The people of South Woodford have been fighting a valiant and intense battle against plans to impose a massive and dominating mosque on their area. This mosque is needed by nobody apart from the Muslims who currently occupy a small mosque that is already on the site and there is majority objection to this mosque among locals of all races and beliefs. People are quite rightly concerned that this huge three storey ‘mosquestrosity’ will dominate the area, bring no extra trade to local businesses and may even push potential customers of these businesses away due to the increased pressure on parking.
The fight against this mosque has been going on for well over three years with the application being refused by the then Conservative run Redbridge council. The mosque promoters appealed and there was much too-ing and froing with applications and amended applications but ultimately the application was, people thought, refused for good. Unfortunately there has been a change of administration in Redbridge from Conservative to Labour in recent years and earlier this year the mosque promoters resubmitted their application to impose this unwanted mosque on South Woodford. The now Labour majority Redbridge council has decided to ride roughshod over the majority of local people in South Woodford who were surveyed about the mosque, and impose it on South Woodford despite valid objections to it.
I was not at the planning meeting last Thursday 28th March, but some sources for this blog were in attendance. One source said that the eleven person council planning committee voted six to two to grant planning permission and impose this mosque. There were five abstentions to this vote. My source told me that there were elements of the planning hearing that seemed wrong to them. For example they said that when the solicitor for the residents group from South Woodford, who are objecting to the imposition of this mosque, got up to put the resident’s case for refusing permission for this mosque, one councillor dismissed his input on the grounds that he ‘wasn’t local’. I must admit that this looks to me to be a very specious reason for dismissing the input of a lawyer? It is highly unlikely that any objector group to any particular planning application would have a lawyer who just happened to live in the potentially affected area. Lawyers do not always live above the shop so to speak.
Another source from the meeting seemed to get the impression that the mosque application was getting a much easier ride from the councillors than should be the case. Whilst I accept that this is a subjective impression, the allegation that has been made to me that the councillors were making pro-mosque application ‘speeches’ and not asking pertinent questions about the application, does give a questionable impression. It gives the impression, to me at least, that here were councillors who were being somewhat partisan towards the application and also to Islam.
This impression is given some more solidity by this source’s claim that the architect of the new mosque was invited to speak, but was not listed on the documentation for the meeting. Neither it is alleged, were any questions from objectors allowed to be asked of the architect. Instead the architect was allowed to wax lyrical about this project and bang on about aspects of the design that had little bearing on some of the issues that lay at the heart of the objections to this mosque, that of access, parking and the potential for local disturbance. The number of objectors to this mosque imposition speaks for itself. The number of objections (579) exceeded those in favour (546). That included representations outside the Borough. South Woodford (E18) residents voted 75% against (502 compared with 163). That is a massive majority to say no to this unwanted mosque. Three quarters of those liable to be immediately affected and afflicted by this mosque, that’s the residents of South Woodford itself, yet the Labour run council decided to side with the Muslims against those whose quality of life and businesses will be adversely affected by this mosque. When it comes to local government and local democracy, with Labour it seems that some animals are more equal than others. The Labour Party in Redbridge does what it all too often does, which is dump unwanted mosques on areas that will suffer because of them and to say hell with those whose area will be blighted by them.
From what I can gather from speaking to those close to this issue, this planning meeting was characterised by a significant lack of impartiality on the part of the council. It may not be possible to appeal this matter via the planning process, although if the application had been refused such an appeal would have been open to the mosque promoters. There certainly seem to be questions that need to be raised and directed to the council about the conduct of the planning meeting and it is to be hoped that this decision and the manner that it has been taken, is properly challenged through as many channels as possible.
Links
Previous articles going back to 2013 regarding the imposition of a mosque on the people of South Woodford
2013
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2013/12/15/news-from-south-woodford-mosque-busted-for-the-moment/
2014
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2014/07/02/good-news-from-south-woodford-mosque-plan-rejected-again/
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2014/08/21/bullst-supreme-from-an-imam-in-south-woodford-essex/
2015
2016
2017
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2017/03/09/south-woodford-mosque-plan-finally-busted/
2019
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2019/02/19/south-woodford-mosque-e-teers-have-another-go/
