Alida Baxter

Renowned London journalist and author

 

View from Soho,

Fighting a Council

Hello? Anyone else out there having a fight with their local Council? No, don't scream! And no, you are not supposed to swallow Prozac with your whisky! Not bottles full … Put that down and, while we're at it, stop rocking back and forwards. We are going to have a sensible talk about this, and a bit of mutual support will be cheaper than the Priory. It may not actually solve anything, but at least you'll know you're not alone.

I've been engaged in mortal combat with my local Council for over three months now, and I'm telling you that nothing they threw at Russell Crowe in Gladiator compares to this. Where do they get these people? But I use the term loosely. Are they spare Cybermen from Dr. Who?

It all started with what everyone in my neighbourhood thought must be some sort of joke. We had survived ages of Thames Water digging up everything everywhere, leaving an empty wheelbarrow and a hole for a year or so and eventually filling it in, only to dig it up again a week later. We thought we'd seen the worst in the quest for new pipes and drains, and then of course there was Crossrail. Crossrail is the Grail, the Everest, the North face of the Eiger – it is a sacred cause and the pinnacle for any Council seeking an excuse to close whole sections of a city, ruining businesses, paralysing traffic and generally making life purgatory for anyone either commuting to or living there. It cannot be stopped, there is no defence against it, if it needs to swallow something in its path it will do so, no matter how big the chunk it takes out of London's fabric, and it has a licence to do just about everything but kill. Keep an eye on the template, if you too live in a city, because now the precedent's been set, something like this could come to you.

So we West End veterans of Thames Water and the CR word thought we'd seen it all by now. But we were wrong.

Here in Soho , I live two blocks behind Oxford Street and three behind Regent Street , and the area isn't just busy with cafes and restaurants and businesses of all kinds, it is densely populated. In January my neighbours and I woke up and found that, without any warning, the only street leading to Oxford Street had been closed, and a sign stated that the closure would last for an incredible eighteen months. A joke, surely ? No, and of the pavements on either side of what had been a major and always busy roadway, one had also been shut, while the other had been made horribly narrow by barriers the contractors had set up. All this for the demolition and redevelopment of one building, surrounded by others which weren't involved, but shared in the suffering!

No vehicle could get directly North or East, towards University College Hospital in the Tottenham Court Road, for instance, because the only exit was Westward, to Regent Street where it neared Piccadilly. Taxis were understandably reluctant to enter this Dead Zone and pick people up, because getting out took such a time.

And the closed street's one remaining skinny pavement became a nightmare for pedestrians when cyclists, currently Kings of the Road in London , started using it as a rat run. No legitimate road surface? Never mind, the Mayor, Boris Johnson, loves them! Kensington and Chelsea Council have even allowed them to ignore one-way street signs – which they already ignore, anyway. So they shot up the pavement, and mothers with babies in buggies, people dependent on sticks and shopping trolleys, and the usual throngs on their way to cafes and offices, all had to scramble for their lives to get out of the way. And once having discovered the pavement, cyclists made really good use of it – not just to race along, but as a handy bike park. As many as five cycles could be tripped over, locked in clusters to posts and signs.

A designated Key Resident (aren't I lucky?), I lay on my bed with my phone and tracked down the Highways Department of Westminster City Council. (Practice makes perfect – nowadays, just call me Sherlock.) The real problem, though, proved to be not so much finding the Department, as getting someone to return a message left for them or actually to answer a phone.

And when someone did speak, it was in sombre tones. It's not the end of the world, said the man. It's Development. He sounded as though he had brought these words, carved on stone tablets, down from the Mount. (Most of the Council's decisions are set in stone.)

The Highways Department were sorry for the developers, I learned. Everything had been made really difficult for them. “Not nearly,” I snapped, as it's been made for us!

There were businesses in the closed street which needed deliveries, so the street had to be opened at night. But, it appeared, those were the only people to have been consulted, whilst no domestic residents had been warned at all.

Demolition and construction work wouldn't be allowed at night anyway, I protested, and hospital clinics and doctors' surgeries are only open during the day! Neighbours of mine are in wheelchairs – what are we going to do about transport?

Oh, they had put the developers through such hoops – they were being charged for the monitoring of the street by Council officials. People from the Highways Department were coming down to Soho to look at the closure, presumably sucking on ice cream cornets while they marvelled at the chaotic scene. What is this development. I asked. After all, such is the shortage of accommodation in central London that Westminster is building Council homes for the first time in decades. Was this to be affordable housing? No, the finished product would be a film company – in Soho , already bursting with voice-over studios, editing suites and film management! I could only squeak, Another one?”

Feeling as though I were through to a maniac call centre, I switched the phone to my other ear and pressed on: The road's being used as a car park for the developer's vehicles, but there's a National Car Park ten yards away! They could use that and the street would be open!

Oh, no, it wasn't being used as car park – oh, yes, it was! I retorted. But the pantomime dialogue got me nowhere, and I moved to yet another tack. This is an eighteen month project . After the initial stage, won't there be phases when the developer can reopen the street for weeks or even a month or two at a time?

