Griff Rhys Jones says London needs nimbys and himbys

Griff Rhys Jones, who is president of the both heritage group Victorian Society, and Civic Voice, which represents amenity societies, is due to address the Highgate Society’s annual general meeting on May 22.

Ahead of the meeting, he told the Ham&High that everyone should be a 'nimby' - which stands for 'not in my back yard' - or a 'himby', which he says means 'heritage in my back yard'.

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Jones said nimbys are not the same as himbys, but both aim to preserve or protect their local environment.

In backing those who are often depicted as a brake on housebuilding, he is opposing Prime Minister and Holburn and St Pancras MP Sir Keir Starmer, who has vowed to take on nimbys amid Britain’s housing crisis, saying they stand in the way of growth.

Jones, who has spoken to amenity groups around the country, said: "Are we nimbys blockers or people who are stopping growth, and are we doing it it to protect our mortgages, a lot of things I've been accused of?

"Planning starts at the front gate. People are concerned about what happens in their immediate localities. Often they don't know if they can't do anything about it. They often feel a little powerless because very big developments are beyond their recourse.

"But the truth is that 97% of planning applications in this country go through unopposed. The notion that that 3% are being held up and this is somehow to blame for the economic decline of Great Britain is an absurdity and Keir Starmer ought to stop saying that." 

The comedian has campaigned against developer BC Partners plan to demolish Selkirk House, a former 1960s hotel and replace it with a 74m high tower near the British Museum in Bloomsbury.

He said: "The problem for everybody who lives in Camden is that making alterations as a private citizen is a really tough thing to do.

"If you are a big corporation however, it seems you can arrive at Selkirk House, next to the British Museum, built by Lord Forte, and the only other skyscraper in that region is the still-to-be-occupied Centre Point.

"This was bought by French developers who have successfully gone to Camden and said we can't repair this building unless we have the right to make this building much bigger than it is already and add another 10 storeys.

"Why do they have such big success with that? Big developers are able to offer big incentives to councils, who are, as we know, short of money, and offer them a wad, a bung, which goes to the council as Community Levy funds or as affordable homes payment, even if it doesn't go towards affordable homes.

"We down on the ground are perplexed by this because if we wanted to do that with our own houses we'd find ourselves in difficulties with a very strict planning process."

Jones said developments in Shoreditch or Kings Cross, were examples of really successful developments making use of the existing townscapes "because we, human beings, we like story, we like character, we like history, we like it to be around us".

He added: "Good planning and good developers often incorporate existing buildings very well and there are good reasons for doing this - recycling a building is a green way to approaching a building, we use up huge amount of carbon knocking them down and we need to preserve them.

"The idea that we should just give in to a developer who finds it simpler to take a bulldozer and knock everything down and start again, is just a myth, it's just stupid we let that happen."

The Highgate Society AGM will take place at St Michael’s School, in North Road, at 6.30pm.