absence of a transformative political vision. Recently, a Runnymede Trust report summarised Tower Hamlets Council approach to economic development and urban renewal as peak social cleansing.
Given the unprecedented opposition to the application, 7,500 thousand letters of objections. Over 500 local residents in and off Brick Lane citing their objections, and 140 traders on Brick Lane giving their objections. The Decision-makers response at Tower Hamlets Council first as the planning authority, and then at the Development Committee, seems to be in the spirit of the late Marie Antoinette. ‘Let them drink a Latte from Starbucks!’
Tower Hamlets is not working!
The above Truman Brick Lane episode highlights fundamental structural issues in the political economy of Tower Hamlets. We have an organisation headed by decision-makers, who are simply oblivious to the interests of residents. This is not just demonstrated in the damning socio-economic statistics in the Borough, but the comparative poor levels of service delivery. From low vaccine roll out to rubbish not being collected in a timely manner.
When having discussions with residents about the above particular situation in Tower Hamlets, I constantly have to remind them that we are in the United Kingdom. That Tower Hamlets is too small to be a country and too large to be an asylum. It does not have to be like this. The problem lies in the structure of Governance rather than its outcomes. In particular, the over-centralisation of powers in the hands of a single Mayor. A single man making decisions in an area with the population of the City of Newcastle. Resulting in an administration constantly reacting to events rather than being their master. Constanly being in the news for all the wrong reasons. With the standard response being, if all else fails, pin the blame on a Tory Government.
Residents in the Isle of Dogs are having discussions in setting up their own Town Council, decentralising services and decision-making. Perhaps residents in and around Brick Lane should follow suit, to get the representation they feel they deserve.
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Hamlet, Act 1 – by William Shakespeare
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