The Lionel Road stadium decision is looming. And in the wake of the Kew residents’ anti-stadium meeting chaired by Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, Brentford stalwart and lecturer Steve Cowan dissects the pros and cons of their arguments like a surgeon with a scalpel.
The future of our football club is about to be decided. The Stadium Action Group led by BIAS members is now working very closely with the lead team from the Lionel Road Development Ltd. who are organising the bid to Hounslow Council Planning Committee. Deliberations have reached a critical point because the Hounslow Council Planning Committee is due to consider their proposals in early December and upon their decision rests the future of the Club.
The centrepiece of the proposal is the stadium, the details of which are widely known about by Brentford supporters. It is fair to say that there is a miniscule group among the supporters who remain against the move to Lionel Road. Presumably they are content to see the club slowly ebb away within Griffin Park, a facility and site that cannot be developed to sustain future success or indeed survival for the Club. There have been three thousand expressions of support for the LRD scheme, most of which have come in the form of signed postcards. Within this figure there have been over a thousand emails and letters sent to the Hounslow Council planning department expressing support for the scheme.
A welcome development
All good one might think, but the proposals are encountering significant and organised opposition from other quarters, and hundreds of submissions opposing the proposals have been submitted for consideration by the Planning Committee. Unrepresentative local residents groups have united to declare their opposition to the entire scheme. These voices come from Brentford, Chiswick and Kew and appear to be stoked by local Conservative Party activists. A welcome development has been the distancing from the ranters among their own ranks, of Members of Parliament, Zac Goldsmith (Richmond) and Mary Macleod (Brentford & Isleworth) who realise that decisions need to be taken on admissible planning criteria alone. Macleod also understands the electoral risks of appearing to oppose Brentford Football Club.
At a recent meeting in Kew one irate woman argued that as most flats in the Green Dragon Lane towers were full of dog mess, and most tenants were drug takers and needing social services interventions for child neglect, the erection of more high rise buildings in the vicinity might create a social meltdown! Another concerned woman was worried that 20,000 people all going to the toilet at once might cause problems for the already overused sewage system! One wonders if she was present at the Doncaster game when most of such deposits fell onto the terraces and thus had little effect upon the local sewage system. Such views are reminiscent of the voices raised from our neighbours in Kew from 1899 to 1903 when the new bridge was commissioned and formally opened by King Edward and Queen Alexandra. Some then called for a barrier to be erected to prevent drunken Brentford residents from crossing the river and spoiling the peace and tranquillity of their village idyll. Such nonsense was countered then by first generation Bees fans who lived in Kew and several intrepid supporters have been speaking out recently like their forebears did at meetings to challenge the misinformation being generated by nimby-mined opponents.
Fear of working class people
These were at least some honest expressions of the ugly undercurrent that fuels part of the organised opposition to the Lionel Road Development plans – that of a fear of working class people and their social and recreational interests. Residents in the Strand on the Green neighbourhood are currently being fed stories of hoards of football fans swarming along their streets and causing chaos before and after matches. In response to such bile, one very dear, elderly lady had the bravery to stand up against the heckling at a meeting in Chiswick, and offer people the chance of coming to her own house very near to Griffin Park, before, during and after a match to see for themselves if these phantasmagorical fears were indeed founded. We should name a stand in the new stadium after this wonderful lady.
One speaker at the Kew meeting pointed out that the origins of the Club were in the Oxford and Cambridge Hotel right by Kew Bridge, so a return to this location had some historic symmetry to it. Much was made by opponents of the supposed damage the development might do to the ‘heritage’ hot-spots in the locality; citing Kew Gardens, the Steam Museum Water Tower and Gunnersbury Park. The fact that the football club is also a part of the heritage of the area seems to have bypassed such people. The fact that lack of vision and resources jointly by Ealing and Hounslow Councils have been responsible for the decline and decay of the park and its facilities is forgotten. So when Brian Burgess outlined the part of the development proposals relating to the Club leading a programme of regeneration of Gunnersbury Park, those opposed simply resort to repeating over and over their point without taking on board what BFC propose to do to improve the local heritage and amenity of the area. Interestingly a senior officer from Richmond upon Thames pointed out that there were in fact no issues from their perspective concerning supposed damage to the views from the south side of the river, nor indeed from the Gardens themselves. However, such authoritative views carry little weight with those determined to prevent our move to Lionel Road. Hopefully, all these views will weigh significantly in the minds of responsible Hounslow councillors who are required to base their decision upon admissible evidence only and not upon paranoid prejudices.
