I'm going to my local polling station tomorrow, and if you live in Bow you might be going too. I received my polling card last month and I've decided against a postal vote so I'll be casting my mine in person. I'm just not entirely sure why.
The letter enclosed with my polling card told me it's because Tower Hamlets council are conducting a referendum on the Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Plan. Everyone who's on the electoral register and lives in the Neighbourhood Plan Area can vote, and if a majority of voters vote in favour then the Plan will be used when deciding planning applications. What they didn't send me was a copy of the Plan, nor even a brief summary of its contents, only a sentence on the back of the letter telling me that further information could be found on the council website. Even then the landing page had no direct link to the Plan, only to another page with 24 further links where the Plan turned out to be the 5th link down. I do wonder how many potential voters got this far, let alone downloaded the 49 page pdf, let alone read it.
It's not a council document, it's been put together by a group of residents called the Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Forum. They formed after an initial meeting in 2016, were officially designated by the council in 2017 and set about engaging the community to create an evidence base. The area in question stretches from Victoria Park to Bow Road and from the Regent's Canal to the A12. Essentially it's the northeast corner of the borough excluding any areas near the Olympic Park where the LLDC holds sway. The RRBNF consulted on their draft plan in spring last year, after which the council submitted it to an independent examiner who then proposed some changes, and hey presto, referendum-a-go-go.
n.b. A Neighbourhood Plan is a directive to be considered by the council when deciding on planning applications. It's nothing to do with Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, Liveable Streets or any of the usual stuff that gets local residents (on both sides) hot under the collar.
Despite living in the area I somehow missed all this, or at least didn't think it was important. I remember an online map of Bow where residents were asked to drop pins with comments, but I never realised there was a committee with a mission and its own dedicated website doing all this useful work behind the scenes. I also haven't received any additional information regarding the referendum by post or by email, even though apparently I was supposed to receive an RRBNF leaflet through my letterbox last week, so if I hadn't done any research I'd be walking into the polling station blind. And I'm 0.005% of the electorate.
I've always associated Neighbourhood Plans with provincial communities, not urban areas. My dad's village in Norfolk is trying to put one together and the village nextdoor had theirs ratified earlier this year, and they're a lot more community-focused than Bow. But it turns out London has 67 neighbourhood forums and 27 'made neighbourhood plans' (which I think means they've been through the referendum stage already). Pimlico's plan was voted through only a few weeks ago. Here's a map, and here's a list...
Made Neighbourhood Plans: Camley Street & Elm Village, Central Ealing, Crofton Park and Honor Oak Park, Dartmouth Park, Fitzrovia West, Fortune Green and West Hampstead, Grove Park, Hackbridge & Beddington Corner, Ham and Petersham, Hampstead, Harlesden, Highams Park, Highgate, Isle of Dogs, Kentish Town, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Norland, Pimlico, Queen's Park, Redington Frognal, Soho, South Bank and Waterloo, St Quintin and Woodlands, Sudbury Town, West Ealing Centre, West Finchley
These areas aren't equally spread. Eight boroughs have no plans, indeed no forums, namely Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Harrow, Havering, Merton and Newham. No new forums have been designated since February 2020 so momentum has been lost. And at least 15 forums have lapsed without reaching a result, for example the Greater Carpenters Neighbourhood Forum just south of the Olympic Park. They got all the way to the examination stage in 2019, but regulations restrict the lifespan of a designated Neighbourhood Forum to five years and that period expired in July 2020, so all their effort was lost.
Meanwhile in Spitalfields... well, this is Tower Hamlets so you can probably guess that something dodgy happened. Two referenda were held in November last year, one for residents (with 54% voting YES) and one for businesses (with 80% voting NO). This left the decision in the hands of the council, which is now under the control of Lutfur Rahman's Aspire Party, who last week sided with the businesses rather than the residents. The Forum are unhappy, even bitter, claiming that the split decision in the referendum was "caused mainly by widespread unlawful voting in the business referendum and other breaches of election law". On Twitter they additionally claimed "46 of the 97 business votes cast came from 91 Brick Lane, owned by property developer OTB who have tried since 2014 to sabotage the Plan." But there's no going back, so all their hard work since 2016 has been for nothing.
The policies in the Roman Road Bow Neighbourhood Plan look good, even uncontroversial, but I only know this because I opened the pdf. I wonder how many people will vote in favour tomorrow without knowing what they're voting for, and I wonder how many will vote against purely because they hate the council no matter what. It could turn out to be a referendum swung by wishful thinkers or perpetual naysayers. What I suspect is that it'll be passed with a large majority as Bow's community warriors, grassroots activists and Observer readers head to the polls while the indifferent stay at home. From what I've seen these referenda normally attract just 10-15% of the electorate, but the result is binding either way.
If Bow votes in favour of the Neighbourhood Plan tomorrow it becomes a statutory document and will guide all development within the local area alongside other planning policies. I reckon that'd be a good thing, although I haven't actually scrutinised every word on all 49 pages so I'm taking the future of my community on trust. On such blind decisions are empires won and lost.
Friday update: YES 1743 (63%), NO 736 (37%), Turnout 12%
