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We have won. A Government plan to sell off five acres of Regent's Park has been thwarted by people power.
After three years of trying, the Royal Parks Agency has admitted defeat in its bid to concrete central London's last secret wilderness for a five-a-side football and drinking club.
This faux-proletarian gesture, in a park that already has two dozen football pitches, was approved by Tessa Jowell and David Lammy as so-called culture ministers, also wiping out a century-old local tennis club founded by the then Prince of Wales.
Its closure led to the suicide of its coach, who hung himself from a tree overlooking the court. The minister has still refused to allow the now-derelict club to reopen.
The wilderness itself is the ghost of the garden of Holford House, bombed in the war and fenced off ever since. It is on the north side of the park adjacent to the American embassy residence.
The Crown never got round to rebuilding the house or uniting its garden with the park. Oaks, limes, maples and horse chestnuts, together with rare plants, avenues and parterres untended for half a century, lie buried in ivy.
I know it because, as a boy, I used to climb through the fence and roam through this magic land of lion, witch and wardrobe, heavy with the shades of London past. Fifty trees were to be chopped down by the agency.
The seizure of any of London's parkland for development is an outrage. Since this was a precious natural reserve, its attempted spoliation showed the philistinism of the Government and its parks agency, headed by Mark Camley, whose obsession has been to sublet ever more of what should be open space to commercial use.
That they should also have closed tennis courts, of which London is desperately short, adds insult to injury.
The Regent's Park victory comes hard on the heels of two other imminent triumphs. Plans for Battersea Power Station, benighted relic of 30 years of abortive planning, have at last emerged shorn of an outrageous tower.
Meanwhile, just across the Thames, the Prince of Wales's assault on Lord Rogers's neo-Modernist plan for the site of the old Chelsea barracks appears to have generated enough outcry to stop it in its tracks.
In each case, the customary developer's approach of planning approval first, publicity afterwards (advocated by the architect Richard Seifert in the 1970s), has fallen foul of determined local activism.
Dogged campaigning by the Friends of Regent's Park and others in Battersea and Chelsea has confronted the wealth and influence of the architect/developers.
London's community defenders receive neither aid nor public money. They must use their own resources to hire lawyers and advisers.
David Miliband and Hazel Blears, as local government ministers, refused even to honour the Government's long-standing pledge to give London neighbourhoods parish council powers, so they could co-ordinate and fight in their own interest.
In the case of Regent's Park, the relevant agency was finally stopped by Westminster council planners after a concerted campaign by the park's friends group, who declare the development “the largest wholesale destruction of trees in inner London”.
Handing five acres over to a private club flatly broke the spirit of the law, which forbids “the carrying on of any trade or business” within the park.
It should be the Government that enforces the law on others, not others having to use their own money to enforce the law on the Government.
In Chelsea and Battersea the cases were different. Here the public was offered no choice of style or density for the biggest local developments in the history of either borough.
In Chelsea it took the clout of the Prince of Wales to bring the matter into the public realm.
It was perhaps unfortunate that the prince fought the Rogers scheme with a design of his own, by the neo-classicist Quinlan Terry, and then proffered it as one royal to another to the site owner, the Qatari royal family.
A shrewder move would have been to demand a competition — or at very least a wider debate about what style was most appropriate to this part of Chelsea.
The site has Wren's Royal Hospital on one side, Victorian “Pont Street Dutch” on another and Chelsea vernacular on a third. The assumption by architects that any debate on such a choice is too esoteric to entrust to the London public is inexcusable in the 21st century.
The public cannot be denied a say in the visual evolution of the capital, whatever those tower-loving, developer-appeasing mayors, Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, might prefer.
Johnson has at least shown some interest in discussing a suitable architecture for the metropolis, in a proposed conference on “London vernacular”. This is hardly sufficient.
At an RGS debate last month on “beauty”, David Starkey and Roger Scruton were roundly defeated by Germaine Greer and Stephen Bayley on the thesis that the British “have no aesthetic sensibility”.
Greer and Bayley dismissed such a patronising view, pointing to the public's clear preference for beautiful surroundings and beautiful objects and their rejection of ugliness, however defined. It was not true that “ordinary people” had no sense of beauty.
I agree. The days when Londoners were assumed to be ignorant and blind to their surroundings are past.
That the appearance of the capital should be left to an elite of landowners, architects and town planners is as unrealistic as it is arrogant. That mafia has lost all credibility with the mess they have made of London over the past half century.
Hardly a neighbourhood, and few buildings, erected since the war would today be considered worth saving on even the most tolerant view of what the future might value.
Some new system must be found for engaging public opinion in the renewal of the metropolis. That includes the scale, style and decoration of buildings.
Citizens of Paris, Rome and Amsterdam know what they want and are allowed to ordain it.