There are two legitimate areas of concern which the LRD and the Stadium Action Group will need to answer convincingly. The first concerns the number and density of dwellings being proposed alongside the enabling development. This enabling development takes the form of several residential blocks whose frankly stated purpose is to meet the costs of the stadium development – hence ‘enabling’ development. The numbers of units being proposed appear to some, to be excessive within the confines of the Lionel Road site. However, if one takes the area to the north of Brentford High Street from the Chiswick Roundabout and north of the railway line and south of the motorway as the area to assess density of residential occupation, it becomes apparent that the proposed number of dwellings would not be particularly high for such an expanse of land. All political parties agree that one of the key strategic needs across London is for more housing. The stark reality we face is that as land is both scarce and very expensive there is little choice but to build higher and more densely. /the alternative is to eat into green belt land on the periphery and few would find that acceptable. People who are seeking to prevent constructive proposals for new housing need to explain to Hounslow Council Planning Committee members, where alternatives are to be found. Instead of criticising Brentford Football Club and LRD Ltd. we should be applauding the fact that they delivering on such a key social and political priority for the region.
Detailed parking management scheme.
A related concern relates to possible traffic congestion. It is argued that the Kew Bridge vicinity is already at a standstill and closing off part of Lionel Road when matches are taking place will further add to the problem. Kew residents fear that their leafy streets will be over-run by new residents seeking to park their vehicles overnight over the bridge and, even worse, thousands of drivers coming in for match days will take up every spare inch of parking space in Kew. There are several responses to these objections. The first is LRD Ltd. has a detailed parking management scheme which will bring into use at least 1,000 parking spaces using empty space within commercial sites along the motorway and also add hundreds of cycling places in the stadium complex which will be used during the week by commuters using Kew Bridge Station. It is highly likely that most match day drivers will continue to use the places where they currently leave their cars and continue to walk to the new ground which is only an additional five minute walk from Griffin Park, so the new stadium will turn out to have nil impact upon parking in the area. It is also likely that as access to the Lionel Road Stadium is so much easier than Griffin Park, that many who currently drive to matches, will opt instead for buses or trains. We all know of course that when matches take place on Saturday afternoon or Tuesday evening, the north side of Kew Bridge tends not to get congested. I’m a No 65 bus user who doesn’t drive, so I know these things
The objectors of course forget that the area around Griffin Park will be relieved of the pressures that are currently experienced during match day, although residents seem on the whole not to mind too much. The streets around Griffin Park and along the Ealing Road will be less congested than they are at present and this will actually improve traffic flows. They also underplay the positive transformation of a dirty and unsafe seven acre site that is almost the last part of the blight that has affected Brentford for decades. They also ignore the fact that by bringing into being a new community surrounding the stadium, demand for local businesses and services increases, thus helping to reverse the social and economic decline that has characterised Brentford for so long. Dare we say, even the businesses in Chiswick and Kew will benefit! We remember the doom and gloom and outrage from the same people in Chiswick and Strand on the Green, when the plans for the business park opposite Gunnersbury Station were mooted. Of course none of their fears materialised. What did happen was that a dingy part of west Chiswick was regenerated for everyone’s benefit.
Cut through blind prejudice
My sincere hope is that Hounslow Planning Committee members will have the sense to cut through the blind prejudices and fake concerns from these objectors about protecting the environment. Councillors will focus upon the positive planning gains offered by the various facets of the LRD Ltd. scheme. While we champion the idea of a new stadium the most positive feature from the point of view of local councillors must be the proposed significant addition to the local housing stock. The transformation of the last remnant of blight into a modern, clean, social and recreational area should be applauded. The future of Brentford football Club in the medium term rests upon the decision to be taken in the first week of December. If supporters have not written in to the planning department expressing support for the LRD Ltd. scheme they really ought to do it now, as one thing that carries weight with Members of Hounslow Council who sit on the Planning Committee is the number of positive submissions from borough residents supporting any proposal. Even if you have written already you could take the trouble to write a more detailed letter highlighting the points I’ve made about housing, parking, the current site and regeneration of Brentford. LRD have just submitted lots more information dealing with the concerns of the opposition. SO NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO WRITE!
