Cab office application in East Finchley rejected after residents' campaign

{This article is courtesy of the Hendon & Finchley Times}

Wednesday 27th May 2009

COMMUNITY spirit rose up to defeat plans for new cab office in East Finchley which had been recommended for approval by planning officers.

An application to change the use of a former estate agents in High Road, into a mini cab office had led to an outcry from more than 250 residents, who claimed the business would be detrimental to the street scene of East Finchley, the village culture and traffic levels in the area.

They said roads were already congested due to the number of shops in High Road and the extra itinerant traffic would bring no intrinsic interest to the area. There were also concerns there may be increases in late night anti-social behaviour if people are loitering around the office after leaving the pubs.

The council consulted 114 neighbours and received 23 letters of objection, one of which was a petition signed by 234 people.

Michael Mcmenemy organised the petition and said it would have been much larger if there had been longer to circulate it.

He said: “There was a very strong feeling that we didn’t want it.

“Living in East Finchely is almost like being in a village community and we wanted to keep hold of that.

“Customers in the shops were completely indignant at the thought of this cab company encroaching on their village life.”

An agent representing the applicant told the Finchley and Golders Green area planning sub-committee meeting on Tuesday that the business was in fact more of an elite chauffeuring service than a taxi cab company.

He claimed drivers would not have parked in the streets surrounding the office, which is currently abandoned, as they would be serving the whole of North London and it would not have been viable to just park in East Finchley.

The application to the council said a GPS system would be in all the cars to ensure “a smooth running environment for customers, drivers, and staff in busy residential roads around East Finchley”.

Council planning officers advised councillors to approve the plans, subject to conditions, adding: “The council do not consider the change of use to pose any impact on the vitality and viability of the East Finchley Town Centre.”

The conditions included ensuring no driver connected with the cab business visits the office to wait around, take orders or collect clients, and there should be no collection of passengers within a 100 metre radius.

But East Finchley Labour ward councillor, Colin Rogers, said the conditions were “contradictory, unfeasible and difficult to enforce”, and the office would be to the detriment of the community.

The application was rejected by committee members on the grounds that the “activity, noise and disturbance” would severely impact on surrounding residents.

Paul Thompson, of Huntingdon Road, spoke at the meeting and said campaigners wanted to ensure a “safe, positive and valued community” was maintained in East Finchley.

“This shows the old East Finchley spirit is still there,” he added.

“The decision is fantastic news because the whole area would have been affected.

“The plans would not have been in line with the community and everybody has been in support against them.”

Chris Hansom, also of Huntingdon Road, said: “There have been a number of things happen on the High Road which we were opposed to and I think it shows how strong the community is around here.

“Whenever there is an issue we all put our head above the parapet to fight it.”

Onwards & Upwards - Big Lottery Fund bid for East Finchley Library

The bid has been submitted by Barnet as their official submission for the Borough to the Community Libraries initiative of the Big Lottery Fund and the result will be known in September (2007).

A proposal from East Finchley Library Users Group for the Big Lottery Fund's Community Libraries initiative

A proposal from East Finchley Library Users Group
for London Borough of Barnet's submission
to the Big Lottery Fund's Community Libraries initiative

This outlines a community-developed suggestion for London Borough of Barnet Library Service's proposed submission to the Big Lottery Fund's current Community Libraries initiative (closing for applications on 30 March 2007). It has been drafted by East Finchley Library Users Group (EFLUG) following extensive consultation (including open public meetings) with a broad range of individuals and groups within our local community, in particular those involved with voluntary activity around East Finchley. It is intended to convey the concept and overall approach - a variety of other documents (e.g. preliminary architectural drawings) underpin it and are available separately.


A New Dimension for the Multimedia Age

The heart of our proposal is to develop a new dimension to East Finchley Library which points a way forward for libraries across our borough, serves as beacon practice and can be rolled out to other Barnet branches - and beyond. The service development (described in this section and the two which follow) is intimately linked to building development (described in the Capital Expenditure section) which would improve the accessibility and DDA compliance of the library, thereby making the most of this valuable community asset and providing (in a very cost-effective manner given the pressures on Barnet's capital programme) an on-going structural legacy.

The root of libraries, as a service and indeed the word itself (derived from 'liber' - book), is in books and the written word. As the world moves at great speed into a networked, multimedia culture with huge implications for and impact on the literary, we propose to develop a complementary dimension to the library's reading and textual heritage - the visual and spoken dimension, factors critical in the modern multimedia environment with its new kinds of literacy and learning.

