which used to be occupied by a pharmacutical company called Ivax. They pulled
out of the area around 2006 and in June 2008 (at the height of the property
boom) Notting Hill Housing Association bought the site from the London
Development Agency.
This was supposed to be a site for office/industrial development but Notting
Hill and the London Development Agency (who owned the Royal Docks at the time),
twisted the arm of the local planning authority (Newham) to amend the
designation to "mixed use".
The site has been sitting there unloved and unused by Notting Hill until early
this year when Notting Hill opened discussions with Newham about developing the
site.
They want to build 800-850 flats on the site.
They are calling it a mixed use development but there very little of anything
other than the housing.
This site sits less than 800 metres from the end of the runway. It would be
hard to find a worse location for housing. It is noisy, isolated, open to flood
risk (wrong side of the Thames Barrier), and it suffers from the smell of the
avaition fuel. On a really bad day when the wind is in the wrong direction, it
also benefits from the smell from Beckton Sewerage Works to the east.
The LDA was wound up at 31 March 2012 and ownership of its remaining
landholdings (virtually all in the Royal Docks) passed to the GLA. So the GLA
now has a financial interest in supporting development in the Royal Docks.
Notting Hill Housing Assciation made a (pre-application) presentation of their
plans to Newham Councillors in April this year.
Can Newham and the GLA be trusted to come to the right decision here when
Notting Hill get around to submitting the formal planning application?