worldwiser

Seems ED wasn't good enough for them. They're now in Harrods it seems.

Wow, over 500 views and no one gives a monkey's. I really am alone then.

With that and the bloody Bishop arranging their bottle collections at 3am in violation of their licence, the owner of this house is clearly trying to get us all to move out! Bless him. I look forward to the housewarming invite.

Seems so. And the promised weekly newsletters that I was ready to believe would happen have obviously not.

The roof 'terrace' is currently home to half a dozen aircon units and other plant and therefore, in practice, no-one can or does use it. And your point about 24 hour usage vs. office hours is a good one.

Dear all - you may not be aware that a planning application has been approved to convert the upper floors of the Foxtons building into flats and a series of roof terraces installed at the rear for outdoor amenity. We were not consulted and the council insist we didn't have a right to be for reasons to do with change of use. There are no rear elevation drawings available as part of the planning application and I believe we should have a right to see them and comment on them before anything further happens.

The application number is 14/AP/0780 if you want to look it up.

Am I alone here or do we not all have a legitimate point of view that deserves to be heard?

I notice there is a poster on a lamppost at that corner soliciting comments from the public. I had not seen it until today.

It seems it is proposed to redevelop the rear of the offices into a series of roof terraces which will overlook dozens of properties. You cannot tell me that we do not all have an entirely understandable, legitimate and urgent need to be consulted. I actually have no principled objection to a redevelopment. However I would like to know exactly what we are all going to be looking at from our gardens and back bedrooms and have an opportunity to be heard on any inappropriate design features and potential loss of privacy. This would be entirely normal and appropriate when no change of use is involved, so why does a change of use exempt them from the normal consultation process?

I can't imagine GS has more than about a dozen people on staff that would come close to falling into the category. Even front desk staff are on more than 30k. Their facilities people are all hired at arms' length via a facilities company so can probably be ignored when they claim they pay LLW.

Hi James,

I wonder if you can assist. A planning application has been submitted and approved (14/AP/0780) to convert the upper floors above Foxtons into flats. We (and about 20 other families) live directly behind this property and I am dismayed to find there was no public consultation whatsoever on the impact of this development. I have emailed the planning department as the two telephone numbers lead to out-of-office voicemails stating no-one is at work until the 2nd of June. Are you able to find out why on earth such a significant development could possibly have been waved through with not a single attempt to consult with the people who could be affected the most? The scheme above Iceland has taken years and got nowhere and this one took barely 2 months. I am most grateful for your input and, of course, congratulations on your recent re-election.

We used them constantly in spite of the manager's absolute and utter lack of warmth and spirit of customer service. I often waited until when one of his assistants was alone before venturing in. They had way too much space for the number of product lines - they only really had stock for half the space. May have been ok in the past but makes no sense with current rents. And as for the jibe about FM, give them a chance! They had to wait for planning and now have to reconfigure a pub into a pizza restaurant. Can't you hold your horses for 5 minutes before whinging about its being boarded up?!

Don't use the 'online' application service either. I did thinking it'd be quicker and all it does is provide you with a print out which you still have to post in but it disqualifies you from the checking service. Plus it's impossible to upgrade later if you need to and none of the call centre people will talk to you. It's a pointless, misleading waste of time and shouldn't be offered at all.

We've already done this argument to death on another thread. No cinema pays the LL. Hardly any London businesses do, only around 300 at the last count. Unless you're going to grow all your own food and never go out again, realise that this is a highly complicated issue not helped by unilateral statements that get us nowhere.

Anyone else get the impression that the recent single and double yellow lines that have appeared on many kerbs in ED look like they were done by a child of 4? Can the council have a little more respect for us and get the contractor to come and do them properly?

Wow, proper old school solutions. My objection is when it's 17 degrees or lower outside at night it remains 25 degrees inside even with fans and windows wide open. No-one's commented on roof tile vents as a possible way forward.. We don't have sashes (more's the pity) as the previous owners defaced our house with plastic. But spending thousands on new windows seems over the top if there's a cheaper more effective solution out there.

Indeed. Actually, far better would be to make them stand on a ladder and retouch their artwork back to the original.

I can't stand Farage but he is legally standing for office in a public election. What these urchins did is criminal damage, it's illegal and they need to be locked up. It's very easy to make a public statement about UKIP: don't vote for them. Far more powerful a statement and, arguably, far longer lasting.

I haven't found a review site that lists an air cooler that a majority of people are glad they bought. I'm tempted to go for aircon and be done with it.

True, but in other parts of the world they design their houses properly so they naturally keep warmer or colder with little human intervention. In this country our housing stock is typically useless. And since ED houses have an awful lot in common, I thought it appropriate to ask for an ED response. Clearly admin disagreed.

Thanks for the 'back and front' idea - we hadn't tried that. Yes, our house faces directly south on one side. Not sure why this thread went to the lounge - figured this would count as an ED issue.

Ok.. it's getting pretty warm again and last summer we practically expired from the heat upstairs in our house. Ours is a typical ED 2-storey, late C19 house with butterfly (London) roof, concrete tiles, PVC double glazing with wood venetian blinds, reasonable loft insulation. The temperature upstairs even with fans blowing and windows wide open reaches 26 degrees at night.

We've tried opening the windows and keeping the blinds closed. We've tried closing the windows and keeping the blinds closed. We've tried only opening the windows at night and early morning. We're this close to installing air conditioning but hear that we may even need planning permission which wouldn't be forthcoming until the summer was over probably.

Solutions I've heard of: painting the roof white. smartlouvres (www.koolshade.com), external French style shutters. roof vents. Replacing roof tiles with slate. Replacing roof tiles with a corrugated material of some sort. Replacing wood venetians with white venetians.

Anyway.. since we've all pretty much got the same house I'm appealing to anyone who might have innovative solutions to spill the beans so we might make our house cool again before we invest in expensive solutions I'd rather avoid. Or if you've successfully put one or more of the rumoured solutions above into effect and achieved results.

Cheers all!

I just think adding an extra 5m to what is already possibly the slowest bus route in London (Walworth Rd) is a kick in the teeth when no-one's making any plans to improve traffic flow. 20m Camberwell to E&C is intolerable. I may as well walk.

And there was me thinking I was a lone genius with my routing. Turns out you're all doing it, probably a few hours before me. I'll be imagining the lightning trails you fine folk have laid down when I trundle in later :-)

My bugbear is the almost daily announcement after Camberwell, 'there will be a short delay while a change of driver takes place.' Why the bus company finds it impossible to run a bus route end to end without giving drivers a tea break I don't know.

Have to agree with 85volga. Not to be too uncharitable, but they really went to a special effort to make their shop front as uninviting as humanly possible. These days that kind of shop needs to be in an area with higher footfall anyway.

Depends if your priority is safety, speed or most direct. I can get you as far as E&C.. Crystal Palace Rd to Adys Rd, Bellenden Rd & Lyndhurst Way to Peckham Rd. Then onto Southampton Way cutting onto Chandler Way and across Burgess Park. Thurlow St to Heygate St gets you to the back of E&C. This is extremely safe and keeps you away from unforgiving traffic. ED to E&C takes me 16m on a really ropey old bike! I would seriously recommend avoiding OKR or Walworth Roads. This is where people regularly die or get seriously injured.