I could hear teeth being sucked on the other end of the line. Hmm, well, that might confuse things. Exasperated, I said there should be a public meeting at which local residents could address the developers, never having had a chance to make their position heard. To this at least I got a yes, but without any set date.

Unclamping my hand from the phone and believing Round One was over, I planned a rest with a cold towel on my head before having another go. But other signs were already being set up …

The receiver was still warm when I grabbed it. What's happening? I wailed to the Department, where no-one was saying it wasn't the end of the world any more. And learned a vital electric cable had to be replaced, another street had to be closed and dug up – But that's the only way out! I shrieked.

The result was, predictably, total gridlock. Traffic entered our bit of Soho from three directions, and it all found itself diverted via a tiny turning to a roadway which sent it back the way it had come and round in a continuous loop. It couldn't get out Northwards and it couldn't get out Westwards, and when people got fed up with sitting in the same spot for hours they climbed out of their cars and threatened each other. No emergency vehicle could have reached anybody, unless it had driven over car roofs. Nothing could move.

Residents protested, local businesses protested, the police protested, but it made no difference. Except to the attitude of the Highways Department, where one official in particular seemed genuinely sympathetic, and told me he'd come back to his office from meetings and found everybody ashen at the volume of complaint pouring in. The electric cable has to be dealt with, I said.“I understand that. But the developers have got to reopen the street they closed.

I was told that the public utility company were being leant on, to work late and over weekends to get their work done quickly, while negotiations were taking place with the developers. The official sounded hopeful. But I'd seen the developer's workmen pausing briefly to smirk at the horrific congestion only yards from them before they went back to their site, and their “Street Closed” sign stayed in place even when the road was totally empty.

The following week, I rang Mr. Sympathy again (by this time I had a whole list of different phone numbers, each connected to a different personality) and found him shaken. Having given the impression that they'd co-operate in this emergency, the developers were now being represented by their site manager, whose attitude was that they'd got permission to close the street, and it was staying that way.

I rang a local Councillor who is usually extremely helpful, but learned that this issue was another man's pigeon. Try again. There was an immediate response from the Councillor with the pigeon, who was already wrestling with the problem, but I was very cynical by now, and he appeared a bit too trusting and optimistic, despite having got no farther than me.

With the situation still appalling, I tracked down the telephone number of the developers' Head Office – it's an international company – and rang them and asked for the Public Relations Department. A sensitive soul took my call. No, they didn't want publicity about the way their street closure was endangering the lives of people in the area; no, they didn't want me to contact the press about the emergency services not being able to reach residents. Yes, they were sure they could sort out the problem.

I rang Mr. Sympathy. We both got hopeful. But the site manager didn't care a hang about public relations, and nothing changed. Mentioning the name of the Councillor with the pigeon caused a gulp, but no movement. What happens if there's a terrorist outrage, I demanded of another official, and the developers still refuse to open that street? Oh, I was told, that wouldn't be allowed to happen. So why let them keep it shut now? The only answer was what sounded like someone moving around in their seat. And then, barely audible, the bitter comment that it might have been better never to have permitted the street to be closed in the first place.

As it turned out, we were stuck with the gridlock till the people dealing with the electric cable left, a whole week ahead of schedule and covered with flecks of foam.

For one week the traffic flowed – like glue, but it moved. And then back came the motionless jam of vehicles.“ Why? I shrieked. And learned that a gas main had fractured and another vital roadway no longer existed, except in the form of a hole.

It is March, I told Mr. Sympathy, holding a bowl of ice cream to my head. That development only started in January and we're already into our second crisis. That street's got to be opened.

They were doing all they could, it looked as though the developers would agree to reopening the street whenever possible.

I'll believe that when I see it! The workmen are enjoying watching what's happening! I told him. One driver got out of his car and tried to attack a policeman he blamed for the diversion! It's the best show in town!

Besides, there was the pavement, which I'd been raging about from the beginning. On the little sliver of footway left when the development started, a restaurant and a beauty salon, like vultures picking at carcases in some canyon, had set out portable signs that made it even more difficult to get through. I had pleaded with the Highways Department that these be removed, along with the locked bicycles, and learned that entirely different people dealt with Pavements, for which there was a Warden. Talk about trade union restrictive practices! Meanwhile, I had yet another name and number for the Department, but found the fiercest voicemail I'd ever heard, belonging to somebody who never called back, and returned to Mr. Sympathy, feeling like one of those drivers sent around in a loop.

But he no longer answered his phone or returned calls, no matter how desperate the message. And the pavement remained a cross between a tightrope and an obstacle course.

Frozen out and furious, I wrote a letter to our local paper, the West End Extra, stressing how essential it was that Westminster City Council should impose conditions on developers that would prevent the kind of nightmare we were currently suffering.

Now this is one of the points where my experience might be of help to you, if you're having a battle of your own, because that letter proved to be a turning point. Our local paper takes up causes that affect our area, and a reporter rang me up and said they wanted to do a feature about the problem. I was met at the development, just yards from my home, interviewed, and photographed pointing dramatically to the Road Closed signs; the reporter also interrogated the Councillor with the pigeon, and then wrote a marvellously sympathetic and lengthy article, which was printed in the same issue as my original letter. Other Westminster Councillors read it, along with neighbouring residents, and I could get people on the phone again.

