They wanted some clear new safety/ information notices. I based these on standard European road signs, and made up some variations for situations not normally encountered on the highway – see if you can spot them.

I know this isn’t the kind of stuff I normally put on here – it is wordy for a change, but, among other things, this experience has made me appreciate just how much work is required to condense a message to fit into a really short space of time (and not do so here!). Let’s just say that’s an appreciation of the wordsmiths’ art – which isn’t too far away from this blog’s normal service.

For those who want to learn NO MORE about my fight with the Big Borough, please stop reading now and click on one of the other categories to your left, jump to view my ‘Portfolio’ or go to ‘previous entries’.

For those of you still with me – you have been warned; I put this up here as I had a few requests from friends for a full account of what happened and it saves me sending out emails and repeating myself:

In September Mum received a letter from her Borough to say that they had plans to extend the Primary School next door in her direction, but of course it wouldn’t affect her. A meeting was arranged and a planner from ‘Borough Development Control’ came to show us the Borough’s proposals – that’s to Mum, my brother, sister and myself, and it was shown to us all very much fait accompli. The plans were intrusive, the planner listened to our questions and concerns, she took them to a pre-arranged meeting with the team at the School next door straight away. From what she said on return it seemed pretty firm that there wasn’t room for negotiation, they were prepared to slightly reduce an area of ‘hard-standing’ but the plans had been drawn up and the process would be moving along now to begin building without much delay.

Until January it waited for a slot on one of their planning committee meetings. The whole thing became quite a worry for Mum.

The committee meeting was set, announced as last Thursday evening. Of this we’d been given six days notice, with directions to some modified plans on the web which were there but, as always with this, really hard to find. On Mum’s behalf, I had to do my best to stop it. It is your democratic right to speak or be represented in front of Council. She could not have stood up and spoken in front of that committee with all the pressure and ‘three minutes – time’s up’ which is all you’re allowed. So I volunteered to be our speaker in opposition.

Someone could have come forward in the six days to speak in favour of the scheme, time and money must have been invested by the Borough to reach this point, but I guess they believed there were enough Councillors on the committee already in their favour, or they just didn’t think there was a chance it could fail. The agenda listed most of our concerns from that September meeting at Mum’s house and could see nothing there to stop the build, it told me all their reasons for the proposals – followed by a ‘RECOMMENDATION: PERMISSION’. So I based my argument on tackling each of those conclusion points intended to persuade Councillors to vote it through. I thought our only chance was to refuse to compromise on anything, a reasoned attack on the whole lot.

I prepared our case with the support of the family. This was the hard work, chasing down laws and regulations, getting support documents together (the thumbnails you see scattered here), and I found it really, really, really difficult to get what I wanted to say into just three minutes. I had to practice my speech over and over, stopwatch in hand, with my wife and with brothers and sisters on the phone and iChat to do so. None of the family held much hope we could stop the bulldozers – at best we might get them to take the hard-standing off the plan.

Thursday night arrived, I found myself in a big room in the Civic Centre with a raised visitors’ gallery focussed on a large T-shaped desk arrangement to accomodate the Councillors, each with an individual microphone. At the foot of the T with back to the audience, no visible trap door, is a seat with a mike and two lights. The Mastermind chair.

Things did not look promising.

Before it started I had a brief word with the guy next to me who turned out to be a pastor looking to open a happy clappy centre and in dispute with a neighbour over parking, foot traffic etc and the noise / hours they plan to operate which were all up for consideration. He had been to similar meetings before as a representative of the church but had not spoken himself. ‘ This particular planning committee is a good one’ he said ‘they nod most things through’ which for me wasn’t terribly reassuring, and ‘My bit should be interesting – have you seen the Kings Speech?’ Sure enough when called upon he had such a pronounced stammer that he could only get out half a dozen words in his three minutes. He must have a direct line on Sundays to do a Sermon. Luckily for him the Councillors asked lots of questions which he found easier to cope with. The opposition lady spoke – quite well I thought – his application went through exactly as he had wanted.

I was still re-writing my piece as I sat and waited for my turn at the microphone, heard other cases and saw how sharp they were at cutting people off after their time slot. A big orange light comes on at 2.5 minutes, red light and you’re off. My name was called, a bag of nerves getting up there:

‘I’m here on behalf of my Mum, the neighbour of this School. She cannot be here and I’ve given you a lot of supporting documents but I hope in particular you will at least read my Mum’s statement, the last page. I know the Borough’s proposals concern her greatly.

The School has lots of land on the edge of the Green belt and has more than doubled it’s built-up footprint since the 1970s. The Borough plan is now to develop a small strip in the North West corner. That seems small compared to the total School grounds, but this strip is over 35 metres long, the full length of my Mum’s back garden and hers is the only house bordering School buildings.

