BBC London News on the Festival Announcement

Spotted by @i_am_softlad

Fishwives tales…

According to Boulangerie Jade, a fishmongers is due to open in September, two doors up hill from them, in the former off-license. Sounds like a useful addition to the high street!

Ouch…

Michelle O’Brien writes:

Pop fans have got themselves an annual festival on Blackheath starting in 2012 and Blackheath Society has got itself a hefty legal costs bill totalling £79,800 after its mammoth bid to stop the planned event was thrown out by court order.

“We are obviously pleased,” said a delighted NIMBY Events Ltd. director Tom Wates after Bromley Magistrates on Friday (July 22) ruled against the Society following the country’s reported longest ever running appeal hearing under licensing procedure. The appeal hearings started March 3.

“We are looking forward to the two-day OnBlackheath festival going ahead in September next year,” Mr. Wates said. “We have no hard feelings about Blackheath Society. We will continue to work with them and other community groups.”

The Society’s Chairman, Mr. Howard Shields, told reporters after the court ruling was announced: “Obviously we are disappointed – and surprised – at the Magistrates’ decision.”

Asked about reports that younger people living in the area mostly support the planned festival and see the Society as speaking only for Blackheath’s older and wealthier residents, Mr. Shields said: “We do agree that we must try harder to get our message over. We have got a communications challenge.”

The Society’s appeal was against a ruling by Lewisham Council’s licensing sub-committee giving the go-ahead for NIMBY to stage the OnBlackheath festival starting this year and continuing in perpetuity, with sale of alcohol.

But Mr. Wates and his co-directors had to cancel this year’s festival plans because of the time the overall appeal hearing has taken. The organisers aim to attract audiences of 25,000 on each of the festival’s two days, charging £45 per ticket per day.

The ruling by the two Magistrates (Mr. Roger Mills and Dr. Patrick Davies)hearing the appeal was scathing about Lewisham Council’s failure to publicise widely enough the original application to stage OnBlackheath.

“It should be the goal of any local authority to conduct its affairs in an open and transparent manner,” the ruling said. “In the weeks leading up to the original hearing by … Lewisham’s licensing sub-committee, in October 2010, there seems little evidence of this.

“This is evidenced by the large number of local residents (from both Greenwich and Lewisham) who were totally unaware of the (NIMBY) application until it was too late to make representations.

“The scale of the proposed event, coupled with the possible impact on the local community, both negative and positive, should, in our view, have caused Lewisham to widely publicise the application.”

The Magistrates’ ruling was equally scathing over the Council’s failure to notify Greenwich Council of the festival application.

“No formal notification was given to the London Borough of Greenwich. This we find astonishing, because a major event, attracting up to 50,000 people over two days, was being planned on a site just meters away from the mutual boundary of Greenwich and Lewisham.

“The chairman of … Greenwich’s licensing committee and their officers only became aware of the proceedings at a late stage. They too were denied the opportunity to make representations…

“In short, we feel that Lewisham, through its Licensing sub-committee, has not acted in an appropriate manner and has not had the interests of some of its residents at heart.”

But the Magistrates said that despite their criticisms of Lewisham Council “we do not find that the decision of the licensing sub-committee was wrong and in fact we consider that it was correct and therefore the (Society’s) appeal is dismissed.”

The Magistrates said although it would be impossible to eliminate all noise from the festival to surrounding areas they were confident it could be managed so as not to undermine the licensing objectives.

The resolution to launch the appeal was the unanimous but sole decision of the Society’s 13-member management committee. The committee did not
consult the Society’s membership comprising some 980 households before launching the legal appeal.

The Society, which bills itself “the Guardians of the Heath”, has asked its rank-and-file members to dig into their pockets and purses over and above the £15 average they pay in annual membership fees to help fund the cost of the appeal.

NIMBY’s barrister, Mr. Simon Taylor, told the court: “This appeal from day one had little or no merit.” He said it had achieved nothing from the point of view of Blackheath residents.

“There is not one single argument that the appellant has raised that you (the Magistrates) have not rejected,” he said. He accused the Society of intransigence and “of wasting everybody’s time and costs.”

He said the society was very well funded with assets of £400,000 while
Mr. Wates and his fellow NIMBY directors were “three family men who have had to dip into savings to fund this appeal.”

Mr. Taylor condemned the Society’s “foolishness” in doggedly ploughing on “regardless to the end” with its appeal instead of dropping it. “It’s my submission that the Blackheath Society from day one did not act logically in lodging this appeal,” he told the court.