Eyebrary

Libraries have traditionally been quiet places. Driving forward this proposal is the opposite. The word 'dyslexia' comes from legein - to speak. We propose to set up a new space on the currently under-used and not properly accessible first floor of East Finchley Library, a specialist centre for dyslexia - a condition which affects some 10% of the UK population, that's well over 33,000 in Barnet. Where better to address reading and writing difficulties than in a library?

The dyslexia centre, the Eyebrary, on the first floor would be visually-oriented as people affected by dyslexia typically have a compensatory strength in visual and creative disciplines. It could include:
· a space for dyslexia support group meetings
· a ready supply of the latest information on dyslexia both as hard copy and online (dedicated terminals with all the key websites bookmarked)
· space for use by dyslexia specialists/practitioners (many of whom live in our neighbourhood) for one-to-one/two meetings [a system of easily movable partitions would create maximum flexibility of the available space]
· visual and artistic displays by people with dyslexia
· performances by artists specialising in dyslexia issues like Benedict Phillips (www.thebenedict.net)

Around this specialism in dyslexia support, a broad range of other complementary community-driven activity would be based, linked by the themes of The Visual and Learning.

A Community Hub

Once revitalised in this way, the upstairs space would be able to take its proper place as a cultural and learning hub of our community, located as it is on the northern edge of East Finchley Village Centre, in very close proximity to two of the primary schools and most of the social housing), as well as enhancing the role of East Finchley Library as a destination for citizens in East Finchley and further afield.

With its visual orientation it would be the natural home of East Finchley Open, the now well established open art exhibition thriving in East Finchley village, composed of a judicious blend of amateur, part-time and professional artists. (East Finchley Open, as well as other voluntary community groups mentioned in this document have taken an active part and expressed strong interest in this scheme.)

The learning activities which currently find a home on the first floor of East Finchley Library such as Kumon maths classes would be extended to include mother and child groups, for example, liberated from the constraints of the quietness downstairs - providing a dynamic, energetic complement to the peace and studiousness of the lower floor. Other learning-related uses which have been suggested from our open meetings include serving as a meeting place for home tutors (and their charges) in the catchment area, to help overcome the isolation that can overshadow home schooling, as well as homework clubs.

Professor Stephen Heppell, the man behind the highly successful DfES-backed Notschool initiative for excluded students (www.notschool.net), would input on productive uses of the space for marginalised/disadvantaged students. Local schools would be encouraged to make use of the space for CPD activities where the teaching staff being away from school premises is helpful. Effective partnership with local schools and the Education department would be vital to this initiative.

The (Hampstead Garden Suburb) Institute are keen to make use of this proposed first floor facility to enhance their life-long learning activities within their new home community (their headquarters has recently re-located to East Finchley). By serving as a space for a range of adult learning activities from book clubs and film & television (media literacy) clubs [in association with the National Institution of Adult Continuing Education, Channel 4 Education and Ofcom] to University of the 3rd Age activities.

A number of voluntary groups based at the nearby East Finchley Neighbourhood Centre (which is not DDA accessible) have expressed interest. These include Neighbourhood Contact, a good neighbour scheme for local people in need, many of whom are elderly and disabled. Contact have told us that the library Community Hub would be an ideal space for running workshops to assist groups trying to access benefits. Other local groups who have expressed an interest in the space include staff at the Green Man community centre (in the Strawberry Vale housing estate).


Capital Expenditure

To make the first floor space properly accessible it would be necessary to incorporate a lift into the building. EFLUG has done extensive research in this regard - it has architects and specialist lift engineers among its members. It has definitively established both that a lift could be added to the building within the terms of its Grade 2 listing and that the cost is viable (this may be contrary to some initial investigation by the Council, but we have cross-checked both the regulations and the economics). This would be the main capital expenditure of this proposed approach. In addition, it would be preferable to remodel the toilet facilities to include a disabled toilet. We would also suggest adding more substantial café facilities.

Human Resources

A part-time community development worker would be part of the package, to help co-ordinate and focus the wealth of volunteer know-how and energy in our very resourceful community, in particular retired teachers who we would make an especial focus of our volunteer recruitment.

Marketing

Libraries have a habit of being somewhat retiring within communities. The visually-driven Eyebrary would set great store by marketing strongly right across the community. From clear, creative, colourful signage; through harnessing the evident goodwill of the local media; to exploiting the new kinds of online, viral marketing now available through the broadband internet, we would make very sure the full diversity of people across the community and borough - current library users and non/potential users alike - know what is made available through a winning BLF bid and why it may be of interest or use or enjoyment to them.