Tonight’s agenda quotes ‘current classroom sizes fall short of the national requirement for square metres per pupil’. I’ve done my best to find out what this requirement is. The Borough planning office tell me it’s one square metre per pupil. From these proposed floorplans a typical new class area is 80 square metres. This School has 30 to 32 kids per class so proposed classroom sizes are generous, by this measure more than twice the space the kids need. And a typical current classroom size, 48 square metres is already more than is ‘required’.

If there has to be a new corridor and locker space here’s an idea. Could it not run along the East side of this wing? That way it’s within the built-up area rather than on Green land. With space freed in what was a corridor, classrooms can grow to full ‘standard size’ with no need to build towards Mum. What I’m trying to say is there are other options here, and we haven’t been given any, so we must object.

Hard-standing: The School will invite parents and kids at collection up onto their raised grounds, it’s to be the length of the extension and fence and from this elevated position looks down on properties below. From the boundary wall is a two metre drop and kids have been caught playing there before. And just how many people will use it? The Borough hasn’t explained.

Green belt hasn’t stopped the School expanding to the East since the ’70s. And, if there is a real need for building, we say please do so in the South or East where the neighbours are sheep and foxes. But there is lots of space still within the built-up area that appears to be under-used. If these plans go ahead the school is brought one whole house closer and looming above Mum. At the front the hard-standing will itself be larger than the footprint of her house. All this on Green land.

So to conclude: There is no need for hard-standing, already there’s a broad pavement and wider gravel area in front of the School, the length of our street, where people can congregate. We see no need or reason for such an area on School land above and next to Mum.

And as for the expansion. We do know for sure that this scheme is bigger than it needs to be. Please refuse these plans. They can build elsewhere on the site, change internal layouts, change school practices, save the taxpayer’s money.’

And it worked – they listened.

If you’re a Londoner you will probably have gathered from the references to Green belt that this Borough is on the fringe of our city and is almost all Tory. After my speech the only young Lib Dem asked a couple of questions and then immediately came on my side (avoiding the two metre drop). The older Councillors – the Chairman and the representative for Mum’s ward and one other are clearly tied up with the School – when they spoke, their declared reasons for voting for approval, had, I think, been negated by what I’d said so they either weren’t listening or didn’t want to listen (or perhaps their pockets are being lined by the building contractors but this isn’t Chicago). Then a young Tory just piped up that I was absolutely right, he proposed the plans be refused, it’s Green belt, and they should look elsewhere in the school’s built area IF they need to. Others said a little more, a nail biting vote – five with us and four with the Borough on both things – and that was it. ‘REFUSED’. I just sat there a few minutes, not quite believing we’d won.

Quite a high leaving the place – strangers in the visitors’ gallery audience congratulated me as I had to walk through. I’ve since been told that it’s pretty well unheard of for Borough plans to be refused at this point. It has done my confidence no end of good – and 2011 suddenly looks like a good year. Sticking it to the Man! The issue may come back, hopefully any new build will be somewhere else on their land now though.

So a small patch of green is saved from the concrete jungle, the planners must return to their drawing boards and, most importantly, Mum – she’s very much happier now.

Dawson’s hill is a local high point. We saw the new year in from there and I returned on the next clear day to photograph the view. Canary Wharf and Docklands above. Click on the thumbnail below to see a big panoramic image from St Paul’s to the City featuring the Shard construction site (soon to be the tallest building in Europe).

All pictures © Stuart Russell 2011, copyright reserved

I designed a new look for Tony Holly, photographer, as he prepares prints and cards for the Christmas markets. This logotype will, though, serve him all year round.

A single holly leaf as a symbol (less ‘Christmassy’ than a sprig with berries) is combined with a sharp, crisp but ‘natural’ serif typeface (Eric Gill’s Perpetua) for his namestyle.

The wonders of nature are often subjects for his pictures, now he has an identity which reflects this.

This will be our last Christmas with a child at the School so I’ll probably attend and embarass Cara in front of her friends with some dad dancing.

NB. As WordPress doesn’t allow advertising these banners are not ‘live’, just here as examples of my work.

The Brain and Spine Foundation had raised funds to publish a ‘toolkit’ explaining to Educational Psychologists the process of recovery for children who have suffered head injuries. I designed/artworked the complete toolkit and also produced collage illustrations depicting the sorts of things that go on in a child’s mind – some examples are shown here.I arranged profile portrait photos to be taken at a B+SF group weekend gathering. In a workshop there the children put down on paper with images and with words the things that interest them. From these ingredients I assembled the various collage items, adding others myself, to create illustrations – a teenage music fan, a computer whizz, a football supporter, a young bookworm, a rocketeer, a deep sea explorer . . .

The latest release by Charlie Synphonia on CCT Records with download artwork and CD cover designed by me. A photograph taken by Charlie in the Ramblas, Barcelona in mid-winter provides a mysterious, atmospheric cover suitable for his music. ‘A raw mix of stripped down unaffected live drums with crunchy muddy filtered samples, taking the listener through a filthy dark landscape’. Nice.