Brentford High Street Steering Group Launch Petition

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Calling for Ballymore to improve design for High Street Development

Brentford High Street Steering Group states:

Five years ago the Brentford community came together with our award-winning vision for the future of our town centre. In 2010 Brentford High Street Steering Group co-commissioned with Ballymore developers a study by The Prince’s Foundation, to ensure a design brief of which future generations would be proud.

The town centre planning application submitted by Ballymore Properties in September 2012 does not deliver the world-class scheme Brentford’s historic town centre should be. Ballymore has submitted a plan for eighteen 6-11 storey high blocks with 929 flats on the south side of Brentford High Street.

Local residents have described the plan as: “aggressive, overbearing and underwhelming.” The high rise, bland buildings are totally inappropriate in Brentford – a town centre with Roman, Saxon and medieval archaeology and once home to Pocahontas.

In 2000 English Heritage recommended the site should be designated a Conservation Area.

As home today to respected innovative global companies GlaxoSmithKline and Brompton bicycles, employing hundreds of local people, Brentford High Street deserves an outstanding regeneration scheme.

We, the undersigned, call on Ballymore to work further with the local community to:

1) Reduce the massing (929 flats) and height (up to 11 storeys) of the development; and

2) Develop the architectural aesthetic to include traditional styles, as well as the restoration of old buildings and modernism currently included in the development.

The scheme must be in line with the Brentford Area Action Plan (local planning policy) agreed in 2009.

November 16, 2012