'Out of chaos will come order' opened the inaugural document announcing the establishment of the North Kensington Amenity Trust at Kensington Town Hall on 5th February 1971. Acknowledging the disruption of 'uprooted homes and years of dust, dirt and noise to the thousands of people living in a very densely populated area', the document was nevertheless distinctly upbeat. It staked the claim of the Trust 'as a unique and independent body whose task will be to carry out a major experiment in local government'. And, it presented the motorway as 'an opportunity to restore the land to provide facilities for the local community'.
But two of its statements were to be hotly disputed in the early years. On finance, it anticipated that 'the Royal Borough will provide a large sum as working capital during the first year whilst the Trust is finding its feet' and further hoped that 'various charitable institutions and other philanthropic bodies will feel that they can provide financial assistance'. On public consultation, an invitation was given to 'any organisation or body which may be interested in locating its activity on motorway land' to apply to the Trust giving details of the space it required.
No models
Yet how was the Trust going to respond? It had land in a congested inner-city area but no firm plans for what to do with it, and nothing like it had been set up before. In fact the opposing lobbies, those for regenerating inner cities and those for urban motorways (worried about the political acceptability of such roads) were as eager to see what the Trust could do as local people were.
The Trust's domain was the 23-acre eyesore stretching from the White City roundabout in the west to the Paddington railway lines a mile to the east. Left in an understandably crude state by the motorway contractors and ineffectively protected from fly tippers, it was not a pretty sight. The longer it was derelict, the worse it became. Drunks and vagrants made it their haunt, despite the best efforts of the Trust to tidy up the land and to create attractive little parks for local residents. And at the western end, travellers occupied the 10-acre roundabout site earmarked for sports facilities.
The committee had no models to draw on when trying to decide the qualities required of a Director when the first job at the Trust was advertised and 80 applications were received. Out of 20 interviewed, Anthony Perry got the job. A 42-year old film producer, he was enthusiastic about getting involved in the community where he had lived for the past eight years. Though his previous experience did not relate closely to the job in hand, it was said that anyone who could produce a watchable film out of the chaos of a film set must be able to do something useful with the motorway land.
With Perry and a tiny staff installed in a run-down house condemned for residential use in the remains of Acklam Road – one of the victims of the motorway – the Trust began to think about how it was going to finance and develop its twenty-three acres.
Would the Council pay?
The views of the committee were at odds. The 'large sum' from the Council predicted in the inaugural document turned out to be a start-up grant of £25,000. Crofton and his fellow councillors wanted the Trust to concentrate on fund-raising from charities and other authorities like the ILEA and to finance the building of community facilities from commercial developments. At this stage the Council had no intention of providing further funding for the Trust. If ratepayers' money was going to have to sustain it, there was no point in having the Trust at all. It would be easier and cheaper to run the whole scheme by sub-committee from the Town Hall. A year on, Crofton was still stoutly maintaining that the Trust 'must learn to stand on its own feet' – a much publicised statement that did little to impress charities who were prepared to assist the Trust, and especially not in the absence of sustained matching funding from the local authority.
The alternative view from community representatives on the committee was that as the Trust was doing the work of the Council, the Council should pay for it all. A range of community facilities was the least the people of North Kensington could expect as compensation for the experience of endless motorway noise and pollution, and a long-overdue contribution from a wealthy borough for the previous years of neglect. The MDT's community-generated plan, worked out before the Trust was set up, would have cost £2.5 million to build. Some representatives argued the Trust should now fight for the transfer of ratepayers' money from the rich south of the borough to the poor north so that building work could start immediately.
"We have no preconceived ideas about the background an applicant should have, but he will have to be someone quite exceptional – a veritable god. He will be a key figure in the development of the land.” – Kensington Post, 21 March 1971, quoting Lady Howe, Vice
Chair of the Trust.
How to get local people's ideas?
Needing to find a way forward, Sir Patrick Reilly and the newly appointed Anthony Perry were prepared to fundraise from charities and companies, but soon discovered that properly worked up schemes were needed before charities would consider funding them. The Trust's first approach was to prepare a loose overall strategy for the use of the land. This incorporated such general features as sporting and recreation use on the roundabout site, commercial use off Malton Road and social and community use in the central area.
