DJ Chris Moyles’ Highgate concerns are listened to
A BAND of Highgate residents – including Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles – has won a year-long battle to stop an “eyesore” development blighting their area.
The modernist three-storey home, proposed for a site backing onto Cholmeley Park, had been compared to a leisure centre and the 1980s arcade game character Pac-Man.
Nearby homeowners also fought hard against plans to chop down a cluster of prized 80ft sycamore trees to make way for the new property.
Mr Moyles, who lives nearby, voiced particular concern about lopping down the trees, which he said provided a vital shield helping to protect his privacy.
But this week, to the relief of the Breakfast show DJ, scores of other residents and Highgate councillors, the unpopular building project was rejected by Haringey Council.
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Cllr Rachel Allison was “thrilled” that the planning application had been turned down.
“It’s one of these things that residents have been working really hard with councillors just to get listened to,” she said.
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Resident Keith Gold added: “I’m delighted and I’m particularly pleased that all the councillors in the meeting understood how inappropriate the design was.
“If that’s an example of community planning – we’ll have more of that.”
Cllr Allison argued that residents could not be accused of acting like “nimbys” who were indiscriminately opposing all plans.
For example, there were no complaints against proposals to renovate a Grade II-listed Victorian villa on the site and to erect a block of four flats.
“No-one was against the renovations on the listed building on Archway Road and they didn’t object to the flats,” she said.
“They just objected to the new house. It was pig ugly and it looked like Pac-Man at the back. The windows over a balcony looked like eyes and a mouth. It was the stuff of nightmares.”
The fight against the scheme proposed for the contested plot, which straddles Archway Road and Cholmeley Park, began in October 2010.
The development attracted huge opposition from the outset and angry letters of objections flooded the council’s in-tray.
In response, the developers Loromah Estates amended its designs and resubmitted them in February this year.
But their efforts were to no avail because on Monday a Haringey Council planning committee rejected the revised blueprint.
