Ward’s Corner market, located in Seven Sisters, is a place where people from all over the world live together in harmony and run businesses that serve the whole community. In 2007 Haringey Council targeted this historic site as an area for redevelopment and granted Grainger PLC, its development partner, planning permission to demolish the locally listed Ward’s Corner building and the neighbouring Latin American market. In June 2010 the Court of Appeal, in an historic judgment, ruled the planning permission which Haringey Council had given to developers to destroy the site as unlawful.

However, Graingers PLC have now re-submitted their plans to demolish Ward’s Corner to Haringey Council.

Cllr David Schmitz, who has campaigned tirelessly with the Ward’s Corner Community Coalition (WCCC), to save this vital community asset which makes Seven Sisters a uniquely diverse place, is submitting his objections to the application for permission to demolish the Ward’s Corner Store and the neighbouring Pueblito Paisa Market.

Below is the full text of  Cllr David Schmitz’s written  submission to Haringey Council:

“ I urge you to reject the application for permission to demolish the Ward’s Corner Store and the neighbouring Pueblito Paisa Market, for the reasons given by the Wards Corner Community Coalition.

In this submission I will give reasons to rebut any possible suggestion that your discretion to refuse permission is in any way restricted. Secondly, I will make some comments in rebuttal of the Applicants’ case with regard to the merits of the application.

Dealing firstly with your freedom to refuse the Application, there are three points of principle which must not be lost sight of.

1.         The previous planning permission given for the proposed development was quashed. Having been quashed, it is null and void, and must be treated as if it never existed. You are therefore free to decide all questions which arise in this application and are in no way bound by the decision of the previous panel. Note that planning inspectors, who publish the reasons for their decisions and thus build up a body of precedent, are entitled to form their own views on an issue and to depart from the decisions of their predecessors on matters of fact, opinion and planning expertise – Rockhold Ltd. Secretary of State for the Environment and South Oxfordshire District Council [1986] J.P.L. 130. That is even more the case with a planning committee, which is in no way concerned with building up a body of law or precedent.

The applicant seek to may rely upon the fact that of the two planning permissions that were given, only the principal planning decision was quashed, while the decision to give conservation area consent was left undisturbed. This fact is of no significance for two reasons:

(1)     the policies relating to conservation areas have changed since the first decision – PPG 15 (which was applied during the first application) has been replaced by PPS 5. The applicant recognises the need to apply the new Circular because it has gone through the motions of so doing by commissioning the “Conservation Area Statement Addendum” produced December 2010 by its surveyors, Messrs. Cluttons.

(2)     even if the principles governing conservation area consent had not changed, the committee would still be able to consider all relevant matters, including the appropriateness of the development to its setting and the undesirability of losing heritage assets. The extant conservation area consent might make it difficult to refuse for conservation reasons alone, but it would be perfectly proper to take conservation reasons into account with other factors, such as, in this case, the loss of a market which is of importance to a large section of the population.

You are therefore both free and obliged to come to your own view on all issues concerning this site, whether with regard to the question of the retention of the Ward’s Corner store, or with regard to the preservation of the Pueblito Paisa market.

2.         You may be told that the Community Scheme, which is a rival scheme for the land that retains both the market and the Ward’s Corner Store, is irrelevant to this application. You may be told, further, that it is not proper to reject a scheme which is unobjectionable in planning terms, simply because a better scheme is possible. This is to distort the position.

It is correct that if a scheme is not objectionable in planning terms, then it should not be rejected simply because something better is available.

However, where a scheme contains elements which are undesirable and therefore objectionable in planning terms, and where those advocating the scheme say that these elements must be included because it is not practicable to exclude them, it is proper, and indeed essential, to consider whether there are rival schemes, because the existence of viable alternatives bears directly on the question of whether it is practicable to have a development which excludes the undesirable features of the application.

In such a case, the argument is not about whether something good should lose out because something better is available. Instead, it is about whether something bad has to be accepted because there is no alternative. If there is an alternative which excludes the bad, this is highly relevant, whether the alternative is ready to build, or whether it is simply something which has not yet been properly explored.

The proposed development contains features which are clearly undesirable.

•          The buildings are too high.

•          The scheme involves the demolition of a locally listed building.

•          The scheme is unsympathetic to the conservation area which it adjoins.

•          It imperils a market and neighbouring independent shops which are depended upon by large sections of the community.

The rival scheme does none of these things, yet neither the developers nor the local authority have made any serious attempt to deal with its viability, and you are fully entitled to take that into account.

3.         You may be told that you are not concerned with speculations about whether the Grainger scheme is financially viable because that is not a proper planning consideration. That is indeed the case. However, if, as is the case here, the developer contends that the scheme, despite its drawbacks, is justified by various benefits which it supposedly will bring to the area, you are fully entitled to ask how realistic the suggestion is that these benefits will in fact flow from the scheme. If you are concerned about the risk that the building may be knocked down, and that thereafter no-one will want to build anything which provides these supposed benefits, or if you are concerned that after the development is built no regeneration will follow, whether inside it or beyond it, you have every right to decide that you are not persuaded that the scheme can produce the benefits which the applicants say that it will, and to decide that these supposed benefits do not override any of the objections which have to it.

I will now make a few points about the planning merits of the application, in rebuttal of the Applicant’s case.

1.         The “Town Centre” of which this development is to form the hub, is small in comparison to other Haringey town centres. It is therefore over-optimistic to believe that any major retailer will wish to have a presence there. In contrast, a unique local attraction would encourage businesses to locate here. The market, especially with the attractive setting provided by a restored Ward’s Corner store, will provide that attraction in a way that a modern shopping development will not. These considerations are of special concern at a time, like the present, when multiple retailers are downsizing. Market stalls and neighbouring independent shops, often run as family businesses, have the flexibility to withstand current trading conditions in a way which larger businesses cannot. They are a safer bet for the area.