London has grown up this past generation and should be free to decide what democracy previously delegated to professionals.
Until then, we should at least salute the valiant warriors for urban beauty, and cheer their occasional victories.
Reader views (7)
Thank you Simon Jenkins. Let's change these appalling planning procedures so that less high profile and less well-off parts of London can defend themselves.
The violence against HRH is fascinating in itself. The current ruling-class, with its continued pretense of transparency and eligibility, have been shown up. Charles has intervened to guarantee an opinion shared by a great many in this country. Whatever one may think of him, and in spite of the left foaming at the mouth,constitutional monarchy is a check and balance to the excesses of parliament, and we should cherish it. I have learnt to view anyone who invokes 'Democracy' constantly, as if they were its high priest, with suspicion. . This new ruling class is of disgusting hypocrisy.
- Om, london, 14/06/2009 12:24
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Can you explain the comment "David Miliband and Hazel Blears, as local government ministers, refused even to honour the Government's long-standing pledge to give London neighbourhoods parish council powers, so they could co-ordinate and fight in their own interest."?
This power was granted in the 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act. Do you have some information that contradicts this legislation?
- Steve, London, 13/06/2009 22:50
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Quote: Liz, London. There has been no proper public consultation about this at all - the council person who is pushing it arrogantly says that full consultation has happened because we could have contacted the local press, and because it was part of an exhibit in the Library for 14 days!
Ah yes Liz, Consultations; these are the illusions generated by local and national governments to give the impression they are doing everything legally and openly; this soothes those that believe in political illusions of honesty and integrity etc.
You should read the Governments Public Consultations; they have loads of them every year etc; try their own website etc.
One I was involved in was about the Governments age discrimination, and their abuse of the mentally ill; normal illnesses and things like dementia etc; they openly admit they do operate an age discrimination policy; and last year this consultation ended etc.
Nothing was done about their human rights abuses in that consultation; instead they are now having another consultation on the last consultation, to decide if they should honour their first consultation etc.
This is all more Government illusions to fool the public; and create more civil servants to carry out more consultations; I have tried consulting the consultation consultants, but they have no address at all to which I could consult them.
I get the impression from my personal experiences; that politicians are all liars and con-artists?
- Mickyinlondon, london, 10/06/2009 13:30
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While you're at it you might look into the deceit and subterfuge practised by Lambeth Council in order to slica a corner off Brockwell Park for road "improvements".
- Mickgj, London, 10/06/2009 10:00
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right on Mr.Jenkins. exposing the Royal Parks Agency and government ministers for their short term greed and lack of concern to protect our precious parks and open spaces.
- Sandy Lieberson, camden, uk, 09/06/2009 22:24
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Bravo Mr Jenkins,but Regent's park will always have the rich and powerful to defend it!
Next, maybe you'd like to take a look a Cheam park, in the borough of Sutton? A lovely, leafy, quiet park, with children's playground, tennis courts, bowling green, poupular with families and dog walkers. Soon to be totally ruined by a BMX track which is to be built on a lovely old strip of land at present full of wildflowers and birdsong.
There has been no proper public consultation about this at all - the council person who is pushing it arrogantly says that full consultation has happened because we could have contacted the local press, and because it was part of an exhibit in the Library for 14 days! It is to have no CCTV, no supervision...and will bring in louts, vandals, under-age drinking and so on, from all over the borough. No one we meet wants it - except perhaps those who live near the nearby Nonsuch park, who have vowed to ;erase all trace of BMX from our park!'
Whatever happened to public consultation?
- Liz, London,UK, 09/06/2009 13:49
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In my opinion; Regents Park is the finest park in London.
The gardeners are second to none; the flowers are constantly changed throughout the seasons; I can think of no other park with as many roses as Regents Park; let alone all the other varieties of constantly changing flowers on display throughout the year.
My wife has Alzheimer’s disease; so life has very little to offer her now, but the joy she shows when I am able to walk her to the Park; which is very near our home is immeasurable, she glows and comes alive, just looking at the beauty of Regents Parks flowers; and simple things like feeding the ducks and the squirrels etc.
Regents Park has given her a much higher quality of life over the past few years, you have to see her reactions yourself to believe the joy Regents Park gives her; sadly she can’t walk far now, and I am not allowed a Westminster invalid parking permit to take her to the park by car etc; they have their own rules as to who qualifies etc; but for a while; she did have a quality of life the Regents Park gave her; I also love Regents Park as well; it is our local park in our part of Westminster.
I was shocked to read your article; I never even knew that there was an attempt to start any kind of commercial sell-off etc; more shame on the politicians and businessmen that tried this latest kind of robbery of the assets of ordinary Londoners.
Regents Park belongs to all of the people now; and should remain so forever.
Keep your hands off.
- Mickyinlondon, london, 09/06/2009 12:21
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