Cgcc Tra
Jacqueline
Czelny
Chair
Mission
We aim to preserve our safe environment for the residents as well as the sense of ‘community spirit’ for all. The Catherine Griffiths Clerkenwell Community Tenants and Residents Association (CGCC TRA), have been supporting residents in the area and helping to preserve the local community and its spirit. Our members are primarily made up tenants of social housing specially the elderly, disabled and children with special needs.
Category
Environment
Additional Information
Background : Our members have been living in the Clerkenwell area for years independently and enjoy the cultural heritage of the area. Many of our older members who are into their 80’s remain living in this community which offer elements of independent living such as keeping pets and continuing emotional and practical support from neighbours, local organisations, etc. This is amazing considering they live less than a mile from the City of London and a ten minutes bus ride to the West End.
Unfortunately, their health and living environment is being threatened with gentrification, which led the multi millions pound conglomerate who are looking for more profit, by buying up land from cash striped local councils, building taller buildings to maximise profit, using legal loopholes (FVA) to avoid and then transfer the responsibility of building affordable housing to local council, which is too poor to build any. The Mayor was asked to look into the deprivation of affordable housing and his office stated the site was too small for them to intervene, and the Mayor did not accept our plea of erosion of housing stock.
The whole building project will have both short and long term harmful effects to the above vulnerable group and we are fighting to ensure the strictest compliance and monitoring will be in place to protect the residents from all harmful effects from noise, harmful air pollution e.g. NOx, overlooking and any other nuisance associate with the hotel and offices.
Aim : we want to raise our profile via social media for practical and financial support.
We did obtain legal support to challenge the planning application in an Inquiry. A subsequent successful case in West London of refusal of permission to replace land used as allotments with residential flats, and to relocate allotments to Syon Park reminded us that social media could play a significant role.
We therefore would like to receive help and advice in using social media.