A Notting Hill homeowner who famously defeated a council enforcement case earlier this year is heading for another showdown with the Town Hall.
Dr Michael Young has instructed his planning consultant to appeal after councillors rejected an ultra-modern extension to his home in Victoria Gardens, Notting Hill, by four votes to one.
The ‘space age’ design, by award winning architect Alison Brooks, divided last night’s (6th Oct) Planning Committee along party lines. Four Conservative councillors voted against it, while Labour and Co-operative councillor Jack Reason (Colville) backed the proposal.
Dr Young’s previous planning ordeal against RBKC cost him £10,000 and took two-and-a-half years to win. That debacle – exclusively exposed by The Chelsea Citizen last June – centred around a timber privacy screen on his roof terrace.
RBKC pursued enforcement action demanding its removal, only for a planning inspector to find that the structure had already been approved by council officers on THREE occasions – in 2019, 2022 and 2023.
The existing roof terrace and wooden screen – the subject of a famous victory in Victoria Gardens
The new planning application before the committee centres around Dr Young’s dream to replace the controversial terrace with a high-design and quirky roof extension. Dr Young has spent a fortune commissioning the project, as well as various impact studies to help secure approval, but the scheme fell on stony ground with councillors and planning officers.
Conservative councillor Lloyd North (Campden), said the scheme didn’t pass his “sniff test”. He told the committee: “We all walk around the borough and look at buildings and say: who on Earth gave that planning permission?”
Abingdon councillor Anne Cyron added: “We have modern buildings in our conservation areas, but they are sympathetic to their surroundings…this is just a step too far for me.” Fellow Conservatives Aarien Areti (Holland) and committee chairman Sam Mackover (Queen’s Gate) also voted to refuse permission.
After the meeting, Dr Young complained that his team had been given little opportunity to address councillors’ concerns. “We were barely asked any questions,” he told The Citizen. “There was more discussion about the air conditioner in the previous scheme than this one.” (in reference to a lengthy debate concerning planning permission for two large air conditioning units in a garden in Elgin Crescent, which was subsequently refused by the committee)
Architect Alison Brooks’ high-design new extension with its distinctive “fish tail” tiling
Dr Young’s proposal even had the backing of the Ladbroke Association, whose chair Sophia Lambert and architect Tom Crofts stayed until the end of the late night hearing to support it. By its own admission, the Association rarely supports modern designs that detract from the historical feature of the Notting Hill conservation area, but were swayed by Ms Brooks’ innovative design.
According to Dr Young, his application attracted 12 letters of support and just three objections. None of the objectors attended the meeting. Dr Young described the officers’ report as “one-sided” and said the council hadn’t properly weighed the proposal’s benefits against the harm it alleged. The day after the meeting, Dr Young contacted The Citizen and slammed the planning committee’s ruling. He said:
‘There is an uncomfortable symmetry to this. It began after a former Conservative ward councillor pressed the Council to take enforcement action over a timber screen on my roof terrace. The Council pursued that case and lost. Last night Conservative councillors rejected the scheme that would have removed that very screen, and the roof terrace with it. I offered to take down the thing this Council spent so long trying to compel. Yet the report before Members described that as a benefit of only ‘modest’ weight. The cost to me of defending it was far from modest.
“What troubles me most is the basis on which the Committee was asked to decide. In my view, the officer’s report was one-sided. It set out every alleged harm while giving little or no account of the contrary technical evidence, the benefits of the scheme, or the very things officers had themselves already accepted. The Ladbroke Association — the amenity society for this conservation area — wrote in support twice and was not mentioned once. Councillors are entitled to a fair account of the evidence before they vote.
“The Conservatives stood on a promise to get the basics right and make life easier for residents. After almost three years now of conflict with the Council over my own home — a fight they started — my confidence in the local administration’s handling of planning matters affecting my property is now at an end. I am glad that the current councillor call-in system is ending on 31 October. Small residential schemes should stand or fall on planning policy and evidence, not on whether individual councillors happen to dislike contemporary architecture.
“This is not the end of it. I will appeal and welcome the chance to put that case to an independent Inspector. After everything that has happened locally, it will be important for the proposal to be looked at afresh, outside RBKC, and judged on the planning merits rather than the history surrounding it.”
CGI version of the future streetscape
Previously from The Chelsea Citizen open this story….
RBKC officers put resident through years of hell and £10,000 bill trying to BAN wooden terrace they had already APPROVED
A homeowner was dragged through a planning nightmare by the council for two-and-a-half years and forced to spend nearly £10,000 defending a roof terrace screen — only for a government inspector to rule the council had already approved it.
In a humiliating defeat for RBKC, the Planning Inspectorate threw out the council’s enforcement case against Dr Michael Young and quashed the legal notice ordering him to tear the structure down.
Voice of the Citizen: Read Dr Young’s blistering retort to the Council’s statement
‘The Council’s mistake cost me nearly £10,000. Do you know what I could have bought with that money? A wheelchair for my father. He has dementia. He cannot walk. That money could have given him dignity, mobility, a bit of freedom. Instead, it went to lawyers, architects and planning consultants. The Council sees a file to close. I see my father’s mobility taken away from him.’
©Photos: Rob McGibbon/The Chelsea Citizen