2.         The Planning Statement Addendum (“the Addendum”) put in by the Applicant following the Court of Appeal ruling is flawed in a number of respects:

(1)     It says that an Assessment has been undertaken concerning the worth of the heritage assets which it is proposed to destroy. See Paragraph 5.39. In fact the “assessment” has been conducted by Cluttons, who are the applicant’s surveyors and who also prepared the Addendum. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the assessment, it is by no means independent and is instead self-serving.

(2)     The Addendum misquotes the Council’s Development Brief in a vital respect, saying:

“The Brief generally envisages the complete redevelopment of the site and concludes that the buildings at Wards Corner make only a neutral contribution to the character and appearance of the Conservation Area ….”

These words do appear in the Brief itself. However, they are immediately followed by the words “although the Wards store itself has some merit”. In other words, there is nothing in the brief which detracts from earlier wording (in fact quoted in the Addendum) which says, “any development scheme should reflect,

and retain, the architectural features of the store, if at all possible.”

(3)     The assurances given as to the future of the market give no comfort whatever. They provide – see Appendix A to the Addendum – that the obligation to provide a market will lapse unless a “Market Lease” is entered into “six months before practical Completion of the development.” There is a serious problem with this.         “Market Lease” is defined as “a lease of the New Market Area to be entered into … in a form incorporating the Heads of Terms and otherwise as proposed by the Developer and Approved by the Market Operator (both acting reasonably.” This wording does not compel the Developer and the Market Operator to agree anything at all. The provision that they shall agree something reasonable is legally uncertain and no Court would ever give effect to it. The Court would never create a complete agreement which the parties had never themselves struck, and in any event, against whom could the Court ever make such an order?

(4)     Unaffordability of new-build to market traders. It is not possible to have any confidence that either the present traders or anyone carrying on a similar line of business will be able to afford the new market rents. The reason is that if the present market building is demolished and wholly replaced, there will be, for all practical purposes, no restriction on the features which the replacement building might possess and which might as a consequence attract rents far in excess of those which independent market traders could afford. If the existing building were to be refurbished, as is clearly desirable, the standard of accommodation would rise and the open market rents would rise accordingly. There would, however, be less of an opportunity than there would in the case of a complete demolition, to create premises which would command rents that were out of the reach of the present traders. The inability of planning conditions to protect traders in the event of a demolition and rebuilding is a good reason to reject the application.

3.         The only Equalities Impact Assessment on the Council’s website is an Assessment prepared by Cluttons for the benefit of the Applicant, rather than by the Council. It is for the Council to form an independent view of the equalities impact of this proposal, and although it is legitimate for the Council to consider the contentions made in that Assessment, it must on no account rely upon it. Any suggestion that the Council has not properly gone through the exercise itself, rather than by proxy, will land this case straight back in the courts. Cluttons’ Impact Assessment is itself defective in the following ways:

(1)     It concerns itself largely with the impact in a limited geographical area, namely the LSOA depicted at paragraph 3.3. The market is an institution which is used by members of the Latin American community who form a substantial section of the population of North and East London. The geographical scope should have been wider.

(2)     No attempt has been made to assess the impact of the loss of the market on the people who use the market as opposed to the people who trade there. See paragraphs 6.27 to 6.34. If there had been any such attempt, the results would have appeared there. This is a particularly serious omission of which the Committee must take note in the light of the Council’s duty, under Section 149 (3) of the Equalities Act 2010 which provides, “Having due regard to the need to advance equality of opportunity … involves having due regard, in particular, to the need to—…  (b)   take steps to meet the needs of persons who share a relevant protected characteristic that are different from the needs of persons who do not share it.”

(3)     The impact of the loss of the market is said to be amaeliorated by the expected presence of a new market. As shown above, however, this is likely to be illusory. For centuries new arrivals in this country have established themselves through family businesses. This is an essential element of social cohesion. The loss of this market and the neighbouring shops will deprive a substantial community of their way up out of deprivation.

(4)     The suggestion that the development will reduce the fear of crime is unfounded. Firstly, the evidence is patchy and out of date. Secondly, any refurbishment of the area would reduce any fear of crime to which the present state of the area might give rise. The proposed scheme is not unique in that respect.

4.         The Applicant has contended that it is not possible to retain the Ward’s Corner Store, because buildings of the height which they desire to erect elsewhere on the site cannot be physically supported unless supports are driven into the ground at the site of the Store itself. That may be correct. However, it does not follow from that fact that the Store should go. If the retention of the store is incompatible with high-rise development, it is for the Applicant to make a case as to why high rise development is so beneficial that it justifies the loss of a prominent building with architectural merit. The Applicant has not done this.

5.         The Council and the NDC have made very substantial contributions, in the form of grants to the Applicant together with options entitling the Applicant to purchase parts of the site at considerable undervalue (appended hereto is one such option agreement for the sale of 12, 18 and 20 Suffield Road and 713 Seven Sisters Road for a total price of £184,000. Yet neither the Council nor the NDC nor the Developers have made any attempt to attract a tenant to the Ward’s Corner Store. There is therefore no evidence to support the suggestion that Ward’s Corner Store must go because there is no potential demand for it. The Council and the Applicants simply have not tried. Even if there were no other objections to this scheme, the application should therefore be refused and should not henceforth be granted unless and until credible evidence is put forward to prove that this fine building is not wanted.”

To view and to add your comments to Graingers PLC planning application for Ward’s Corner visit the Haringey online planning website here and enter the following planning application number  HGY/2008/0303