Feltham comes last with Feltham First again

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 15th Jun 2001

Article by Andy Darley

I wasted my time, last week, trying to contact Feltham First. I wanted them to co-operate with the Environment Agency to address flooding issues in Feltham. They were not sufficiently interested to return my calls or respond to my fax. Three people from the Environment Agency Flood Defences and a Hounslow Council officer thought this important enough to spend a morning on it, as did I. Feltham First were clearly not interested.

Nearly £10 million of public money has been spent on things like subsidising almost unused bus services to Heathrow and making a mess of Feltham High Street. Two ponds have been ruined and several ducklings have been drowned by their activities. Feltham continues to go downhill. I gather the whole operation is nearing its end and I, for one, will not be sorry to see it go. Apart from two computer suites for schools, I cannot find much good to show for the activities of Feltham First. Many of their efforts seem have done more harm than good.

I now discover that the plans for Feltham Town centre have been changed to eliminate almost everything that might have been some use to the people of Feltham. At West Area Committee last night we discussed modifications to the plans for the new Feltham Town Centre. The new library has been reduced in size until it is about the same size as the old one (from 1,672 sq metres to 1,114) and has been moved to the second floor (brilliant for access and evacuation in an emergency)! The YMCA has been deleted because unspecified people didn't like it. The health centre has also been placed on the second floor, with similar advantages. It was claimed that the loss of library space and the YMCA were to make up for having incorporated a health centre. The original proposal mentions 'health facilities' in para 3.1. The access proposals have been changed in a way that would, in the words of Cllr. Bawn, 'make it like Fagan's kitchen'. I think he meant that it would make it a muggers' paradise, a concern that I gather is shared by police. When I was told that 'people being around in the centre would prevent this' I was forced to comment that the Thornfield man had obviously either not been to Feltham or had walked through it with his eyes closed.

It has apparently become a priority to house Ashford Hospital staff at low cost. The GLA apparently were to blame for this. As Ashford Hospital is not in the borough, the GLA area or even the same Health Authority area as us and is being cut back all the time, I couldn't follow this. There was also talk of providing space for Feltham First. Quite apart from my opinion that this organisation is a waste of space, it will have finished before even the foundations for all this are laid! I asked that the whole thing go back to consultation as the proposals had changed totally. I am told that it will but this is not what it says on the front of the report, which suggests:

'members make comments on the revised planning application which is likely to be reported to the sustainable development committee'.

I will believe the consultation when I see it.

Proposals to build 7 or 8 storeys of high-density housing make me wonder why we demolished Home Court. We seem to be replacing it with something worse, or at least as bad!

Other councillors expressed concerns about traffic generation. This does not concern me. With no decent library, accessible health centre or anything to attract the public, other than yet another supermarket, I would be surprised if it generates any beyond the first week. The developers seem so greedy to maximise the space that they can let for sky-high rents that they have eliminated most of the things that might just attract people.

The problems of the nearly derelict centre of Feltham spring from exactly the same sort of thinking in the past and it has gone bankrupt so many times that I have lost count. Short sighted commercial interest and high-density housing built on the cheap. Did somebody say déjà vu? This certainly does not put Feltham first!