One of the earliest discoveries in the council’s documentation on the proposed EF Language School development is that the immediate neighbours, St John the Evangelist Church on Hills Road and Lady Jane Court on Cavendish Avenue, were shown early plans some months ago. It’s a shame that the scheme wasn’t brought to the attention of the remainder of residents on Hills Road and Cavendish Avenue (such as us) at the same time. But I guess developers only do what they have to do. The main document describing the development also states that the council were given “a detailed feasibility study for pre-application advise” (sic) over two years ago. I hate how this stuff doesn’t appear to be made public …or at least not publicised.
The document, which was written by the developers, quotes a Mr Tony Collins from the council confirming back then that “the proposal to provide residential accommodation on the site, dedicated to the use of EF students, should be viewed favourably”. Not by the local residents it wouldn’t be, I’m quite sure. It also reports that there had been an open evening on 13th February 2012 to which all of the residents of Lady Jane Court were invited; this had been attended by approximately 8 residents, “which was not as high as anticipated”, but that “the majority of the informal feed-back was positive and we received four written feed-back forms which were unanimously supportive of the proposals.” That’s a big surprise, if true.