Cap The Towers Alleges Council Dishonesty Over Friary Park

Cites two instances when it says false statements have been made

The Friary Park scheme is already dominating the local skyline. Picture: Cap The Towers

May 16, 2024

A campaign group opposed to the scale of the housing development in Friary Park is accusing Ealing Council of making false statements about the developments during meetings.

Two members of Cap the Towers, broadcaster Sean Fletcher and David Tennant, say they previously contacted the council about their concerns but received no reply. Therefore, they issued an open letter to Peter Mason, the leader of Ealing Council, which says that there is ‘incontestable evidence’ that the Planning Committee was misled on two occasions.

They call on the council to investigate the matter before Phase 2 and 3 of the development is allowed to proceed ‘lest a pattern of deception be allowed to continue’.

The first allegation relates to a Planning Meeting held on 19 October 2022 when the Committee was considering an application from the Mount Anvil to build a further tower and increase the number of units at Friary Park from 990 to 1228.

The question of the financial viability of the initial application was raised by a councillor and a video recording of the meeting shows that a categorical assurance was given that it had been deemed viable.

However, Cap the Towers contend that the viability study into the scheme from 2019 had concluded it was not viable and that this constitutes a ‘deliberate and serious’ misleading of the Committee. Government policy is that financial viability is an important consideration as to whether permission should be given for an application to proceed and it is argued that approval would not have been given if councillors had been aware the scheme was deemed unviable.

The second alleged falsehood took place earlier this year and also involved the issue of financial viability. In 2019, when Mount Anvil’s project at Friary Park was launched, Cap the Towers has discovered that the independent financial viability assessment.
which was used in the Report to the Planning Committee, was only a draft. It was stated that the final FVA (Financial Viability Assessment) would be produced when the planning application was ready to be submitted.

Cap the Towers was later informed that the draft version of the FVA was the only one submitted by the application, but it says it has seen the letter from the developer’s agent which accompanied the planning application at a later date that states, ‘Please note that the Financial Viability Assessment will be submitted under separate cover directly to you on a private and confidential basis.’

Cap the Towers says it has made repeated inquiries about this issue with requests to see the final FVA and has not received a response and therefore it is concluding that a false statement was made on this issue.

Ealing Council’s stated policy on FVA’s which was set out in March 2019, before the Friary Park application was approved is “LB Ealing will publish without redaction all viability statements and information submitted as part of a planning application.’

Cap the Towers suggest that the final version of the FVA may have been deleted or destroyed and that there was a failure to highlight in reports made to the planning committee that the application made in 2022 had also been assessed as financially unviable.

A third application is likely to be submitted in relation to Friary Park in the near future with requests for increases in height anticipated.

A visualisation of the height of proposals for Friary Park. Picture: Cap the Towers

The open letter states, “Will this application, like its two predecessors, also be ‘financially unviable’? That would seem ludicrous. On the other hand, if the developer’s quest for viability involves building more flats or higher towers, that too would be ludicrous. This is because the scheme, even as it stands, has only around 9000 square metres of public open space when it is required to have over 43,000 square metres according to the GLA’s Population Yield Calculator. Any increase in population as a result of more flats and/or higher towers, would inevitably lead to gross and even dangerous overcrowding at Friary Park. The National Planning Policy Framework does not intend that viability can be delivered at the cost of sustainability. The developer is facing an impasse. Cap the Towers stands ready to work with the Council and the developer to see if we can together find a way out of this impasse.”

Mr Fletcher and Mr Tennant have requested a meeting with the Head of Planning and Cabinet Member for Good Growth, Cllr Manro, as well as a senior member of the Mount Anvil team, to resolve the issues they have raised.

They say, “Would this approach not be preferable to the kind of conflict which we have all had to endure for the last five years? Is it not worth a try? “

Ealing Council has been approached for comment on the allegations in the Cap the Towers letter.