Critics of the royals have found another stick to beat the Cambridges with. Residents of their select corner of London are reportedly up in arms over plans for a double-storey extension beneath the Orangery at Kensington Palace, citing the noise, the pollution and the general inappropriateness of the whole idea. Defenders of the scheme insist that it is about making more space for the duke and duchess’s charity staff, and improving facilities for visitors.
High-profile planning disputes, especially about so-called mega-basements in the capital — because that is where the payback from additional space is greatest — have become a feature of the city landscape.
Only last week, Jung Chang, author of the best-selling Wild Swans about real life in Mao Zedong’s China, made a well-publicised cry of anguish about her neighbours’ plans for a lavish wine cellar. Also a resident of Kensington, she said that her next book could be at risk, given the likely disturbance from the building works.
Over the past couple of years, there have been similar impassioned pleas from a host of well-known individuals, among them Tom Conti, Brian May and Edna O’Brien. They all pleaded that they needed peace and quiet to do what they do and that planned works would be a catastrophic intrusion. It would be easy to dismiss the complaints as the whingeing of a well-heeled privilegentsia with time on their hands, friends in the media happy to air their cause, and the money — if personal connections don’t work — ultimately to go to court. An everyday story, in other words, of the 2 per cent; so nothing that affects the rest.
So far as mega-basements are concerned, that is partly true. Only the truly well-off can afford them. And until the latest spate of complaints, the problem seemed to be going away. The two London boroughs most affected have imposed new restrictions, and one (Westminster) has introduced a two-tier noise and nuisance control, which boils down to a special service for the rich.
But the narrow focus on mega-basements and fights among the super-rich risks obscuring what is, or should be, a real issue. It is not just those in the plushest parts of the capital, with neighbours drilling down to accommodate their wine collection, whose lives are made hell by construction. Anyone — owner or tenant, in the capital or not — whose home is affected by other people’s building works has to suffer the self-same disturbance and the self-same blights of noise and dust, but without a public platform to complain.
Those who work from home — an increasing number — or who are housebound because of frailty or illness have little choice but to suffer in silence, or rather what used to be silence, but is now the pounding of demolition balls, the constant vibration from the excavators and the ear-splitting agony of heavy-duty drills. That is before the constant wheezing of ill-conditioned lorries, and the dust that penetrates everything, everywhere.
There are regulations, of course. But these allow continuous and almost limitless noise from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays, which hardly gives those who do not leave home for 9-5 work much choice but to bat down the hatches and insert the earplugs. There are supposed to be air quality and noise controls, too. But they are lax compared with most European standards; construction companies are well-versed in where to place such devices (to least effect), and enforcement by cash-strapped councils — whether on hours or decibels — leaves a lot to be desired.
Much has been said recently about the United Kingdom’s failure to comply with European Union air quality rules, with the emphasis on traffic fumes, and the shocking damage to public health. But there must be places where construction dust is at least as damaging to air quality and where extreme noise from constant drilling raises stress levels, with equally adverse effects on health. Scandinavia limits the noise that can be made from drilling in domestic settings. Why can’t we?
With new housing sorely needed and Britain’s infrastructure out of date, construction of all varieties can neither be postponed nor avoided. But one reason for the strength of nimbyism in Britain has to be the lax oversight of development and the negligible consideration given to the quality of life, and health, of neighbours.
The pity is that so long as the negative impacts of development command attention only when celebrities are threatened with a mega-basement next door, the human costs to the 98 per cent will not be addressed.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster.