To decide what should actually be built within these sections, at its first public meeting, held on 4 July 1972, a year and a day after its inauguration, the Trust aimed to exhibit the plans it had been working on and to get reactions. If people did not come forward with their own ideas, they might come out and say what they thought of the Trust's. About 300 people packed into the meeting. Perry outlined the rough schemes proposed and went on to say, 'We have, I believe, established an independent identity of our own. But we also enjoy neighbourly relations with all the many dedicated groups within the area'. 'Not true' came from the floor, followed by heckling, mayhem and uproar. The Press reported 'repeated demands made from the audience for the Trust to hand over the land to the people to use as they wanted'. And there were objections that too much commercial development was proposed. After a stormy two hours the meeting broke up with nothing agreed.
Little progress to report
Perry and Reilly were depressed by their failure to connect with 'real' local people and did not accept the claim of vocal activists to represent 'the silent majority'. When they first started work, they had expected to be faced with the difficult task of choosing between scores of deserving projects worked out by local people and all needing space. The reality could hardly have been more different. By the time of the Trust's first AGM in 1972, eighteen months after it had been set up, not only had nothing permanent been built, but very little temporary use had been made of the motorway land. Leaving aside the independent adventure playground which continued to flourish, the only other 'facilities' were a few concerts on Portobello Green, a four week summer season in a temporary theatre in one of the bays, and a well attended sports weekend on the roundabout site. But this was hardly progress in the Trust's or anybody else's eyes.
Delays on the lease
Delays on the Trust's lease further deadlocked progress and soured relations on the committee. The Council could not sublet the land to the Trust until it had the head lease from the freeholders, the GLC. It took three years for terms to be agreed and another three years before the Trust's sublease was agreed and signed. The problems of amalgamating some 400 individual titles to different parts of the motorway land had caused much of the delay. And the District valuer had advised doubling the £23,000 rent the Council had already agreed with the GLC. Further protracted negotiations were necessary to persuade the GLC to stick to the original figure. On the sublease, the Trust was holding out until the Council took action to evict the travellers who had moved onto its land.
Apart from providing its critics with further ammunition, the delay over the lease had the practical effect of preventing the Trust from concluding deals on some of its commercial developments. A lender would not offer a mortgage on land to which the borrower did not have a secure title, and no tenancy agreements could be drawn up. Meanwhile, the Council, who were retaining some 'prime sites' under the motorway, was getting on with its own developments. The first buildings to emerge under the motorway – the Westway Information & Aid Centre and the Westway Lunch Club, on either side of Ladbroke Grove – were to be Council owned and run. The contrast made the Trust look increasingly ineffectual and local criticism grew.
Finding a way forward
Two years on, having failed to engage local people in the decision-making process as much as it had hoped, the Trust was still proceeding largely by trial and error and trying to match schemes and money as it went along. Its overall land-use plan had been ratified by the planners in August 1973 and it could now press ahead with individual projects that fitted this brief as soon as money and viable schemes became available. It would be criticised. One of its own working parties was already leveling the charge of 'imperialism'. But if it continued with the desperately slow and so far fruitless process of open public consultation, it would come under increasing fire for a lack of results.
A group of working parties set up by the Trust helped bring local people and organisations into a more structured engagement. The result was that, during 1973 and the two following years, progress at last began to be made first with planning and fundraising and then with actual building. In its fourth annual report in October 1975 the Trust breathed an audible sigh of relief, 'At last, real achievements to report'. The AGM that year was the first that the Trust, now chaired by Jennifer Jenkins, could face with genuine confidence.
"The Trust has a most formidable task and only when you start to tackle it can you understand why it takes so long to achieve anything concrete.” – Letter from Sir Patrick Reilly, Chair of the Trust, to a community activist, July 1972
Real developments at last
The public’s and the Trust’s confidence rested on developments, worth £600,000, now in the pipeline. These included Acklam Hall and Maxilla Social Club; a large sports pitch on the roundabout site; an all-weather floodlit pitch in Bay 66 in Acklam Road; low-rent offices for community groups and charities at Thorpe Close, off Ladbroke Grove, and nine bays of light engineering workshops at Malton Road. Planning and fund-raising were also progressing on another important community facility, a pioneering nursery centre at Maxilla Gardens.
What had broken the building log-jam more than anything else was a long-awaited agreement on the lease of Trust land. The Trust could not start any major building projects until it had possession. It had taken three years to reach an accord with the Council on the lease. It was a further year before the travellers were moved off Trust land. Then in September 1975, contractors moved onto the Acklam Hall site and the 'first sod' was turned a week later.