National Grid held a briefing for community stakeholders including MUG on 10 May. These are the main things we learned. There is a public exhibition about the North London Reinforcement Project on Tuesday 17 May 2-8pm at at Nye Bevan Community Hall.

• Works will restart in July or September and continue until 2016. Up to 2015 the work is related to the new cable tunnel (London Power Tunnels project). After that it’s the North London Reinforcement Project, the overhead lines up to Waltham Cross.

• Vehicle access is as much as possible via route 4 (Chatsworth Rd, Millfields Rd, EDF). Loads that can’t negotiate the Chatsworth / Millfields Roads corner will go via Hillstowe St.

• NG insist that they have designed the work to minimise road movement at Millfields. The tunnel is being bored from the westward end, and a new shaft has been sunk near Finsbury Park for insertion of construction equipment and materials.

• At Millfields, spoil from sinking a new shaft to meet the tunnel will be brought out, and materials for a head house and other site structures and machinery will be brought in

• Hours permitted for vehicles are:
  Monday – Friday 8 am – 6 pm loads, (7.30 – 6.30 site staff)
  Saturday 8 am – 1 pm.
  Millfields Road residents have pressed for no Saturday movements. Should MUG also do this?
  Please tell us if you see vehicles at other times.

• Speed bumps by homes in Millfields and Chatsworth Road will be removed to reduce noise from heavy vehicles. Hackney council Streetscene will probably substitute vehicle actuated signs (as on Powerscroft Rd). Councils aren’t allowed to put top-speed type cameras except at an accident blackspot. Streetscene is pushing for government regulations to be changed to allow use of average-speed cameras.

• NG will pay for landscaping in front of the substation. MUG is in touch with LBH Parks about this.

• The very tall ugly building at the north east corner of the substation may be removed: this is something MUG asked for when the works began.

• NG claims to be open to discussion of visual design of the new shaft head house which will be at the east side of the site, overlooking the orchard.

(continued from 26 March, 9 March)

The Lea Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) executive committee is to consider taking the Department for Communities and Local Government to judicial review over its refusal to intervene at Essex Wharf. Despite contrary advice from their senior planner, and legal officer, the LVRPA planning committee decided on 7 April to refer the decision upwards, following the intervention of a Lea Valley Federation delegation.

We ask all our members and supporters to press Hackney’s representative to continue supporting judicial review.

Speaking for MUG and the other LVF groups, David Rees argued that

• the proposed development is not merely a local issue: the Lea Valley is a Regional Park in the capital city, established by an act of Parliament, hence of national importance, and government should intervene to prevent a single local authority (Waltham Forest) damaging it
• there has been no housing in the park on the east bank of the Lea till now, and there are other ‘white land’ sites where developers would build if they could: once this development goes through, the park authority will be confronted with many more attempts to develop the east bank

Hackney’s delegate to the planning committee, councillor Chris Kennedy, argued persuasively against accepting their planning officer’s advice, and in favour of looking closely at the possibilities for review. He noted that Waltham Forest council had gone so far as to rewrite their Unitary Development Plan (UDP), without consulting the park authority, to allow themselves to accept the development, and supported David Rees’s argument about the likely domino effect for the park’s white land enclaves. He argued that the authority might do best to fight on principle so as to put down a marker for developers, and for any boroughs tempted by them, that future applications would be fiercely resisted from the start.

Chris Kennedy also sits on the Executive so his position gives us some hope. Please contact cllr Kennedy to support his position and urge him to continue pushing for the LVRPA to pursue judicial review:

The next LVRPA executive committee is on 26 May. Judicial review would have to be brought within three months, which would fall on 18 June.