The Association’s Annual General Meeting will take place in St Helens Church hall (St Helens Gardens W10) on Thursday 1st November at 8pm.  The meeting is open to all members, and to anyone living in the streets around the St Quintin Estate.

There will be the usual formal business of electing a management committee and officers for the association.  We have a management committee of 12, with two members standing down this year, and please email sthelensassn@aol.com before the meeting if you wish to stand for election.

The officers of the association have agreed to continue for a further year, if re-elected.  These are: Chairman, Henry Peterson, Vice Chairman Ruth Hillary, Treasurer Maggie Tyler, and Secretary Tania Martin.

For the main discussion at the AGM, we want to talk about about the past and present of Latimer Road, and to get peoples ideas for its future.

Latimer Road is part of the Freston Road/Latimer Road Employment Zone, within the current planning framework of RB Kensington and Chelsea.  The council has recently launched an Enterprise Review, looking at the future of employment zones in the Borough.  Fresh thinking is needed, not least because Latimer Road is one of the few parts of the borough where offices and business units prove hard to let.

As part of the proposed neighbourhood plan for this area, we feel that Latimer Road could be improved.  It currently lacks pedestrian footfall, but this will change when the proposed east west underpass beneath the railway is built.  Plans for this project have not been finalised, but £4m of funding is included in the Imperial West S106 agreement.  It is understood that the underpass might be built as part of the earlier phases of the construction programme for Imperial West, in the next year or two.

So we would like to seek the views of our members on the regeneration of Latimer Road, and how to bring more life to the area.  We will be showing examples of how some similar roads and streets in London have achieved a good mix of workshops, offices, studios, and residential, which in turn bring cafes and restaurants to the area (or ensure the survival of those already there).

We hope that you can join us for this discussion, Thursday November 1st at 8pm.

There has been a big local reaction to this proposed 8 storey development behind Lichfield Studios.  Many objection letters and emails have already been submitted to Kensington Town Hall.

It has also emerged that the level of consultation with Oxford Gardens school, which the development will overshadow, has been pretty minimal.   The Head, Governors and parents of pupils at the school seem to have been told little about the plans.

As a result, the Council has agreed to extend the public consultation period, and the new deadline is October 27th.  We are distributing this Crowthorne Road development leaflet to houses in Oxford Gardens and Wallingford Avenue, to make sure everyone gets to hear about these proposals.  Click on the link above to see a list of reasons for objecting to the current plans and (if you have not already done so) please email or write to the council with your views.