Outrage in Kensington and Chelsea Council

Outrage and disbelief spread in Kensington and Chelsea Council last Thursday, as the assembly was rejected a saying in the erection of TfL cameras in the borough’s conservation areas.

The congestion charging cameras in dispute were put up on Holland Park Avenue and Abbotsbuty Road by Transport for London (TfL) without planning permission in 2006.

The council has objected to the cameras since autumn 2005, and the Planning Inspector’s decision to reject their demand was therefore met with “extreme disappointment”.

The main concern of the council is the appearance of the cameras, which is said to disfigure the conservation areas in which they are erected. Deputy Leader of the Council, Daniel Moylan, said:

“The decision, which we are still considering, means that TfL is under no constraint about what it erects in conservation areas and this clearly cannot be right.”

In an earlier report TfL noted that cameras would be “designed in accordance with accepted streetscape design guides,” but today the message was different. A spokesman said:

“Our legal advice was that we did not need planning permission for these sites, and we are pleased this was confirmed.”

Since 2003 around 700 congestion charging cameras covering the entrances to central London have been put up by TfL.


Reflective report
I discovered the story about the congestion charging cameras on Kensington and Chelsea’s web-page and decided to write it because the cameras had been an ongoing talking point in the local neighbourhood in the past. I created a new angle on the story by stressing the sharpened conflict between the council and Tfl in the intro and continued this angle throughout the article.
I decided to use a rather dramatic language in the article to highlight the long dispute the verdict against the council was the result of. Unfortunately, the quote I got from TfL did not live up to the intense conflicting tone in the article but as it was the result of an intense effort to get in touch with the right person, and I finally received the answer by email, I did not have the opportunity to ask more specifically into the conflict and get a better quote.
I therefore chose to make the article relatively short and not to include too many details about previous problems between TfL and the Council of Kensington and Chelsea. I also did this because the new conflict did not obviously relate to the old conflicts, and I was afraid that it might seem, as if I was implying that it did, if I mixed the information together.