A Tale of Two Cities: Kensington's ‘Trickle-up’ economy

UPDATE 30.04.17

People don't always believe me when I say parts of the borough are very very poor. For me, this photo says it all:

Do you see this? Right next to one of our newest most expensive developments, still being sold, homeless people have built a little bivouac out of waste. Though they aren't counted as homeless, as they have a roof. I know this because I went out with the wonderful Street Sleepers team in November, and they told me so. These people have been there for some time. Leave them. 

No caption necessary.

Meanwhile, Planning Committee, after a long debate, felt it had to approve the demolition of a Council care home, to make space for a super-luxury private care home. The applicant complained about neighbouring Dovehouse Green, saying it was 'unloved'. UNLOVED.

Edenham campaign

First was the application for the former Thamesbrook Residential Care Home site at Dovehouse Street in Chelsea. I know this well. Not only was I born just around the corner, but visited in later years some of our residents who were cruelly decanted there when the Council closed Edenham Residential Care Home in front of Trellick Tower – which had also been designed by Erno Goldfinger. We used every possible means to try to save the home, to no avail. Another heartbreaking campaign.

Reuben Halsey with Tony Benn

One of the Edenham campaigners was resident Reuben Halsey, he appeared on telly with Tony Benn and led much of the press campaigning for his fellow residents, many of whom were less articulate than him due to illness and dementia. So I often visited Reuben at Thamesbrook, and also former Labour Councillor Bob Pope, who had severe dementia but was responsive when visitors talked politics.

Thamesbrook was closed down ‘as a matter of urgency’ and residents removed when legionella was discovered in the plumbing. Now I’m no expert but I do know one, and he told me you can effectively and totally destroy legionella in the water system with no risk whatever to residents. Ahem. So what are they doing with the site now? Oh yeah, turning it into a super-duper luxury private extra care home, where people can future-proof their lives by buying in earlier than they need to – or only buy in when they have care needs – depending on how you phrase the question.

The frankly repellent applicant ably turned the entire committee against him with his attitude, stating that the lovely Dovehouse Green (above), next to the site on Kings Road, was ‘unloved’, which drew gasps from the public attending. He then corrected this by stating that ‘some people shouldn’t really be there’.

I know the good people of Chelsea, and a vast majority love a good social mix. The wonderful Methodist Church has a homeless hostel, so homeless people hang around so they can queue up later for a bed. This is a sad but inevitable part of daily life, in a very rich area where people lose their jobs, homes and sometimes their sanity in quick succession, and so much of the back-up and simple humanitarian support has lost its funding. People I have spoken to (some of whom dandled me on their knees when I was a baby) accept this and where possible volunteer to help at the hostel. They certainly don’t think that ‘some people shouldn’t really be there’.

After prolonged discussion the committee sadly couldn’t find grounds to refuse. We will get a huge lump of ugly building occupied by the super-rich.

No doubt one day they will get their way and socially cleanse Dovehouse Green of the unfortunates whose plight they have been instrumental in creating.

First go, 'Portobello Village'

The formal meeting was followed by an informal ‘factual briefing’ on the development at Acklam Road and Thorpe Close by Westway Trust, aka ‘The Portobello Project’. Formerly known as ‘Portobello Village’, which was so toe-curlingly wrong in every detail that they even changed the name in an attempt to delete the past.

I can’t comment on the detail as at some point it will come to committee and I do not wish to be accused of predetermination … but I made some comments at the time and I hope they will be taken into account.

But as a more general comment …

Westway Trust was set up to compensate residents for carving a swathe through a residential neighbourhood, felling homes to build a motorway beside schools and bedrooms, spewing noise and pollution into our and our children’s lungs. The land under the Westway is set up as a charitable trust for the purpose of this compensation to local communities and this section is in my ward.

Nursery, workshops, community hall, laundry - vision for
community space in 1970

So I truly object to the depiction of our fabulous mixed and diverse family neighbourhood as some kind of - totally sanitised - spectacle for visitors. The first set of visuals for the ‘Village’ showed only white middle class millenials having a lovely and expensive time in the joint poorest ward in London. It caused a major ruckus and one night the Council chamber was occupied (not for the first time) by protestors.

