2 November 2020
RESIDENTS RIVERSIDE COALITION FIRE UP CAMPAIGN TO OPPOSE 14-STOREY HOTEL IN STAINES CONSERVATION AREA
Five residents’ organisations in Staines have joined forces to oppose the construction of a 14-storey hotel and apartment complex on the Bridge Street Car Park site in the riverside Staines Conservation Area. The scheme was announced by Spelthorne Borough Council during the summer following the signing of a Development Agreement with the Arora hotel group.
This morning, the ‘Residents Riverside Coalition’ served Spelthorne Council with a 15-point Freedom of Information request and plan future actions to oppose the scheme.
“We need to get to the bottom of what’s in the Development Agreement and our correspondence with the Council so far on this has got us nowhere. We’re looking for transparency and democratic accountability – surely not too much to ask of a public authority,” says a spokesperson for the Coalition. “What was announced in the summer is way outside the existing town plan, violates national guidelines on Conservation Areas, and cannot be supported by the already crippled road infrastructure at the Listed Bridge. It’s a grotesque scheme which only very few Councillors knew about until it was formally announced in May. We just don’t understand how anyone thought a massive tower-block almost two-and-a-half times taller than anything else in the Conservation Area was a good idea in the first place.”
A few weeks after the scheme was announced a new Leadership team was installed at the Council, pledging to ensure residents and Councillors have a greater opportunity to have a voice and to focus on the needs of residents. “We’ve hung our hat on these pledges,” says the Coalition’s spokesperson. “We in turn have pledged to work constructively and positively with the Council to secure a better development solution for this very sensitive Conservation Area site.”
For more information contact – Nigel Rowe email: anrowe1@aol.com phone: 07785 776696
Residents Riverside Coalition – a Working Group of residents’ organisations opposed to the Arora scheme and serving the interests of some 600 residents on both sides of the river
Thames Edge Management Ltd., Colnebridge Close Residents Association, Staines Village Residents and Traders Association, Friends of The Hythe, Waterside Place (Staines) Residents Management Ltd. Supported by: Staines Town Society.
Recent Comments