Lewisham Council’s barrister, Mr. Edmund Walters, told the court: “It was not clear how many members of the Society were actually behind the appeal.” “On every legal point the Society has lost,” he added.

The Society’s barrister, Ms. Sarah LeFevre, agreed “the appeal was dismissed in every aspect” by the Magistrates. But she told the court: “It’s not fair to categorise this Society as a dog in the manger … We do say we had reasonable grounds for appeal.” Blackheath Society had done little to protract the proceedings, she said.

The appeal has occupied a total of seven days of hearings since the court proceedings started March 3. The appeal hearing was originally expected to last only two days. It has heard evidence from 16 witnesses called by the Society, two called by NIMBY and four called by Lewisham Cuncil

“Yes, it’s not a poor Society,” Ms. LeFevre told the court. But she said most of the registered charity’s £400,000 was in the form of property bequests.

Ordering costs against Blackheath Society, the Magistrates awarded £41,000 to NIMBY and £10,800 to Lewisham Council. With the Society’s own legal costs amounting to £28,000 this brings the total the Society has to pay in costs resulting from its appeal to £79,800.

“OUCH?” asked a reporter of Mr. John Hine, one of the Society’s management committee, who was in court.

“OUCH!” he agreed, adding: “We need younger members.”

Update:

Blackheath Society in a statement to its members after Friday’s court ruling acknowledged: “The total costs, including our own costs, that will have to be met (by the Society) is a very substantial sum, some £80,000.” It would be funded from Society reserves, the statement said.

NIMBY’s legal team had asked the Magistrates to order the Society to pay the full £140,000 costs incurred by NIMBY and Lewisham Council during the appeal. But the Magistrates declined to do this, saying the Society’s appeal had been “properly brought” and that Parliament had intended residents to have a say in the licensing process.

“This was reflected in their (the Magistrates’) order that the Society should pay less than 50% of the costs that NIMBY and Lewisham had claimed,” the Society’s statement said.

853blog on the Nimby decision

Much more detail on the court proceedings here:

http://853blog.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/on-blackheath-music-festival-gets-court-go-ahead/

NIMBY Pop Festival judgement

Blackheath Society have lost their appeal against the NIMBY “OnBlackheath” pop festival organisers and have been ordered to pay £80k costs. Although not completely formalised, this means that Lewisham council have effectively given permission for an event to be held annually, subject to safety reviews.

Despite the rather lofty mention of “anonymous comments in the blogosphere”, I’ve never been totally convinced that the proposal was an entirely good or bad idea.

Read the full text from Blackheath Society for yourselves below:

We are sorry to report to members that, at the final hearing earlier today, and after six days of evidence and argument, the local magistrates dismissed the Society’s appeal against Lewisham Council’s decision to grant NIMBY Events a perpetual licence to run a two day pop festival on the Heath on the second weekend of every September.

However, in doing so, the Court acknowledged that the appeal was properly brought by the Society. This was reflected in their order that the Society should pay less than 50% of the costs that NIMBY and Lewisham had claimed. Nevertheless, the total costs, including our own costs, that will have to be met is a very substantial sum, some £80000. This will be funded from Society reserves.

In its judgment the court had recognised a number of deficiencies in the way the original decision by Lewisham was reached. For example, the magistrates found that “there seems little evidence” of Lewisham acting in an “open and transparent manner” in the weeks leading to the original decision. They found it “astonishing” that no formal notification was given to Greenwich, and “In short, we feel that Lewisham, through its licensing subcommittee, has not acted in an appropriate manner and not had the interests of some of its residents at heart”

Nevertheless, in what ultimately amounted to a rehearing of the application, at which a very substantial body of new information was eventually provided by NIMBY, the court evidently took comfort from the process of scrutiny by the Council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG), and the opinion of the Police, and found in favour of upholding the licence as originally granted.

The decision is of course a serious disappointment to the many local residents, who, members or not, wrote to us, the magistrates and Lewisham Council and took the opportunity of public meetings to express their opposition to the proposal. Notwithstanding anonymous comments in the blogosphere, we remain to be convinced that the festival will be welcomed by many who live in the area.

In any event, the festival is not yet a “done deal”. In order to obtain a confirmed licence NIMBY has still to complete the process of satisfying the SAG that all the concerns about noise, road closures, transport, law and order, safety, etc can be fully addressed. NIMBY has also to complete a separate process of formal approval from the Council to use the site, in respect of which there are other concerns and objections.