Beacon of Best Practice

The project would produce regular reports to capture the good practice and outputs of the scheme, with a view to making it replicable in a sister library on the other side of the borough, as well as offering it as a paradigm for progressive approaches to contemporary community libraries UK-wide. In this way, the proposed approach offers an opportunity for Barnet to capitalise on its track-record in library provision and education by serving as a beacon of best practice as library services across the country move into a challenging yet exciting new phase.




Contact Information

East Finchley Library Users Group

Adam Gee
Chairman


Polly Napper
Secretary

Input into Barnet Council Cabinet discussion about Library Strategy

This was written in response to the Cabinet paper ('Developing a Strategy For Barnet's Libraries') referred to in the previous post.

"I am writing as Chair of the East Finchley Library Users Group, which exists as a vehicle for the local community as a whole to support and contribute positively to the development of our local library at East Finchley.

The five brief points we'd like to introduce to the discussion are:

1) To draw the Cabinet's attention to the fact that a wide ranging consultation (of library users and non-users alike - the consultation was geographically defined) about the future of East Finchley Library was carried out only a couple of years ago at a cost higher than that currently proposed for the cross-borough market research. The results of this substantial, in-depth East Finchley research project should be taken into account at this juncture. 9.3.1. states "At local library level, there have been occasional surveys about opening hours and other changes. However, there has been little attempt at segmented market research etc." - this statement is misleading in ignoring the substantial research around EF Library.

2) It is critical to consider the position of libraries in the context of the community as a whole. In our community, for example, you pay a premium to live near the tube station. That means the people who most need the library services live at the other end of the High Street. It's in this direction where most of the public housing and state schooling is located, the latter a major user of the services.

3) It is vital to take a sophisticated view of the best practice information available on progressive approaches to library provision. This means taking full account of circumstances where a particular solution has been applied. So if, for example, a library has been built into a retail co-location (as per 9.5.4), the full circumstances of previous provision, community layout, reason for new building etc. must be carefully considered rather than any kind of simplistic adoption of such models.

4) There is currently significant lottery money available for development of progressive library services which should be considered at this time. This opportunity is not referred to in the cabinet papers.

5) The logical end of arguments as set out in 4.2, for example, is that all old buildings owned by the Borough should be sold off and replaced. That there is no capital programme to address maintenance of buildings surely is a policy lacuna that needs addressing. We understand the budgetary pressures to which LBB is subject, but selling off old buildings because of the absence of such a programme seems like the cart leading the horse."



from Chairman
East Finchley Library Users Group

East Finchley Library Users Group meeting - this Thurs 14th December

News has reached us that Barnet Council are planning a major review of Barnet's library service in 2007. A document 'Developing a Strategy For Barnet's Libraries' was considered at a council meeting on Monday 27th November. East Finchley Library Users Group submitted a response to the document which you can see in the next post.

While the document looks vaguely positive when read at face value, past
experience leads us to be extremely nervous about the possible implications for our library. This is a large scale borough-wide review which is almost certainly intended to involve relocations and closures.

We have also been told that councils are now able to bid for lottery funding
of up to £2M to improve library buildings for projects benefitting the community. (see http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/prog_community_libraries). The offer closes March 2007 and we have been told that the council has not even decided whether to bid! What they do admit, however, is "There is no capital programme to address maintenance of buildings" - all the more reason to seize this great opportunity!

To consider these two things we are calling a meeting of all EFLUG members and other interested people for Thursday 14th December. If you have suggestions to offer, time to contribute or would just like to be updated on the latest news, please come along at 8pm on Thursday 14th December to Martin Infant School (next to the library and opposite the junction of Church Lane and the High Road).
Mince pies will be provided!

Welcome to East Finchley QoL (Quality of Life) blog

East Finchley QoL
Striving to maintain and improve the Quality of Life in a unique London suburb

QoL is being set up in the first instance to keep an eye on our local library which is yet again under threat. Its broader, longer term purpose is to look after all aspects of our very special part of the world.

This blog is open for any interested people to contribute to. You can do this either by leaving a comment or by becoming a regular contributor. (Either way you'll need to register with Blogger which is a straight-forward process. To become a regular contributor simply email agee@channel4.co.uk and you'll be given Contributor status).

East Finchley QoL blog has been set up by the East Finchley Library Users Group under the chairmanship of Adam Gee, a long-time local resident.

So whether it's about our library or other aspects of the Quality of Life in East Finchley please use this space as a place to express your ideas, concerns, hopes and preferences...