'Portobello Project', with added diversity

So they came back with ‘added diversity’. They deleted some of the white millenials and replaced them with light-skinned black millenials, with picture perfect Afros. Where are the Moroccan grannies? Where are the Afro-Caribbean elders, the Rastafarians? Where are the ornery folk of all colours and creeds buying cheap fruit and veg with their children?

Ah yes, they have been ‘designed out’.

What is very very clear is that the Westway Trust is planning to turn this section of land, which previously was entirely a community asset, into a privately run hipster millenials’ playground.

I feel sick.

Kensington and Chelsea is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the country after seven years of Tory government. Three years ago I proved that RBKC is the most unequal borough in Britain. This has actually got worse in our deprived areas, with worsening life expectancy, poorer health, and the return of Victorian illnesses like TB and even rickets. Opportunities for training and work are being squeezed out – often by the Council itself privatising our publicly owned assets – with the sad but inevitable consequence of rising youth violence and crime.

Their ‘solution’ is punitive and draconian. There is little empathy for those whose lives they have ruined. They must be punished and moved away – just like the ‘unloved’ of Dovehouse Green.

Our poorer communities and vulnerable individuals are being squeezed out by voracious development to benefit the few and very wealthy; we are now suffering the worst excesses of the trickle-up economy.

Time to stop turning a blind eye.

‘First they came for the street drinkers …… ‘ 

Catalyst Housing development Portobello Square 'won't last ten years' says workman

‘We create this space’
the advertisement says

Catalyst Housing Group boast of awards and expertise as workman says development ‘won’t last ten years’ 

In late 2014 a tenant moved from their former home on Wornington Green, North Kensington, around the corner to the new development of Portobello Square. The developer is Catalyst Housing Group, the architects PRP and the contractor is Ardmore Construction.

The top floor flat had nice views and was suitable for the disabled tenant’s needs. However over the very wet winter that followed the ceiling leaked into the living room, several times. 

That was eventually fixed and the ceiling repainted, but then there was damp coming into the bedroom through the walls. It was discovered that no membrane had been fitted and that was why the damp was seeping through. This was also remediated.

This was now concerning the tenant who is quite unwell and immune compromised, so susceptible to bacterial, viral and fungal infections, having previously suffered tuberculosis and aspergillosis caused by black mould, where the mould actually grows inside the lungs.

A further issue arose when the toilet was not flushing properly. After several visits workmen had to break through the wall to reach the cistern. It was found that an instruction leaflet had been left inside, partially blocking the pipe.

It was then found that the laminate floor was beginning to buckle in places, creating a potential trip hazard.

In early February this year another problem arose – there was water leaking upwards between ceramic tiles in the bathroom floor. At first the tenant was accused of being a messy bather, or of not using the shower curtain. Then it was discovered that the seal between the tiles was leaking. 

When some tiles were removed it was realised that there was a leak coming from pipes below the bath. Workmen removed the tiles and left the floor temporarily bare to dry out, before returning to replace with lino.

Two days later, the disabled tenant stepped into the bathroom, and the floor collapsed. They were lucky not to break their ankle. They contacted Catalyst once again but at the time of writing had not received a response.

Councillor Emma Dent Coad has been helping this tenant, who wishes to remain anonymous, throughout the process. Emma says: ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened when the floor collapsed. It could have been so much worse. The bathroom floor is now covered in black mould and has a huge hole in it. I am simply appalled at the very poor construction quality of this flat which is endangering the health of a very poorly and disabled person who deserves better.’

Councillor Dent Coad says that she has had innumerable reports of problems in the new flats, ranging from damp, leaks and dodgy electrics to two actual ceiling collapses. She says: ‘This floor collapse is an alarming new departure. I have contacted Environmental Health and Catalyst, but I can’t help worrying that if this happens again there could be a very nasty accident. These buildings are barely three years old. One day I met a workman who had come to repair a problem in one of the flats. He told me that in his opinion this block won’t last ten years. Given the cost of these flats - £620,000 for a one bedroom apartment – people must be told what is going on here.’

Catalyst Housing Group have won awards for Portobello Square:

They say Portobello Square is: 

In reality this is the quality of workmanship: 

You may ask yourself if a totally untrained apprentice was given the job of finishing off the laminate floors. 

