How Far Has Richmond Council Climbed the Ladder of Citizen Participation?

At the bottom of the ladder there is Manipulation and Therapy described as levels of "non-participation" that have been contrived to substitute for genuine participation.

Next there is Informing, Consultation and Placation which are considered to be “tokenism”; under these conditions there is no power to ensure that views will be heeded. It is necessary to reach the higher rungs of the ladder to enter into Partnership and Participation.

One wonders which rung on the ladder the people of Richmond upon Thames have reached with their Council.

At the Richmond United Group Meeting, Cllr David Williams who spoke on behalf of the Council said that he accepted that the mood of the meeting was hostile to the Council’s proposal on Twickenham Riverside and said that if residents are prepared to work with the Council to try to find a way of avoiding housing on the Riverside and could produce an alternative package he would put it to the Council.

However, within a day or so, this proposal was rejected by the Leader of the Council, Serge Lourie. Cllr Williams had also hinted that should there be no housing on the Riverside, the controversial “linked sites strategy” could not be implemented.

Therefore street scene land, green spaces and amenities valued by residents would not be sold off for development. This too was later rejected by the Council who said the decision had been made. So much for the Quasi judicial planning process!

At an Area Consultation Meeting (ACM), only the week before, a Council presentation was given on the proposals for Twickenham Riverside. These were rejected by all present apart from members of the liberal democrats, the political party which is control of the Council at the present time. It is interesting to note that this ACM was not in the Twickenham Riverside Ward and the level of hostility to the proposals only emphasizes the feelings of people throughout the Borough.

Incidentally, the controversial Gifford House and the Borough’s children’s Contact Centre are in the ward where the ACM was held. Gifford House is currently on the property market and the Planning Statement available for Gifford House states that there were objections in 2007 because there was no consultation with the community prior to the [withdrawn] planning application. There was no pre-application consultation despite the fact that the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames is the freeholder of the land and despite the Borough’s adoption of the Statement of Community Involvement in 2006.

We are now told that there will be some pre-application consultation on a new planning application for Gifford House but residents wonder whether we will progress very far up Arnstein’s ladder.

The children’s Contact Centre, also mentioned at the RUG meeting, is at the back of Gifford House and will be squashed into a narrow part of the former children’s garden. Not only will the children using the new Centre not have a garden, residents will suffer very badly from the close proximity of the building to their homes. Once again the people of the Borough will pay the price of the Council’s development plans.

During the Richmond United Group's Borough Meeting Steve Shaw, Sustainable Communities Act expert, and James Page of the Green Party, explained the Sustainable Communities Act launched by Hazel Blears earlier in the day. The Act aims to encourage democratic citizen involvement. The Chair put the following motion to the meeting: “This meeting calls on our Council to support and adhere to the Sustainable Communities Act. In future we expect the Council to adopt policies that maximize the local residents’ participation in determining what those policies are.” The motion was passed unanimously.

One of the main issues often raised by residents concerning Council decisions is that the majority party always has the majority on committees and instead of acting in the interests of residents the dictates of party politics seem to be followed.

Zac Goldsmith, who was the last of the guest speakers at the meeting, spoke about the urgent need to cut the distance between people and power. He said that people were switching away from formal politics at the local and national levels because they no longer felt politicians listened to them. Local Authorities, he said, are often either bulldozed by Central Government, or are able to blame Central Government for unpopular decisions. He suggested that if people were able to earn the right to have a referendum, locally, regionally or nationally, by collecting enough signatures, trust in politics would return and the quality of decision making would improve. See Politicians Must Share Power, or lose it, written by Zac for the Social Market Foundation Perhaps the only way conflict of interest between the local government and the community can be overcome is for democratic citizen involvement to become enshrined in the way the Council operates and for committees to be composed of people who will weigh up arguments fairly and not vote according to a political agenda, against the wishes of local people, which is what the current Administration continually does.

Richmond United Group is due to meet with the Council’s newly formed “Task Force” but given their attitude towards residents who dare to oppose them, change may not come until there is a change of leadership.

www.richmondunitedgroup.com

Photo by Brian Holder