Residents' Association Forum

Plans to demolish Brabant House on Portsmouth Road and replace with three storey building incorporating eight flats (http://www.elmbridgetoday.co.uk/News/Plans_for_eight_new_homes_Thames_Ditton_0000003158.aspx)

2012/0883 (http://www3.elmbridge.gov.uk/WAM/showCaseFile.do?appName=planning&appNumber=2012/0883)

Many thanks for flagging this up, Ratty - it seems to have escaped the radar, for this is the first i've hard of it certainly.

This would be demolition of a part of local History.  Brabant House, in the late 1800s the offices of the Kingston-based Rural Sanitary Authority, became the first office of the brand new Esher & the Dittons Urban District Council in May 1895, remaining the council office until 1923 when Sandown House in Esher was bought.

Neither the Design & Access statement nor the local press mentions this rather significant aspect of the old building, which contains some rooms and ceilings from the former days of local glory.  I will bring this to wider attention.

Brabant House is now (just) in Hinchley Wood ward, which seems to be why it didn't appear on our radar, and I have brought it to the attention of HWRA as well as our own Association.

I suspect that absent any local listing there is little that can be done about the proposed demolition,  so a decent Victorian house will disappear and its history will remain merely as a few lines of print and a few pixels.  There is a certain sweet irony in the inheritors of the Council's history nodding through its obliteration.  Never let it be said of the current  Elmbridge Administration that the corporate pride of  a few provincial burghers stood in the way of lucrative private development.

However, I feel we cannot let the building go without voicing at least a cry of pain, so although planning grounds may not be strong I have objected to its demolition on history grounds.  Others may object to the proposed replacement - yet again, office use will give way to the more profitable residential use.

PS: the objections so far raised by others look fairly cogent.

Application refused on the basis that the proposed development would be set well forward of the existing building, and therefore would be unduly prominent.

I'm afraid your objection Keith received short shrift: "The existing building is neither listed nor located in a conservation area, hence it is not a heritage asset."

It's a shame that our planning officers have such a narrow viewpoint.

Ah well, I could not let it go unremarked though that response was always likely.

It would not be surprising if there was, in due course, a renewed application setting the development far enough back to meet the Planning officer's grounds for refusal.

Meanwhile, the Brabant Clinic (and no doubt Street Child Africa too) are keen to make known that they continue in business at Brabant House.

New plans now submitted for the site. Ref is 2012/4521...

The Castle Wildish Marketing Report seems to totally ignore Keith's potted history of the building's true heritage.