This is NOT Consultation

The Council has manipulated and misrepresented the consultation process throughout to suppress any negative feedback from residents and to represent a level of support for their plan that simply isn't there. These plans are the council's, not ours. Their “consultation” was them informing us what they intend to do to us and telling us it's what we asked for.

Examples of the methods of manipulation and suppression will be given in detail, along with examples of how the Council has persistently reported overwhelming support when they knew this to be untrue.

If you read the publicity put out by the council, they regularly include the phrase “co-production”. Involved residents who attempted to have some meaningful influence over their plans challenged the council again and again to stop using the phrase “co-production” as it was untrue. Eventually, there was an admission that residents did not co-produce but in fact “influenced” the council's decisions. Though in their planning application, they again claim we co-produced with them.

The evidence is that the only influence we may have had was over things like water taps and art not substantial matters like the scale of the development or retaining community land and facilities. LBHF Council are not the first to use deceptive consultations to appear to be co-producing when they are not. “Future of London” identified this practice in a report they released in 2023 describing it as Co-washing - a term they applied where there is an engagement process but it is largely meaningless as it does not devolve any decision-making power to community representatives.

The White City Residents' Association asked for the raw data from the developer consultations, but, like almost all the other requests for documents, they sent no evidence to support their claims.

About the council's consultation, residents stated that even though they raised objections and concerns to the council and its consultants, they were ignored. They had a sense that consultation was and remains meaningless as the council will go ahead regardless of residents' views.

Over the coming weeks, we will set out how the council has set the worst example for developers in the borough who may wish to ride roughshod over the wishes of the community.

We begin with the question of how an officer told the council that the council's White City Estate residents had told the council officers that they did not want a small development but instead wanted a very, very large one that would fill the entire centre of the Estate and take four years of demolition and re-development.

Coming Soon