You would be quite wrong. 

Rumour has it that the new apprentice was given at least two hours' training. Then sent off to finish the entire block. 

Now that can't be true, can it?

And a filthy New Year from Catalyst Housing Group

When Catalyst were in the process of persuading residents of Wornington Green that demolishing their estate in phases, and rebuilding with double the number of homes - the extras being private of course - they faithfully promised to keep residents safe, the estate maintained, and to decant people only once and only during the first phase.

Visiting yet another bereaved family, who lost their elder while waiting with appalling anxiety for over a year for their - 2nd? 3rd? - decant, I am faced with the estate in a frankly disgusting state.

Lifts are broken, stairs blocked up to prevent anti-social behaviour have been kicked in and occupied by drug users, fire escapes broken into, and the dirt is simply shocking.

Catalyst Housing - you are on notice. 

No Christmas cheer at Wornington Green

This is the dream residents were promised.
They will be young, thin, and laughing as they move.

Yes I was a bit late delivering Christmas cards to local members on Christmas Eve. I'd had a cold, but I did get them out before the day. So I raced round the easy bits, Ladbroke Grove, St Lawrence Terrace, Portobello Road etc without too much trouble. But Wornington Green was somewhat problematic.  

I have visited quite a few old and vulnerable people there who are being unwillingly decanted to somewhere they don’t wish to live. The anxiety and insecurity takes a terrible toll on their health, and I've just heard that yet another old dear has succumbed to illness before experiencing her 'lovely new home'. I am heartbroken for her family, who have been a bedrock of the community for decades.

It’s been a while since I walked around the whole estate.

I was shocked. The estate is filthy. Security doors are broken. Entryphones are out of order. Lifts aren’t working, and the stairs are full of rubbish and steeped in urine. No wonder that crime and anti-social behaviour are on the rise; Catalyst Housing just don't care.

It reminds me of the old days. So before I head out again next week with my proper camera to record the filth they expect people to live in, while they wait for the 'glorious new era' they have been promised, here’s a reminder of what they’ve had to put up with over the past six years:

2010, a view from Thompson House, rubbish thrown out of windows as paladins were hardly ever emptied. Disgusting, and it attracted rats and other vermin.

Unbelievably, an entire bird's nest was constructed, and eggs laid, in a staircase that should have been swept daily. Residents called in Environmental Health, who had to get in a specialist team to deal with it as the eggs had hatched when they arrived. Health hazard.

Just one of many instances of truly appalling black mould, in a child's bedroom in one of the 'old' blocks (just 40 years old). The damp came through because the gutters had NEVER been cleared. NEVER. This was in Pepler House, a building that was commissioned to last for 200 years but they never bothered with cyclical maintenance.

A small sample of the residents' protests as the dark shadow of the planning application drew near, in March 2010. This family lived in a perfectly lovely 1970s house, beautifully designed and compact, neat back garden overlooking the now demolished park. They loved it.

To add to the campaign of endless (subtle) harassment of residents, one day Catalyst Housing Group decided to change the locks on the Residents' Room. This was their oh so diplomatic way of disbanding the Residents' Association, who had been supporting the campaign against development of the estate.

This is the reality residents faced.

Catalyst Housing's actions grew less 'diplomatic' as they came to the point of sending eviction notices to families, some of whom had no idea where they would be sent. This three-generation family were distraught.

To counteract some of the bad press Catalyst Housing were attracting, they very publicly wrote the infamous SIX PLEDGES. Click to read.

None have been honoured. 

Here is the Catalyst Housing director of the time, Manpreet Dillon (now at Notting Hill Housing Group). See how he smiles as he signs the pledges. He even went on BBC tv to make his point that the development would tackle overcrowding. It hasn't. They are still moving families out of the borough.

Despite all the pledges made, the new homes have been constructed with frankly appalling construction quality. I could do better than this with my toy saw and glue gun.

Windows have been fitted poorly. 
This is one of the worst examples,
in the show home!

This is the craftmanship behind
the new traders' lock-ups.
 They leak. Little wonder. 

Oh no, the new buildings
now have damp,
just like the 'old' ones. 

And more than one ceiling collapsed. Oops.

So the accommodation at Wornington Green has turned full circle, in just three years, with leaks and damp. Catalyst Housing are treating residents with utter contempt. 

