For this week’s edition of ‘Nimby Watch’, we’re going on a road trip, from leafy Islington to Ipswich, where residents are wailing about warehouses…
Where to? We’re going on a little road trip this time, to answer the question of the ages: what unites the residents of central Islington with those of the suburbs outside Ipswich?
Not very much, I would have thought… And you’d be largely right. But the denizens of both areas are united by their years-long battles against a major blight facing the nation.
Crime? Climate change? People playing music through the speaker on public transport? Worse than all of those things. It’s something that has left Islington’s residents campaigning for the lives of their children, while at least one Ipswich resident told the BBC they been left ‘in tears’. It is, of course, warehouses.
Warehouses? Yes, warehouses. Big sheds that you put stuff in. And then take stuff out of again. We need quite a lot of them these days, especially since we like getting goods from online shopping delivered to our door as often as we do.
So what’s the problem, then? Let’s do one at a time. In Islington, Ocado leased a disused warehouse on the edge of an industrial estate – yes, Islington still has industrial estates – which used to be occupied by BT for payphone repairs. They wanted to use the warehouse as a delivery centre, with all-electric vans. Local residents and the council had different ideas.
I thought they might. Residents also that complained Ocado hadn’t asked for planning permission to use the warehouse building as … a warehouse.
Is that something you need planning permission for? According to Islington council, yes! Because the site had been disused for a while, it was eventually ruled that Ocado can’t use it without an extensive planning process – even though they’d promised to build plant walls, use all electric vehicles, and more. As the site isn’t suitable for housing or commercial space, it seems that the council and the locals would rather it would be left derelict.
Well, maybe the centre of the country’s biggest city is a bad place for a warehouse anyway. Well, it’s not entirely unreasonable to try to put a grocery delivery centre – which sends out perishable goods, after all – near its customers. And Islington residents do love their Ocado shops. But let’s say go with the idea that cities are a bad place for warehouses. Where should we put them?
I can see some problems with sticking them right out in the countryside. Well, it’s not particularly handy for the customers, and would mean lots more trucks on rural roads. But there’s also the issue of trying to find some rural land that no-one thinks is part of some area of outstanding natural beauty, home to some rare species, and isn’t farmland – because building anything on farmland is a whole headache of its own.
So … we’ve ruled out the cities and the countryside. I guess that leaves the suburbs? Get you with all the deduction, Sherlock. But this is what brings us to Ipswich – where residents are still upset about a warehouse built in their neighbourhood four years ago, and are pushing for compensation – with the BBC covering the whole row at length.
What’s the issue here? Largely the same as in Islington! People don’t like living near big sheds, though sometimes they get a bit hyperbolic. One woman complained having a grey wall at the end of her garden was ‘like being in a prison camp’, which seems a little bit extreme.
So, no warehouses in cities, at the edges of cities and towns, or in the countryside. Where does that leave? Nowhere. It leaves nowhere. And that’s the problem in a nutshell – we all want the benefits and convenience of online shopping and deliveries, but the products don’t actually come from the cloud. They come from warehouses, and need delivering to our homes.
That doesn’t mean the warehouse has to be where I can see it, though. Maybe it does! Someone has to see it from their house. Warehouses mean jobs, activity, convenience and maybe even economic growth – all of which we want, but without any of the downsides.
This is what any plans to reform planning are up against – they don’t just have to make the process quicker, but they’ll need to do the much harder job of changing our attitudes too. Because as long as we feel entitled to protect our view, our vibe and to refuse building on nebulous other grounds, we’re going to miss out on the upsides, too.
Okay, but ‘fess up: did Jeff Bezos pay you to write this? He did not. But if he’d like to send a thank you, his companies do know where I live…
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