Lib Dem Leader Neil Williams has welcomed the decision of Planning Aid for London to take on a controversial planning case in Hornsey, which could deny elderly residents vital light and the use of their garden. Residents approached the planning help service after advice from Cllr Williams, who has been helping them on the case.

Cllr Williams has expressed serious concerns about plans by developers to erect large buildings on the site in the Campsbourne, Hornsey, which would have a terrible impact on local residents. Although works have stopped in recent days, builders are planning to erect nine new business and residential units on the small site off Hornsey High Road.

The buildings would rise immediately behind the residential blocks in nearby Pembroke Road.Current plans allow for three-storey buildings with a 13 meter high brick wall (the rear wall of the proposed buildings) to be erected within 27 feet from the windows in the rear walls of the Pembroke Road residential properties and sited immediately in line with the bottom of the gardens of Rectory Gardens.

Cllr Williams says the whole case reveals another dreadful planning blunder by Haringey Council, and permission should never have been granted for the new buildings. If the works are finished, local tenants and residents would only have the view of a blank wall approximately 39 feet high from the windows of their homes, depriving them of direct air flow and light. Such large buildings would also overshadow further nearby properties on Rectory Gardens, The Campsbourne, and Campsbourne Road.

Lib Dem Leader Cllr Neil Williams comments:

“I am pleased that Planning Aid for London has taken this issue on, as this is a very serious case. I have also asked Haringey Council a number of additional questions this week about the granting of planing permission for this appalling scheme.

“It is a difficult case, but I do not see why, if a planning blunder like this is made, that residents should have to suffer the consequences.”