The Society will seek to work constructively with Lewisham to ensure that, if NIMBY is able to overcome the remaining hurdles, this event will cause the minimum possible inconvenience to the community. One of the ways this could be assisted would be by the Society’s attendance at the meetings of the Safety Advisory Group, which we shall seek permission to attend. We shall also be making representations about the wider issues beyond licensing involved in any final approval. In particular, if an event is proposed for 2012, we will be highlighting the many concerns about holding such an event within days of the completion of the Olympics and Paralympics.

In the meantime, prompted by our decision to appeal the original grant of the licence, Lewisham Council, jointly with Greenwich Council, is in the process of producing a policy for use of the Heath for commercial and other events in the future. We see this as a very welcome step and are contributing to the consultation process. A significant benefit, if a policy along the lines of the Council’s draft is adopted, would be that future applications of a similar nature from entrepreneurs such as NIMBY and its financial backers will be subject to a far more rigorous examination than we have so far seen in this case.

We are extremely grateful to all those who have supported the Society in its endeavours, particularly those who contributed to our fighting fund which, needless to say, remains open.

We welcome any continued input and support from members and others on this issue.

Childrens books scattered across the library

Taken by twitter user gwithiansunset
By the way, if you’d like to stop nasty Mr Pickles from turning our empty Nationwide into a betting shop, you’d best click this link.

SouthEastern trains enthuse about the wonderful steps

Following on from yesterday’s nonsense, there’s another PR inflected piece of tosh here:

Network Rail Blackheath Station becomes accessible for everyone

But with an added helpful soundbite from those experts in timeliness, SouthEastern trains. Vince Lucas, service delivery director, enthuses:

“For our passengers at Blackheath the completion of this project is a real improvement that they can see for themselves. The station is vital to the local community and encouraging more and more people to use trains has to be a good thing. As with other stations which have benefited from similar schemes, we are sure that more passengers will now start to use the train to get around.”

Yes it’s great Vince. I’m sure I will continue to choose SouthEastern over and above the wide range of other train operating companies available to me from Blackheath station, skipping down the beautifully rendered steps as I do so.

Anyone care to balance this up a little?

From the “just has to be read to be believed” department:

Blackheath station becomes more accessible

To keep disruption to a minimum and get best value for money, work to renovate the platforms took place at the same time.

Transport minister Norman Baker said: “It is important that everyone is able to access the railways as rail travel continues to grow in popularity – that is why we have contributed £1.1m from our Access for All initiative to upgrading Blackheath station.

“In total we are committed to spending £370m on upgrading stations across Britain for people with reduced mobility.”

Dave Ward, Network Rail’s route director for Kent, said: “Thousands of people living and working in Blackheath rely on the railway every day.

“This new step-free route around the station is great news for passengers and will make it much easier for everyone to use the train, especially those with reduced mobility or with small children.

“It’s a significant investment in our stations so they better meet the ever changing needs of passengers.”

This article surely is a joke. Where are the delays, the wrong steps, the misery of the commuters? Please head to their comments page and make them realise what a crock their article is. Government subsidy to pay for increased accessibility whilst the SouthEastern is allowed to cream off £61.5m profits every year.

UPDATE:
They’ve now added a statement from Network Rail to the bottom of the page:

A Network Rail spokesperson said:

“We issued a letter in April advising local people that we had experienced some problems with the project owing to a combination of extreme winter weather conditions in December and January, some unforeseen difficulties with the installation of the new power supply for the lift and some issues with the fabrication of the new staircase.

“This meant we would not be able to complete the work to the original timescale.

“We apologise for any additional disruption this caused for passengers.”

Translation: We ordered the wrong size steps, we subcontract to subcontractors who have to come in on the train from Southampton (good luck with that), and our subcontractors can’t agree between themselves who is responsible for removing the wobbly bridge. Suck it up and enjoy those price rises…

Open Sesame

The Millennium steps have finally been declared fit for human footsteps. People are still using the wobbly Millennium Bridge though. It’s now become a badge of honour, I guess.

The old Puccino’s guys have gone, and so has Classic FM sadly, replaced with something that sounds more like Kiss. No chairs & tables either? The two guys seem friendly though.

The Stannah stairlift (really) is surviving so far, and speaks! Which is nice. The series of comments on the previous post nearly made me spit my coffee out in laughter.

Parakeet Alert!

Scrumping apples from the tree outside!

Not going to win any awards for photography, but you get the idea..

See the incorrectly titled older post The Greenfinch Tree for previous sightings!