Looks like Leytonstone’s councillors have finally joined the “Fight the Flights” party…

Councillors Demand Action on Aircraft Noise

Along with many local residents your Leytonstone Labour councillors Clyde Loakes, Jenny Gray and Marie Pye are very concerned about the increased aircraft noise over parts of Leytonstone.

At our request the council undertook an investigation to identify the main causes of this.

These appear to be:

• London City Airport recently changed the direction of some of their flights particularly from runway 28, and of course many of these flights are jets.
• Further changes were made to London City Airport as a result of planning application for extra flights submitted to the London Borough of Newham. This application was not referred to Waltham Forest Council.
• Air traffic control at Heathrow airport has been redirecting a very high number of planes due to weather conditions during the summer.

As local councillors we are determined that the voice of Leytonstone is heard loud and clear about these issues.

• We have ensured that the council will respond to the current BAA Heathrow consultation programme Noise Action Plan.
• The council’s noise level assessment team will be prioritising checks to see whether residents are eligible for the London City Airport (LCA) Sound Insulation Grant Scheme.
• Waltham Forest Council will also be demanding a place round the table at the the London City Airport Consultation Committee which at the moment is only open to Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Greenwich, and Tower Hamlets.
• As local councillors we will be contacting the London Borough of Newham to express our concern at their agreement to increased flights from City Airport.
• We will also be involved in an upcoming consultation by the National Air Traffic Service which will focus on flights coming over our area.

I do find the political posturing by all of the main parties quite amusing. At a flights meeting earlier this month the Lib Dem’s and Ed Northover (Conservative parliamentary candidate) made noises about working together and not trying to gain political mileage out of this issue. Haven’t seen any evidence of it yet!

If you haven’t visited the Westfield Stratford City website, its well worth a look. After stagnating for a long time, its recently been re-designed, sporting a flashy new look with some nice slideshows featuring cgi impressions of the finished article and some pics of how the work is progressing.

Stratford City - Northern Arcade

A mural featuring Leytonstone’s most famous son, Alfred Hitchcock, sporting a studded leather jacket has been painted outside 491 Gallery’s “Vertigo” building on Grove Green Road, Leytonstone…

Vertigo Mural: Alfred Hitchcock

Seems to have met with a mixed reaction. I quite like it, certainly brightens up the outside of the building – I’m sure Hitch would be amused. Further info on the 491 Gallery project can be found at www.491gallery.com.

Waltham Forest Guardian reports that the Tesco Express in Wanstead could open before the end of the year. A planning application to site a loading diectly in front of it had been rejected by Redbridge Council, holding up progress. However this has now been resolved, with Tesco agreeing to make deliveries via Grosvenor Road instead, so work can now press ahead to fit out the store.

Press release from Fight the Flights…

Anne-Marie Griffin of Fight the Flights said: “The High Court has today given us costs protection for our legal challenge to Newham’s decision allowing increased flights from London City Airport”.

Without costs protection, Fight the Flights would have been at risk of unlimited costs liability and could not have proceeded with the case. Costs protection is only normally given where the Court recognises the public importance of the case.

“This is a very important case and we now look forward to pursuing the case to the next stage.”

Fight the Flights is a pressure group formed in response to the application by London City Airport to increase the number of flights to 120,000 per year. Many Leytonstone and Wanstead residents have already been affected by recent increases and wider flight paths due to greater use of jet aircraft. Things are going to get much worse if this expansion goes ahead. Further details on the Fight the Flights Website.

A point was made at the recent Leytonstone Community Council Meeting regarding the state of Leytonstone High Road. The speaker had noted that 2 years ago the main uses for buildings on the High Road in South Leytonstone was…

1. Empty.
2. Fast Food.
3. Hairdressers.

He had spoken at a Community Council Meeting then about the state of the buildings there – badly run down with trees growing out of the roofs and had requested that the council do something about it.

Leytonstone High Road

So, since 2 years has passed what’s happened. Well, he’s done the same survey again and the new top uses for buldings on that part of the High Road are as follows…

1. Empty.
2. Fast Food.
3. Hairdressers.

Buildings are in a worse state than ever with even more trees growing out of their roofs.

Unfortunately when this point was raised the majority of councillors were out of the room deciding on Community Council Funding. However, Councillor John Macklin was present and spoke about the assumption made by the council that the Olympic Delivery Authority will be stumping up some cash to allow fund regeneration work on the High Road. Unfortunately it now seems that this money is not going to materialise and there’s no other money in the kitty. Hardly surprising given the current economic climate – Boris and the ODA are trying to cut back the main spend on the Olympics, never mind worrying about those of us on the periphery.

The tragic thing is that these are great Victorian buildings, letting them get into this state is absolutely criminal.

Driving down the High Road these days literally makes me cringe because its in such a sorry state. Surely something can be done – maybe the only way is to get up a ladder myself to chop those roof trees down!!!

Seems that Kirkdale’s has unfortunately bitten the dust. A double blow after the loss of The Loaded Dog. The way things are going pretty soon there won’t be anything left in Leytonstone!

As I sit on the committee of LARA, I attended the Leytonstone Community Council meeting on 12th October. We had applied for funding, which fortunately we got (hurrah!). There were many other benficiaries on the night, as each ward (Leytonstone, Cann Hall and Cathall) had a £10,000 pot to distribute amongst the various applicants, all voted for by the attendeed with a final decision made by the councillors. There was also a £5,000 pot for those applicants which didn’t fall into a particular ward. The majority of that went to the Leytonstone Festival (good news), though that initially looked like the Leytonstone Arts Trail would miss out. Fortunately Leytonstone Ward had a surplus, so that was given to them – great news as they did such a sterling job during this year’s festival.

E11 seems to have more than its fair share of apathy, so since the forum on this site was pretty much dormant (expect for a constant stream of attempted spam from our friends in Russia!) I’ve decided to ditch it. This goes hand-in-hand with a general re-focus/re-design, leaning towards a more regular blog/news site. I’m also currently working (well, trying to work) on www.leytonstone.org.uk which has more of an arts/editorial feel as well as aggregating streams from various other Leytonstone related sites. Hopefully the two will compliment each other rather than clash.

Very sad to hear news that The Loaded Dog in Leytonstone is closing. This was a key music venue in the area and was widely respected as being one of the best small venues in East London. Just goes to show how, like many other long gone bits of Leytonstone High Road, if we take these places for granted, we risk losing them. I count myself among the guilty there as I never actually ventured into The Loaded Dog – kind of regretting that now.