You can be sure that I will be onto this in 2017. 

DARK MATTERS: light means life in Kensington & Chelsea

The gorgeous Trellick Tower at night. Classic
'socialometer' with at least one-third of lights
on, evidence of social or long-term occupants

I still write periodically for the professional magazines I used to work for some years ago. And I have posted in the blog below an article which is being published in Building Design, K&C News and the Docomomo Newsletter.

We are currently engaged in a review of parts of the Local Plan, which is the bible for Planning and development in the borough. So before you dive into the article on ‘Balance and Sacrifice at the Design Museum’ I’d like to make some general points that highlight where I believe we are going very wrong in RBKC.

• The obsession with ‘landmark’ (tall) buildings could eventually ruin forever the very human scale of K&C, where for the most part buildings are no higher than our magnificent plane trees. Trellick Tower is exempt as quite properly it was designed to be surrounded by green space and long views. These may now be built upon, which would be a huge mistake.

• The pernicious habit of seeing buildings as precious objects placed 'just so', not genuinely knitting them into the area they land in. Instead developers use their highly- paid and deceitful marketing teams to create a false environment and false optimism, which has a negative impact on the neighbourhood.

• The sheer insanity of imposing floor to ceiling windows (is this recommended in some design guide?) on people whose lives do not resemble a page in Architectural Digest, is an architect’s conceit. There is no consideration that simply affording decent window-coverings for massive windows is beyond the purse of many tenants, who end up with cheap curtains drawn 24/7. 

•  The neighbourhoods, places and buildings that people most appreciate have arrived organically, and it is very hard to create from scratch a neighbourhood or centre that functions, and feels authentic and not synthetic. Which is why you have to start with what is there and not erase it all. Though this hasn't really worked at the Design Museum due to its poor planning history.

• People recognise the blatant dishonesty when their neighbourhoods are being marketed as an area of affluence and creativity, while the creativity being publicised has been imported and subsidised, and there are no plans whatever to increase the income of locally based artists or to subsidise their creative output.

• You cannot contrive spontaneity, officially sponsored 'pop-up' markets will ultimately fail, because they are imposed rather than building on what is genuinely needed there.

• The visuals of some proposals to ‘improve’ areas appear so contrived it is like a stage set. A stage set in which local ‘actors’ are expected to roam to add colour and diversity (while they search for shops and services that have been priced out of the area). For some reason I don't wish to name this 'diversity rule' applies to Afro-Caribbeans, but not to our Muslim community.

Some of our 20^th century Kensington estates have been designed as modern versions of the essential garden square, with homes leading out into communal gardens. Where these have been well cared for and properly managed, they can be precious community commodities. Instead they are being ‘re-imagined’ with streets running through them 'to reinstate the original Victorian street pattern', with perfectly awful kitsch neo-classical inspired housing blocks that are simply modern slab blocks with twiddles attached, which they have the impertinence to describe as ‘mansion blocks’. They are not.

Alternatively we are to be decanted into the ultimate fakery of urban ‘model villages’, that resemble Noddy’s Toy Town with all the associations I do not intend to repeat here.

In essence, you must start with what you have and not impose what you would like to have, or how (still mostly male) architects would like people to live. 

Some people do not wish to be on show day and night. Some people value their privacy.

Finally, a word on dark buildings.

Kensington and Chelsea has suffered its share of high-end new residential buildings bought as safety deposit boxes rather than homes. And the most recent of these are currently blighting Kensington High Street, which is being run down to the extent that only the phone shops and brothels are prospering.

Trellick Tower above is an example of an occupied building. So is this, flats above shops in the 300s of Ken High Street.

Now look at this, one of the new blocks squeezed into the square in front of the Design Museum. The entire block has been bought by one family. 

It is entirely unoccupied. Dark.


Just down the road is 'One Kensington'. It was marketed as having lovely views over Kensington Gardens towards Kensington Palace, and indeed it does. But no lives in the flats overlooking the park. Out of 90 flats, just two ever have lights on. 

'One Kensington', just two occupied flats, looking east

'One Kensington', facade looking west, no lights and no one at home

Dark matters. These dark buildings are destroying our high streets, our shops, and our communities. 