If this proposal fails there are no alternative sites within the Borough. Is anyone who really supports Brentford, seriously willing to contemplate a return to the Noades dream of relocating us to somewhere like Woking?
Steven Cowan
Brentford Resident and Season Ticket holder
Please post your thoughts regarding Steve’s article in the comments field below.
Steve, a very good appraisal, undoubtedly the process has reached the “nimby” objectors with an instant anti feeling towards the development because of a knee jerk “oh no, not football”,whilst they sit at home glued to their Sky TV coverage of the Premier League perhaps!
It intrigues me that since my childhood the Lionel Road site has largely been a dumping ground for aggregates, waste disposal skips and assorted building materials and the only worthwhile use of Lionel Road has been as a cut through to the M4 and A4.
The parade of shops from The Express pub to the station are an eyesore, the station itself has been neglected so all of these facilities will benefit from refurbishment as a consequence. When Glaxo located to Brentford a consequence was a refurbished station and four trains an hour to London from the previously two an hour.
I sincerely hope that planning is granted, the area is semi industrial and will benefit from the additional facilities. Your example of Chiswick Business Park is another case in point, I work there,it is an excellent development that has attracted global companies who operate in TV, Oil & Gas the entertainment industry and information technology, whose employees patronise the bars, pubs, cafes and restaurants along the Chiswick High Road.
As it stands Lionel Road is an eyesore, a worthwhile and community centric plan is being promoted and planning permission applied for,let’s hope that Hounslow Council recognise the value of the initiative and wholeheartedly support it.
As one of those nimbys from the other side of the bridge who also is a season ticket holder at one of your west London rivals, perhaps I am not the best person to respond but I do want to try and bring a bit more balance to Steve’s summary.
Trying to cut through some of the social commentary and memories of past class differences that our own local north south divide has been responsible for, I have to ask the question of why does this wonderful new stadium has to be part of a package of such an intense commercial and residential development?
In the early days of the Lionel Road project it was all about the stadium and although there were a small number of opponents, the vast majority of people welcomed the new stadium. Perhaps rather naively they believed that funds generated from the sale and development of Griffin Park together with support from Hounslow Council and future stadium revenues would be sufficient to create a solid business plan. From someone who has not been that close to the project, it feels that the latest version of the plan has been hijacked by developers who are looking to benefit from the strong local support for the new stadium to wring out the maximum opportunity to sweat the Lionel Road asset to the benefit of their bottom line.
Perhaps I am misguided but in all that I have read and heard recently, not once I have seen a business plan or financial statement that shows the revenues from the residential and commercial developments being used 100% to the benefit of Brentford FC. And that makes me concerned that along with all of the other development along the A4 and Kew Bridge Road/High Street corridor, profit is being put before the real interests of either the Club or local residents on either side of the Thames.
As someone who has family living in Brentford and had a family member who was a professional with the Bees many years ago, I absolutely see the need for a new stadium. But as with everything that is football, the supporters become emotional when it comes to the interests of their Club and sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. Putting match days to one side, can anyone who travels through this part of town every day not be concerned that yet another 900+ homes within the proposed 12 blocks is going to add to the already long queues of cars and busses trying to move around the area?
Never mind about the sewage system being under additional strain and poor old Mogden Works yet again overflowing, how will the local schools cope? Like many boys, my son has to travel to a Hounslow school every day, a journey that will undoubtedly take longer if this development goes ahead. But he is lucky in that he has a school place, a luxury that, going by the level of over subscription his school faces every year, will only get worse unless the Lionel Road development is fully thought through and measures the true impact on all local facilities and infrastructure.
So to be clear Steve, I would love to see a new stadium that the Bees can be proud of but at what price? If it is this or nothing then I would suggest that it is a very high price to pay to retain a local club. But I would also caution against the obvious passion and commitment of the Bees fans being used as a lever to benefit the commercial interests of the businesses involved in the scheme. Let’s have some financial clarity and then everyone can see who the real winners and losers will be and be clear if this is the only option for the future.