It was only the end of the beginning, but it made me feel better – I might have to spend most of my time lying on my bed, but I could still roll my sleeves up. The Highways Department had no peace – I nagged and nagged and nagged.

And here's another tip I learned – emails should be your last resort, not your first. An email from a member of the public is so easy to ignore, and it can just lie in the wrong person's Inbox. If you get a reply at all, it will be cautiously worded (you'll never get someone letting their guard down and tiredly admitting in writing that something should never have happened). Arm yourself with the telephone number of every single official in your enemy Department, and if you have to leave a message, leave it with them all. If you do email, first get everybody's email address, just as with the phone numbers, and copy them all in, including your local Councillor.

I sent only a couple of emails, but used one to explain in block capitals the difference between a pavement and a private forecourt, when the Pavement Warden wouldn't have any of the clutter removed because he didn't know the difference!

One official started taking my calls even when he was at home, and said he'd told his colleagues that they were all in it together – yes, indeed, because I'd put them there. Another told me that the developer couldn't expect any favours from the Highways Department regarding any other, future site in Westminster , after the appallingly unco-operative attitude they'd displayed here. I also learned that legal advice was being taken, as to what could be done to insist the developer reopen the street, despite the permission they'd been given to close it.

And then something else happened. Unable to get a taxi to pick me up, I was making my painful way up the narrow, littered pavement to find a cab when a workman stopped me to ask why, whenever he saw me, I always looked so unhappy. Gritting my teeth, I explained that I was in truly terrible pain because of a spinal problem. Oh, I should have an operation, his mother had had an operation and it had changed her life! A red mist forming before my eyes, I explained that I'd had two operations already, and my life had been changed, but not for the better. However, I was very sorry that my looking unhappy spoiled his day. Clearly a stranger to irony, he actually accepted my apology.

Within twentyfour hours I had written another letter to the local paper, relating this experience and warning everybody to smile as they struggled up the street, for the sake of the workmen. The letter was printed in the next issue, with my photo again, and the developer, already detested in our area, became an object of ridicule.

By mid April the pavement was entirely cleared of signs and locked bikes, there were signs telling cyclists to dismount (though of course the cyclists didn't), and the street began to be opened occasionally for an hour or so at a time.

By this time I also had a date for the public meeting (to take place more than four months after the street was closed, but an improvement on no date at all). And when Thames Water suddenly shut yet another street and started digging, the one man I'd never been able to contact answered his phone, and yelped when he heard my name. “I've rerecorded my voicemail!” he whimpered (and he had – I checked later and instead of the defiant bark was charmingly welcomed to leave my message), and Thames Water would be out and away by the end of the afternoon!

Having him on the ropes, I brought up the local rumour that the same developer who'd blighted our lives since January might be considering another project in Soho, and asked him what could be done to prevent another disaster. His advice was invaluable. But before I come to it, given that it's really a rider to this story, let me sum up.

I haven't achieved the solution I wanted for our beleaguered area, not yet, but I have come some way and gained some small victories. And the most striking thing about my story is the enormous amount of my time even this degree of success has devoured.

Yes, some people started off with me. But having sent an email (to an address I'd discovered) and received no answer, or left a phone message or two (at numbers I provided) for those who didn't call back, they gave up. I don't blame them, they have busy lives and occupations, and it would be impossible for anybody with a full time job to have devoted as much of their days to this battle as I have. Desperation drove me on, because I needed to get to the hospital appointments and spinal treatments that are such a part of my life, and the closed street terrified and terrorised me, but even so it was incredibly wearing. I'm paid for this job, one official said to me. “You're doing it all for nothing.” Heaven knows it had been hard won, but I had his respect.

The greatest lesson to be learned from my experience is not just that you have to be determined, but that unless you are prepared to give up virtually every other activity you won't stand a chance in any fight against a Council. As the official said to me, they are paid to do this – to take a decision and stick by it, unless you can persuade them otherwise. And the only hope you have of persuading them is not to give up.

So you have all my good wishes, if you're engaged in a fight of your own. Whatever it is, I hope it's on behalf of others as well as yourself – always a good start.

And as to the advice from the man who'd even rerecorded his voicemail to placate me? Before the Highways Department comes Planning, and it's at the planning stage that decisions can be made which will impact on street closures, although that won't necessarily be immediately apparent. Here in Westminster , as everywhere, the cuts have been drastic – so much so that one economy has been in notices about planning applications. It's very simple: they don't get sent out. So from now on I'll put in a call every few weeks to the Planning Department, to see what's on the horizon. (Yes, there is a website, but it's been inaccurate in the past and there's no reason to hope it'll be better in the future.)

It might be as well to check with your own Council, about what economies of this surreptitious kind they could be making. You may be all too aware that they're closing libraries and Day Centres, and that they think the best place for small children is up a chimney, but if they too aren't sending out information about planning applications, you could find yourself face to face with a wall or a Road Closed sign and a fight like mine.

So good luck to you all, fellow battlers, and spare a thought for me when you can, between sorties – there's no end in sight yet of my particular war.

© Alida Baxter

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