Our Planning system and regulations were woefully ill prepared for the last round of development, and the effect has been stultifying. Now is the time to reassess who we allow to do what and where. 

Let's find a way to put the lights back on in K&C.

Design Museum: are we sacrificing our legacy to Mammon?

Photo of EDC at the Design Museum, by Dave Mullen Jnr

It is very difficult to write about a building that feels like a family friend.  I have visited the Commonwealth Institute throughout my life, starting with regular primary school trips. We would traipse up Earl’s Court Road in twos, to the inspiring building where our very international mix of pupils felt entirely at home. We even used the theatre for school plays. Later I took my children there, we giggled at the cow milking exhibit and admired beautiful and strange artefacts from around the globe. Later still I campaigned with the Docomomo-UK Working Group to save the building from dereliction and demolition. Finally as a Councillor I sat on the Planning Committee that approved the application to accommodate the Design Museum (though I voted against), and there could hardly be a more worthy tenant. But how would I cope with the ‘re-purposing’ of this icon?

The best approach to the building is through the park. The beautiful sweep of the roof, and the renewed exterior cladding, is tastily updated without being compromised. The courtyard when entered from the park is pretty and welcoming. And then you enter, and it all changes. In place of the processional route past the flag court via the famous loggia and lobby, into the exhibition hall with its sweeping stairs and galleries, you are smacked in the face by the awesome wood-cladded atrium rising far above you. There are few clues as to its purpose. The first impression is more of a prestigious hotel cum conference centre. In Dubai.

Legibility has been sacrificed on the altar of architecture. Circulation space is generous, if not excessive, but it is also very confusing. Some visitors quickly got lost. ‘There’s a lovely library, where IS the library?’, ‘Is this the way to a basement car park, or another gallery?’. Anonymous  doors may lead to a private office, meeting space, gallery, auditorium or – eventually – a library, but the building keeps its secrets and some found this annoying.  If this is deliberate, a public building is not the place to mess with people’s minds.

Spaces such as course rooms, the library I eventually managed to find,  and most other public spaces are generously located on the outside of the building with lovely views of Kensington.  There are cafes where we will all feel blessed and privileged to be seen, if we can afford it. There will be a lot of sponsored exhibitions, for which the justification, to some, may be questionable. But that is the sad and inevitable path taken by many modern cultural institutions. Students will of course flock to the exhibitions, which needless to say will be intelligent and inspiring, and they will love it.

Others more qualified than I have written at length about the building itself, so I will turn to how it works within its physical location, and how it might change the dynamics of the neighbourhood. As a Planning  Councillor  I have been involved from the ‘game-keeping’ end of this story, which began in 2011. I was unsure then about the placement of the three OMA blocks – and I was right. In essence the original courtyard has been sacrificed to Mammon. The housing blocks completely obscure the view from the street of the well-loved Commonwealth Institute building, infuriating local people who have to look at them every day. The blocks are heavy on architecture and light on sensitivity in relation to the street, more like funky battery chargers keeping the old building  going, than any kind of urban improvement. Paving stones carved with the names of Commonwealth countries – a tribute to the former flag court – are a graveyard to our imperial ambitions.

From the street it is, frankly, joyless.

I left the building and walked down Kensington High Street with visitors who hadn’t been in the area for a while. They were truly shocked at the state of the formerly vibrant High Street, barely clinging onto life with its empty, charity and pop-up shops, looking more and more like Edgware Road, but without the buzz. I explained to the visitors that the Council is gambling the entire future of the High Street on the success of the Design Museum. This reactive rather than proactive position is a frustration to those of us who have seen Ken High Street decline over the past decade. School or uni students will be looking for McDonalds not The Ivy, and I’m unconvinced that the better heeled evening and weekend visitors will spend enough to sustain a bright new future for central Kensington. A  Planning ‘fail’ in my opinion; time will tell.

Right across the road from this hothouse of education and design idolatry sits another casualty of Mammon, our beautiful Art Deco Kensington Odeon, boarded up and awaiting its outcome. On the table is an execrable Ritblat/Minerva plan to wrap a mere vestige of the façade in luxury flats. This application was so unsympathetic that it was thrown out by a usually developer-friendly Planning committee, but sadly it won on Appeal. An alternative scheme preserves the current building and its gorgeous marbled lobby and stairs, and turns it into a mixed-use arts centre, which has the support of 20,000 residents and a shed-load of money. In another Planning ‘fail’ however, the Council has controversially refused applications to designate the building as an Asset of Community Value so the alternative plans can be drawn up. The good people of Kensington are enraged.

