Trouble on the Hill

Say Notting Hill and what do people think of? Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in the ethnically cleansed film from 1999? 

The Carnival, held every summer since 1966, one of the world's biggest street parties? Or maybe the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower 3 years ago? They probably don't think of a row that's been smouldering between the people who live in Notting Hill and the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Khan, a former Labour Party MP, youngish, ambitious, pugnacious, and about to run for his second term, probably won't want to go canvassing in Notting Hill in an NBC suit and respirator. After 3 years of fierce local opposition, he's just given planning permission for a 17-storey commercial and residential development right on Notting Hill Gate, over 0.52-hectares, extending 2-storeys below street level, crowned by the highest tower for miles.

Why the fuss? The site, Newcombe House, a 12-storey office block in Notting Hill Gate, is a crumbling memorial to the late 1950s. Windows routinely fall out of the dilapidated structure during high winds. Rows about its replacement have been going on for so long that many of its commercial premises now lie empty. The residential housing unit for homeless people, once provided by the Notting Hill Housing Trust, has long since been sold off and kept locked.

Meanwhile developers have come and gone, successive plans have been modified and everyone knows change has to come to this bright band of London stretching between the lively markets of Portobello Road and the ritzy antique shops of Kensington. No one is going to oppose new business, new jobs, new tourist attractions after the pandemic. But the lives and livings of a lot of people will immediately be affected by this massive new development. 

Six bus routes run along the eastern side of the site. On its north side there is a major subway station, served by the Central, Circle and District lines of the London Underground system. What is going to happen to them during the necessary excavations? Or to traffic along the Bayswater Road, a major route into central London? Amazingly, such things don't concern planning departments. Their business is the site and only the site. Not how many people commute to and from work. Or - plague or no plague - go to Notting Hill to shop, eat, drink and play.

The local primary school, Fox, tops the league table and adjoins the site. How will parents get their children to school whilst construction lasts? 3 years? 5 years? Perhaps 10 if the anticipated depression is really bad. On the site, two established restaurants had already closed before the pandemic hit. But what will happen to the curtain shop, the one that's been there since the original development in 1957? 

It's not just the wage earners the Mayor is ignoring. What of the local Royals, the ones who live in Kensington Palace, whose helicopters rumble overhead and motorcades nip between the red buses on Notting Hill Gate? And all the diplomats and their embassies in Kensington Palace Gardens? How will they feel about a tower block so high it will have sightlines right into where they live? About as enthusiastic as anyone crossing Kensington Church Street when the high rise will turn a brisk wind into a howling gale.

There has been opposition, a rare coalition of people born in Notting Hill, who grew up in its dank, rented terraces. And newcomers, who, over the last half century, transformed those same houses into pastel painted bijou cottages.They have been united over the past 3 years of plans, consultations, appeals. All to no avail. The Mayor and the latest set of developers seem to have won. Unless the pandemic-cum-depression turns out to be a complete blight on all shops and office blocks. And if it means rich foreign investors no longer wish to buy London flats and leave them empty most of the year. But, meanwhile, if the pugilistic London Mayor comes knocking for votes in Notting Hill, NBC suit or not, he'd better keep his guard up and protect himself at all times.