Agenda item

Question from Karen Thompson, Resident

"The Fulham Gas Works development and the expansion of Chelsea Creek will add thousands of homes to the area. Can the Council share what analysis it used to assess the impact of the closure of Harwood Terrace on the surrounding area in the context of all the traffic volume expected to come from these new developments (and especially given the closure of Hammersmith Bridge)?"

Answer from Councillor Wesley Harcourt, Cabinet Member for the Environment

“Thank you very much Ms Thompson.

Yes I have been down there myself, I have seen the lorries coming out of there. They wouldn’t get through the width restriction - it’s ordinary volume of ordinary vehicles going through Harwood Terrace, which has always been the problem we’ve been trying to deal with.

The development of the gasworks site is still in the planning stages, it’s got planning permission admittedly, but at the Planning Committee we looked at the predicted impact and estimates in the number of trip generation that there’s going to be done as a result of this and these were discussed openly at the Planning Committee when planning permission was given.

The experimental closure of Harwood Terrace has given us an opportunity, given us the chance, to gather data, gather evidence. And based on that evidence we will publicly share, as I promised before, to inform the council's approach to any further property developments in the area.”

Supplementary question

In view of the fact that the closure of Harwood Terrace has created, by itself, all this additional pollution for the neighbouring residents, and increased noise pollution, which was also evident on your data collected, how on earth can the Council justify keeping Harwood Terrace closed a moment longer?”

Answer to the supplementary question

“It was a plan that was discussed with residents - certainly the residents of Harwood Terrace. And I have spoken to your lead campaigner, as you may well know, on more than one occasion and he’s been invited in to meetings with myself and Highways officers to discuss this.”

The answer at the moment is - we need to gather the evidence. We haven’t got all the evidence in yet. We’ve looked at the time it takes buses to get across from Harwood Terrace to Tyrawley Road bus stop. We’ve only so far been able to get data for one single day from TfL. So we’re trying to get that. Trying to get anything out of TfL is impossible. But we are getting that and when we get that data, when we look at all the other data - the other data only came in on Monday - so we haven’t had a chance to finalise it yet. As I said I can promise you that when we’ve got it, collated it, analysed it, it will be presented to one of our Policy and Accountability Committees and all of you will have the chance to input into that. They are public meetings and they make policy.”