The irony is that the OMA flats that have supposedly saved the Commonwealth Institute building from demolition have made the area so insanely expensive that positive and trip-generating ventures, such as reinvigorating the High Street with independent shops and the proposed arts centre, could lose out to yet more luxuriously empty flats.

All this brings us to the attitude of Kensington and Chelsea Council to the conservation of the borough. We are currently undergoing a Review of our Local Plan, and I am charged with coordinating the response from the Labour Group of Councillors (numbering 11, for you disbelievers). 

So we have Policy CF 7 on Arts and Cultural Uses, and we have Strategic Objective CO5 on Renewing the Legacy. Their relationship is somewhat tortured. CO5 reads thus, and is pretty encouraging: ‘Our strategic objective to renew the legacy is not simply to ensure no diminution in the excellence we have inherited, but to pass to the next generation a borough that is better than today, of the highest quality and inclusive for all. This will be achieved by taking great care to maintain, conserve and enhance the glorious built heritage we have inherited and to ensure that where new development takes place, it enhances the borough.’

This is all very reassuring as an objective, but the actual policy, on which Planning Councillors have to base their determinations,  is antithetical, and sets up a conflict around the lurking gremlin of ‘enabling development’.  There have been more hotly contested debates on this issue at committee than any other, and unless we get this right, now, it will continue to allow vested interests to triumph while our built legacy is sacrificed on the altar of developers’ 20% profit margins. 

Versions of this article have appeared in Building Design, K&C News, and will be published in Docomomo-UK Newsletter. Copyright EDC

MY CARNIVAL

I first visited Carnival in 1980. It seemed wild and exciting. I came with a black male friend with shared tastes in music and dancing. He was not my boyfriend, but as he took my hand to guide me through the crowd in All Saints Road a group of Rasta elders nodded approval, one saying, ‘now THAT’s the spirit of Carnival’. I will never forget that moment.

The freedom of dancing and drinking in the street was new to me and exhilarating, and the atmosphere of pure joy – and love – was uplifting.

Then suddenly, when it was dark (Carnival ended late those days) my friend panicked and shouted ‘run this way NOW!’. As he grabbed my hand again I peered over the peaceful dancing crowd to see a row of policemen, arms linked, charging at us.

Six years later I moved to North Kensington. I didn’t have to go to Carnival. It came to me. I have always loved those few days (it used to be three), the neighbourhood transformed with no traffic, people sitting and chatting on their front steps, everyone taking time to talk to neighbours and strangers, the fantastic goodwill – and love – of a massive street party. The food, the music, the dancing, the costumes. You can’t beat it.

My children all went to Carnival from tiny babies, and still do. There are obvious places it’s sensible to avoid with a baby in a buggy, otherwise it’s a truly family friendly event.

There have been good years and great years, and years blemished by the criminals who sadly come to steal, sell drugs and cause trouble. This happens at large events, you can only work to control it. It also happens at other times. We had five stabbings in Golborne Ward last Boxing Day. No one said we should ban Boxing Day. There was a 50-strong riot outside Boujis nightclub in South Kensington six months ago. It’s still open. There was a major incident in Hyde Park when an end of term water-fight turned violent. Hyde Park prevails. Epsom Derby this year … the list continues.

And yet, criminality disrupting Carnival is being used as an excuse to ban, move or drastically change it.

But Carnival doesn’t create crime. Criminals attend Carnival.

Sadly, some of these criminals are very young and their lives must be desperate and hopeless indeed for them to engage in such violent behaviour.

Now, those politicians who ruthlessly agreed to cut youth services and destroyed community policing by voting for cuts to police funding, wish to punish those they have failed.

This is leading to a very serious and unpleasant threat to eviscerate our massive and joyful street party. Those with no understanding whatever of the importance and value to local people of the second largest cultural event on earth wish to destroy what they don’t understand. This campaign seeks to ‘civilise’ Carnival.

