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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Lies, damned lies and the so-called 'save our riverside' campaign
October 7, 2009 2:19 PM
•CLLR Stephen Knight writes: Most of the public concern about the Twickenham Riverside development is based on almost total misunderstanding of what is proposed. This is perhaps understandable given the number of lies being spread about the scheme by political opponents of the Council.
Here are some of the most common lies being spread:
• Lie 1: 'The Council is selling off Twickenham's riverside to developers for luxury housing.'
- The site in question is in fact not the embankment itself, but the former baths site that has been a derelict eye-sore in the town centre for almost 30 years.
- Only 26% of the site will be housing in order to fund the other 74% of the land being turned into a new public park and children's playground and an environmental River Centre and boathouse backed by Sir David Attenborough and run by the Environment Trust for Richmond upon Thames.
- The new houses will be ordinary 3 and 4 bedroom terrace houses and 1 and 2 bedroom flats typical of the area and the whole scheme has been designed by a local Eel Pie Island architect who designed the existing houses next door in Water Lane.
- The Council is not seeking to make any money from the scheme, but instead to improve Twickenham's riverside by bringing a derelict site back into public use.
• Lie 2: 'This is historic public land that was always intended as public open space.'
Except for the temporary children's playground at one end of the site, the land has never been open to the public except on a paying basis as a swimming pool. It was originally bought by the Council for road widening and civic buildings.
• Lie 3: 'The Council wants to bulldoze the children's playground to make way for luxury houses.'
The current playground was only ever intended to be temporary, and the scheme includes a new better and permanent playground as part of a new public park and the River Centre.
• Lie 4: 'Conservative Councillors oppose the sale of this land for housing.'
The current scheme was actually started by the Conservatives when they ran the Council. They set the current planning policy for the site in 2005 to include enabling housing development and started the public competition for a use of the site that led to the selection of the Environment Trust's River Centre. Strangely they fail to mention this now, so they can opportunistically jump on the so-called 'save our riverside' bandwagon. They also fail to mention that it was the Conservatives that originally closed the swimming pool in 1981, starting the history of dereliction.
• Lie 5: '93.5% of the public voted against the scheme and the Council is just ignoring them.'
The so-called 'referendum' backed by the Conservative Party did not ask residents to vote for or against the scheme. Instead it asked a loaded question: '"Should public land on Twickenham Riverside be sold to a property development company?" The propaganda that accompanied the 'ballot' failed to mention that only 26% of the site will be private housing and that this development funds a new public park with an improved children's playground and a River Centre on the rest of the site.
• Lie 6: 'Thousands of people have signed a petition against the scheme.'
Political opponents of the Council have amalgamated several different petitions calling for different things with signatures collected over several years and now claim this as a single so-called petition against the scheme; it is not.
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