Neighbourhood news, features, and comment
All of us city dwellers tend to live our lives much more in the public domain: in the streets, cafes and public spaces of our neighbourhood. My twenty-four hour diary gives a glimpse of how I use our streets, not only as a thoroughfare, but as a breathing space and a meeting place. 3.00pm Tuesday: …
Continue reading "Twenty-fours hours in a central London neighbourhood"
Camden Council says the are only five rough sleepers in the whole of the borough, far fewer than neighbouring Westminster, Islington or the City of London, according to the official figures published in February. But anyone walking through Camden late at night or in the early morning will think that five is not a credible number, nor does it …
Continue reading "Counting rough sleepers in the London Borough of Camden"
By News Reporters Voting will take place in Fitzrovia on Thursday 22 May for Local Government and for the European Parliament elections. Polling stations open at 7am and close at 10pm. Fitzrovia is split into parts of three council wards -- Marylebone High Street and West End in City of Westminster, and Bloomsbury in the London Borough of …
Continue reading "London local government and European Parliament elections 2014"
Exemplar the property developer leading the construction of Fitzroy Place is coming under increasing pressure to abandon its plans to rename the Middlesex Hospital Chapel which it is meant to be restoring as part of a legal agreement with Westminster City Council. A medical historian, a former surgeon, and the chair of one of Westminster City Council's planning …
Continue reading "Fitzroy Place developer in trouble over Middlesex Hospital Chapel plans"
Westminster City Council has now made a decision on where the boundary of Fitzrovia and Marylebone will be for the purpose of neighbourhood planning under the Localism Act. In an announcement this week Councillor Robert Davis, Cabinet Member for the Built Environment, agreed the recommendations in a report following a period of public consultation on five neighbourhood …
By News Reporters The Middlesex Hospital Chapel at the heart of the building development known as Fitzroy Place is currently being restored as part of an agreement with Westminster City Council. It is a Grade II* listed building and it is the only part of the former hospital that still remains intact. However, the developers …
Continue reading "Help us preserve the name Middlesex Hospital Chapel"
The West End ward in the City of Westminster is now unusual in that it has an excess of housing. Hard to believe with all the worrying news about shortage of homes for Londoners. But between the neighbourhoods of Mayfair, Soho and a large chunk of Fitzrovia there are now more individual dwellings than there …
Continue reading "No shortage of housing in the West End of London"
By Christina Latham 221b Baker Street, just a name and just a number. However, when Arthur Conan Doyle put pen to paper in 1886, this unassuming location was transformed into the home of a literary legend. Sherlock Holmes is an unlikely hero due to his selfish nature and disregard for consequences. Yet his genius and …
Continue reading "An enjoyable visit to The Sherlock Holmes Museum"
By News Reporters Great Portland Estates have submitted plans to create homes, offices, shops and restaurants on the site of Royal Mail delivery centre in Rathbone Place. The mixed-use scheme designed by Make Architects which includes a new publicly accessible space will be considered by Westminster Council after a period of public consultation which is …
Continue reading "Rathbone Place redevelopment plans submitted to Westminster Council"
By News Reporters Westminster could miss out in millions of pounds of government money because the census carried out last year failed to count 25,000 residents. Westminster's Labour Councillors have called on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to make public all its information, assumptions and calculations to explain how they calculate that Westminster's population …
Brian Jarman visits Westminster Council leader Philippa Roe at her seventeenth-floor office; and risks defenestration as he asks her about housing, that other woman, and whether the Evening Standard will be dictating the Council's West End parking policy. Let’s get one thing clear: Philippa Roe is no Dame Shirley Porter. The new leader of Westminster …
By News Reporters While tenants in the City of Westminster are struggling to pay their rent in the face of rising property values and housing benefit caps, luxury apartments due to be built on a plot in Fitzrovia are being sold off-plan in Hong Kong and Singapore for up to £8,500,000 a piece. Channel NewsAsia …
