IF YOU WANT TO COMMENT ON THE LATEST HENDON LIBRARY PLANNING APPLICATION, YOU CAN OBJECT HERE UNTIL MIDNIGHT TONIGHT!!
For inspiration, here's are two objections, the first from the wonderful LIBRARY CAMPAIGN and the second from Judicial Review claimant, Richard Lecoat ...
THE LIBRARY CAMPAIGN
The Library Campaign is the national charity that supports public
libraries and public library users.
We note with astonishment that there is no designated slot in Barnet's
consultation form for national bodies that have a legitimate interest in
developments that affect architectural quality and cultural assets of national significance.
The cultural implications of the proposed development are obvious. In terms of pure design, the town hall, public library and fire station would be far less visible,
and would no longer be the three central buildings at The Burroughs.
They would be turned into a single lump, dominated by bland 21st century fill-in
architecture.
In terms of culture as defined in its widest and most up-to-date sense,
research increasingly shows how important "sense of place" is to
residents' local pride, mental health - and satisfaction with their
local authority. This hub plan seems custom-designed to destroy any
sense of place.
In particular, the library is a handsome, free-standing, deservedly
listed building that expresses strong civic pride.
It is also nationally famous. The iconic librarian Eileen Colwell put
Hendon on the map as the centre for probably the most important
20th-century development in public libraries - children's services and
story-telling.
A local authority with any understanding of its assets would find ways
to highlight this inheritance, which combines historical pride with
busy current day usage.
Local residents have shown they are very willing to work with the
council to help it exploit this unique asset. Indeed, they have come
up with concrete proposals that do not seem even to have been considered.
This is not best practice.
To bury the building, as planned, in crass and unrelated bits of
university provision is astonishingly short-sighted.
We suggest that listed building consent is needed for this intrusive
addition that hides a large part of the building, and that this
consent could not responsibly be given.
The damage would be major; the benefit minimal.
We note that local campaigners were assured, as recently as 29 June,
that "the original Hendon Library building in its entirety will be
solely for residents". Now they are told the long-used 1970s library
extension, recently leased to the university, is to be permanently
given to it as a lecture hall.
The current plan may technically fulfil the June assurance. It does
not fulfil its spirit and is an instance of bad faith, which will not
help future relationships with the public. .
Like Hendon residents, The Library Campaign feels let down by what we
see as the council's failure to re-think a crass and unnecessary
development, despite the public's clear wish for it to do so.
RICHARD LECOAT
Okay, I admit, it sounded good: "The whole of the library will be returned for use by the public and the community". Amazing! No longer would we be potentially forced to accept a horrid 'new build' library stuffed into the bottom of equally horrid (and monolithic, to boot) student buildings, or squeezed into that ill-conceived darling of the architects, The Rotunda, a building for which words fail me. Hurrah! We the people had been listened to! Our voices had been heard! Democracy, we thought to ourselves with childlike naivety, CAN work! Wonderful!
And then - as has been the case at every step throughout this venal, undemocratic and, frankly, asinine process that we know as the Hendon Hub - the truth began to dribble out. And the truth was not so very wonderful.
It transpires, then, that the space on the first floor (the library courtyard extension, dating from the 1970s and originally used for the provision of library services... until Barnet Council leased it, like everything else, to Middlesex University), is NOT to be returned to public use after all. Instead, this space is to become a lecture hall for... wait for it, because you'll never guess... Middlesex University. So it seems that only the ORIGINAL parts of the library are returning to the public. The newer portions, despite the fact that they could and should be used to extend the public floor area and be used for providing the services of, y'know, a LIBRARY, go instead to Barnet Council's bestest buddy forever, MDX.
(If this was one of Eileen Colwell's children story times then the tale being told to rapt young faces would presumably be Faustus, or The Curse Of The Monkey's Paw, where people *seem* to get what they wish for only to discover to their lament and chagrin that the wish has in fact been maliciously twisted into something horrible and ghastly by the wicked, self-serving intent of the wish-giver. Oh, but forgive me, I digress).
And not only are MDX still getting sizable portions of Hendon Library as their own private fiefdom, but the library, it seems, is STILL destined under these proposals to have an enormous and unsympathetic prosthetic extension of steel and glass attached to its rear end. The problems with this additional construction - the four-storey teaching block - are numerous. Specifically:
1. It interferes with the existence of the Town Hall and the Library as separate and individual buildings as viewed from The Burroughs. Hendon Library is a grade II listed building, at least in part, and deserves to retain its separate identity as a building that stands apart from its neighbours. The overall effect of the new build is to create something akin to a single (if uneven) terrace of buildings - taking in the Town Hall, the Library and the Fire Station. This is an unwelcome change and deeply at odds with the pre-existing heritage feel of the properties.
Furthermore, the fact that the proposed extension annexes both the Library AND the Town Hall shines a cold and revealing light upon Barnet Council's increasingly shrill denials that they are putting the wants and wishes of MDX ahead of those of council tax-paying (not to mention VOTING) residents. Both the Town Hall and the Library will become A DE FACTO MATERIAL PART OF MDX CAMPUS as a direct result of this extension's construction. Any claim by the Council, MDX, or anyone else, that the Hendon Hub does not represent a change of use for the entire area - from residential community to university campus - is thereby exposed as the mealy-mouthed, guff-filled poppycock that it is.
2. The scale of the proposed construction, as with everything to do with the Hendon Hub, is grotesquely out of step with the surrounding architecture. The extension building is overbearing and, by filling in the gaps between the various buildings, destroys the previously open and airy feel of the space surrounding the Town Hall and Library. The entire proposal is characterised by overdevelopment in terms of mass, scale, and size. The important and attractive nature of the Library facade (acknowledged by the fact of its Grade II listed status) will be palpably marred by the unsympathetic new structure being proposed to stand behind (and around) it.
3. Not to mention that the roof of Building B9 is raised higher than the library roof and detracts significantly from the original pitched library roofs as it fills the area between them.
4. It is not clear why it was thought that a modern-looking steel and glass extension would blend seamlessly into a 100-year old Grade II-listed heritage site. However that conclusion was reached, that conclusion is wrong.
Residents have been making these same points about the size, scale, look and feel of the proposed buildings for over two years now. That so little has been done to accommodate these reasonable and justifiable concerns in all that time clearly demonstrates the total hubristic contempt that Council members and their officers have for the community that they claim to represent.
Lest we forget, these plans were originally supposed to be backed by the Supplementary Planning Document, which it turned out was not actually supplementary to anything at all, at least nothing that actually existed, and when challenged on that matter the Council decided that it might be best to withdraw the SPD after all and to pretend that it never happened. Plans currently being presented are now supposedly backed by the 'emerging' local plan, except that 'emerging' in this context is just another term word for 'doesn't exist yet, either'.
These proposals have no true validity and the process of the entire Hendon Hub is revealed yet again and nothing but smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand dressed up to try and look like democracy - a bureaucratic bunco booth designed to deliver Hendon's finest assets over to specific vested interests at the expense of its residents and their quality of life.
The whole thing is crass and insulting and stinks and is shameful.
I OBJECT.