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Ballot box will give its verdict on Sobell plan
• SO, the decision concerning the Sobell Centre and surrounding grounds has been made – our leisure centre is to be rebuilt (not refurbished at much less cost) and a lot of houses and flats for sale are to be built (Sobell plan gets final approval from Lib Dems, September 12). However, the “social/affordable” housing – so emphasised by our “listening” council – can be ignored, now that there is a new London administration.
A number of issues are puzzling: the listening Lib Dems are, I assume, very concerned with making decisions that are democratic – democracy in their terms being the majority. Yet, only just over 2 per cent of the questionnaires circulated were returned – hardly an answer by the majority. In fact, we have been told that 1,500 replies expressed a wish for a swimming pool and yet only about 1,400 questionnaires were returned.
This low return is not surprising. The area that will be affected by this monstrous plan is ethnically and culturally mixed and many are unfamiliar with the questionnaire system. Many people living in the area are here because of dangerous and frightening experiences in their own countries; they may well be fearful of any authority, such as the council, and want to keep well clear of sending information.
Furthermore, they may have needed help to judge matters and think about the repercussions of the plans. What a pity the council did not bother to hold the public meeting that many of us begged for, where we could have talked to each other about these things. We might have devised a plan that could have encouraged people to respond.
Why didn’t the council do this? Perhaps it has no understanding of our area or empathy with the people who live there.
Who benefits from this proposed development? Not the needy of Islington who require to be housed but cannot afford to buy, nor people who cannot afford to purchase flats and houses around the £500,000-plus cost.
No, I can see the Lib Dem councillors themselves benefiting electorally by providing houses for purchasers who might well vote for them. And the benefits to councillors are a continuation of power in their patch, and perhaps – even more – the continuation of generous payment and expenses for their roles.
Coming from a family much involved in local politics – people whose aims were to achieve ideals, including that of improving the lives of working people, and who did this without payment – it seems to me this situation is a tragedy.
MAUREEN COMAN
Thane Villas, N7
• ELECTORAL suicide is most likely for the Liberal Democrats if they demolish the Sobell Centre prematurely.
It would be a vast public open sore, a constant reminder for voters seeing the bare site on the corner of Tollington and Hornsey roads, Holloway (Sobell to be demolished, September 5).
They plan to relocate the various activities temporarily in other parts of the borough. This will greatly inconvenience large numbers of people in Highbury East, Highbury West, Canonbury, Holloway and St Mary’s wards.
They will need to get binding contracts from solvent developers to build the four blocks of housing that are a large element of the financing. That seems unlikely in the 18 months to the next council election in May 2010.
The Nationwide Building Society predicted last week that it does not see a property recovery before 2010 “at the earliest”.
There’s a question also about the rebuilding of Finsbury Leisure Centre and adjacent Ironmonger Row Baths. Dreams of luxury flats to provide a large part of the £25million (at 2007 prices) have been shattered.
Property developers do not usually build blocks of flats on spec and hope to sell them. They sell off-plan and then build. This was dealt a mortal blow by the credit crunch.
Councillors Ruth Polling and Andrew Cornwell, executive members for leisure and finance respectively, need to tell electors where they see flats’ binding contracts coming from in the 18 months of their term remaining – if they can find any developers still sufficiently solvent.
LEO CHAPMAN
Dufferin Street, EC1
• SO Islington Council executive has decided to proceed with plans to demolish the Sobell Centre, leaving local people without sports facilities for two years, before it is rebuilt and buried inside a housing estate.
The council’s “consultation”, which offered only one choice and had to dangle gift vouchers even to garner a less than 3 per cent response rate (some 1,400 people), was used as proof that the scheme had public support.
The fact that more than 3,500 people had organised and signed petitions opposing the council’s plans was not even mentioned by the council leaders at the meeting. When challenged on this omission, these thousands of regular Sobell users were dismissed as misinformed by Councillor Ruth Polling. This attitude is at best patronising, at worst contemptuous, and hardly fits with the inane “listening to Islington” agenda continuously rammed down our throats.
The Sobell, being a large site under council ownership, represents a very rare opportunity to improve leisure and green space in our overdeveloped borough. That the council has chosen to sell off swathes of the land (both green space and potential green space), even in the face of massive opposition, demonstrates its lack of imagination, its arrogance and its disregard for local democracy.
CLLR KATIE DAWSON
Green Party, Highbury West
• WHILE supporters of the Lib Dem council might like to pretend the non-participation of the public in a council consultation process could be an indication the majority are “happy with the proposals”, in reality it is the Lib Dems’ cynicism towards the electorate that leads most people to conclude that it’s not worth bothering to engage with any of their glossy propaganda exercises (Why cling onto Sobell? It’s past its sell-by date, September 12).
The less than 3 per cent who responded over the future of the Sobell Centre is a case in point.
The Lib Dems’ limited affection for democratic processes was best articulated by their ex-leader, Steve Hitchins. Achieving the highest vote through the ballot box was, he maintained, “sufficient mandate” to push ahead with anything the party chose for the four years between one election and the next.
This attitude explains why the Lib Dems refused to ballot council tenants about their plans to push ahead with the PFI scheme for Islington council street properties, despite huge tenant opposition.
In fact, in a show of hands at a conference organised by the Federation of Islington Tenants’ Associations and the council only one tenant out of the hundreds in attendance said they supported the Lib Dems’ plan to push ahead with the scheme. “Happy?” Hardly.
The same attitude also saw them plough ahead with plans to sell Finsbury Town Hall (initially to Berkeley Homes), with less than one per cent response to their consultation and with only 35 out of 15,000 residents (0.2 per cent) in support of the plans.
After the Berkeley Homes scheme fell through in 2004, a second petition was signed by more than 2,000 residents (out of the 4,000 households in the EC1 New Deal area), registering a 50 per cent opposition. “Happy?” I think not. Ditto, the hasty drive to transfer all council estates to an arm’s length management organisation. They are many other examples.
Happily, there is a price to be paid for this chicanery. Not that far back the biggest Lib Dem majorities (800 approx) in the borough could be found in wards like Clerkenwell and Bunhill. But in the local elections in 2006, Lib Dem support had withered significantly, leaving wafer-thin majorities of 100 and 50 respectively.
So if the knocking down of the Sobell Centre can be justified on the grounds that “it is past its sell-by date and crumbling”, the same principle can also be applied to the Lib Dem administration in the Town Hall.
GARY O'SHEA
Independent Working Class Association
WC1
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