Last year there were two public surveys on Carnival, which set alarm bells ringing. The Council survey was, despite local fears, a genuine attempt to review arrangements and run things better. The Council – to date – seems to ‘get’ Carnival, as the second largest cultural event on earth, which brings £94m into London every year. For their £500k input into funding, the Council makes their best efforts every year to control those elements they are responsible for – mainly placement of wee, collection of rubbish, closing of roads, local policing, event and stall licensing and noise nuisance abatement. We truly underestimate the time and care they put into this, and their close work with the London Notting Hill Carnival Enterprise Trust, police, residents’ groups and all other services.

Here is the response to the Council’s survey from Carnival Village Trust, the development agency for Carnival Arts, which puts things neatly into perspective:

‘Carnival is both an event that happens in a public space and an art form.

As both an art form and a street festival, Carnival has three main modalities:

1.   A ritual of resistance

2.   A festival of otherness and

3.   Performance Art.

However, for many, the Carnival is also a street party; the annual Bank Holiday festival whose popularity and appeal is participating in a joyous, care free celebration with very few inhibitions.’

The other survey, from the office of our parliamentary representative (not wishing to get personal here), was an ill-judged effort with highly deterministic questions, that resulted in polarising and inflaming opinion.

This is hugely disappointing. We expected better.

Kelso Cochrane, the first victim
of racist murder, 1959

It is ironic that an event set up by local people to heal the community -  after the appalling Notting Hill race riots, leading to the first racist murder, of Antiguan carpenter and law student Kelso Cochrane, by neo-Nazi Blackshirts in 1959 - is now under threat by an arguably racist and undoubtedly anti-community campaign. 

Let's not forget those days of 'No Irish, no blacks, no dogs'. 

In 2009 the community put up a plaque where Kelso fell; seven years later some have determined to erase our history.

One suggestion arising from the second survey is to move the sound systems to Little Scrubbs. This is laughable. The sound systems that brought the music of the Caribbean to our shores, and changed the British music scene forever, cannot be disconnected from the event that created them.

Would you go to the opera, with no singing?

Another proposal has been to move Carnival to Hyde Park and charge for tickets. But Carnival is not a show, it’s a participatory event. This may be confusing to those who don’t wish to see people whose costumes and physicality don’t conform to white cultural norms of classical beauty. Hyde Park was the venue for the Great Exhibition, where ‘colonial tribes-people’ were put on show to amaze and amuse the paying public. Is this what they want?

Among many other things, Carnival is a celebration of our wonderful North Ken melting pot, on our doorsteps. You can have a beer at home, go out and have a brilliant time, for nothing, in an area of London that is still shockingly, and inexcusably, poor (despite increasing gentrification) - Golborne and Colville wards where Carnival is focussed are among the poorest wards in London. It is a wide-reaching community relations exercise whose social and community value, at a time of rising hate crime, goes far beyond its financial cost. And frankly, while all our communities in North Ken feel they are being squeezed out – by estate development, rising rents, CPOs, Pay to Stay, Bedroom Tax, property prices – it’s needed more than ever.

It’s a necessary counter to what many see as the attempted ‘bleaching’ of Kensington.

Currently Carnival is classed as a community event so the policing costs aren’t chargeable to the organisers. Ticketing would turn it into a commercial event; the £6m policing costs then payable would destroy the event forever. Job done for the haters.

Let’s put that £6m cost into perspective. Protecting Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge – from extradition to Sweden for alleged rape - has cost £11m. Nobody is threatening to evict him for this unpaid bill.

The cost of unpaid parking fines by embassies in K&C and Westminster is £87m; nobody impounds their cars. The amount owed by the Russian embassy in Notting Hill Gate alone would just about cover the full cost of policing Carnival.

Protecting the Royal family, whether on official business, their endless holidays, or nights out clubbing, costs £103m a year. Nobody sends these billionaires a bill.

So here we are. One rule for the rich, another for the poor, clear as day.

CVT also said in their response to the Council: ‘Carnival is .. a barometer of British society’.

Sadly true.

We’ve come a long way since that police charge I saw on All Saints Road in 1980. Let’s not turn back the clock.

As the Black Eyed Peas said it: ‘Where is the love?’.