Westway Development Trust History


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	The decade-by-decade picture galleries show in pictures how the local community has responded to the motorway and accompany the history of the Trust's early years below.

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Taking on the Motorway - A history of the first 21 years of the Westway Development Trust (known until 2002 as North Kensington Amenity Trust)

By local historian Andrew Duncan

The following sections include the full text as published in 1991. For more recent news see LATEST NEWS or consult our recent ANNUAL REPORTS - to contact us with any queries email CLICK HERE TO EMAIL info@westway.org

INTRODUCTION - THE MOTORWAY COMES

| Protests and Campaigns | Conflict and Success | National Interest |

CHAPTER ONE - NORTH KENSINGTON FIGHTS BACK

CHAPTER TWO - CAMPAIGN FOR THE TRUST

CHAPTER THREE - ORDERING CHAOS

CHAPTER FOUR - WOULD THE TRUST DEVELOP? Touch and Go

CHAPTER FIVE - BUILDING ASSETS, DEVELOPING SKILLS

CHAPTER SIX - THE TRUST AND ITS COMMUNITY The People's Plan

The Motorway Comes

In the mid 1960s an overhead motorway, the A40(M), was driven through North Kensington, the most northern district of the inner London borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The other highways already bisecting the area were historic routes into and out of London, and communities had naturally grown up around them. Staked out on giant stilts, the motorway monolith, �the largest continuous concrete structure in the country', now sped cars in and out of the city centre over the lives of the people of North Kensington. It brought blight, noise and disruption to a community already contending with economic hardship, a decaying inner city environment and local government neglect.

Protests and Campaigns

As this modem engineering feat encountered North Kensington's stock of nineteenth century housing, homes were demolished, streets chopped in half or left stranded as little as twenty feet from the new raised highway, exposed to the constant noise of traffic and the nightly glare of headlights. The protests of residents of Walmer Road and Pamber Street hit the international headlines when the motorway opened in 1970. By then a decade of community action networks had grown up in North Kensington in the fight for better housing and open spaces where children could play. Energetic activists set up grass roots associations, organised on local issues and campaigned for improvements.

Out of a four-year campaign, North Kensington Amenity Trust was set up in partnership with the local authority in response to two demands. The mile strip of land under the motorway which lay within the borough's boundaries should be used to compensate the community for the damage and destruction caused by the road. And the 23 acres should be held in trust to ensure that local people would be actively involved in determining its use.

Conflict and Success

The story of the Trust is one of conflict, for it was born out of bitter clashes between an angry local community and the two planning authorities that gave consent to the motorway intruder - the GLC (Greater London Council) and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. But it is also a story of hope. Over 20 acres of derelict land have been reclaimed. Today, a diverse portfolio of commercial developments, occupying one fifth of the land, contribute to the local economy and fund the Trust's charitable activities. Community facilities range from landscaped gardens to charity offices and from sports and fitness centres to lunch and social clubs. The Trust began life with a Council grant of �25,000. Today it is a self-sufficient charity with an annual turnover above �1 million and assets estimated at over �20 million. It now has the ability to make grants to community organisations and to help set up projects beyond its immediate boundaries.

But getting the Trust established has been a hard 20 years. Arguments have been fierce on the key issues. Long drawn out fights in the early days centred around local community as against Council control. Community representatives argued for funding from the rates, the Council for commercial development of the land - the debate on where the balance should be struck persists. Developer, landlord and property manager - the roles the Trust has grown into have been at odds with most people's expectations of a local charity. The 'people's trust' has become an entrepreneur, an organisation with a bureaucracy. But because of it the Trust has succeeded, in large measure, in delivering local people's ideas of what should be done with the land.

National Interest

There is now national interest in the contribution locally run development trusts can make to their neighbourhoods. The award-winning North Kensington Amenity Trust is cited as a pioneer and an example that can be replicated elsewhere. What has attracted interest is the Trust's success in finding ways to fund and sustain its developments; in bringing new resources into the area; in building assets that are retained in the community and in generating surpluses to meet new needs. With another hundred years still to go on its ground lease, the Trust and its community look well set to outlast the motorway above - and to continue a lively engagement.

CHAPTER ONE - North Kensington fights back - Westway

The 12-mile Western Avenue from White City Stadium to Denham was conceived as a fast exit from London before the First World War. Built in stages between 1920 and 1943 it balanced the Eastern Avenue on the other side of the city.

As traffic increased, it became apparent that the road had one major drawback: it was too short. Instead of whisking cars and lorries at motorway speed into the heart of London, it dumped them unceremoniously at White City, with three miles still to go to Marble Arch. Huge bottlenecks built up at Shepherds Bush just south of White City. Traffic then moved in a slow crawl along Holland Park Avenue and Bayswater Road. In their frustration, many drivers tried to find a way through the residential streets of Notting Hill. Accidents, pollution and congestion were the inevitable consequences. The solution to the problem had been proposed in the 30s. An extension linking Western Avenue with the Marylebone Road would provide an easy, fast access to the City and the West End and could follow the established artery of the Metropolitan railway line between Paddington and Latimer Road. War then post-war austerity intervened. By the late 50s the economic situation was more favourable, reform and modernisation were in the air, and the need for the road was greater than ever. The Western Avenue Extension, or Westway as it became known, was finally approved in the form of an urban motorway that was to straddle the inner city on huge concrete stilts.

Site clearance began in 1964, involving the demolition of hundreds of houses. From 1966, four years of continuous construction work followed on what was then the biggest road building scheme ever undertaken in London. During that time the central swathe of North Kensington and Paddington was little more than a vast building site. Continuous noise and dirt from heavy lorries and machinery became a familiar and unwelcome part of life. The road finally opened to traffic in July 1970. Minor works and cleaning up were completed a year later.

Engineering Triumph

In engineering terms, the new road was a triumph. Its two and a half miles made it the longest stretch of elevated motorway in Europe. It incorporated all sorts of advanced features from electric heating on gradients to special vibration-absorbing joints. Though the cost doubled during building to �33 million, the road appeared to fulfill the function for which it had been designed: within a few months of opening, 47,000 vehicles a day were cruising through the roof tops of North Kensington and Paddington, taking only a few minutes to cover ground which formerly used up to an hour of valuable commercial time. Though some claimed the effect of the new road was to transfer the Shepherd's Bush jam to Marylebone Road, it seemed to offer a solution to the problem of traffic congestion in urban areas. It had been intended as one of the main radial arms linking central London with an Inner Motorway Box, part of ambitious Greater London Council plans to run three concentric highway belts around London. The Box scheme was shelved in the 70s, leaving the half-mile M41, connecting the Westway roundabout with Shepherd's Bush, as its only monument.

" There was a terrible noise for weeks when they were pile-driving. They started at six o'clock in the morning - sometimes it went on all night. You think the whole city is being bombarded beneath you."

Eileen Wright, resident of Latimer Road, which was severed by the new highway.

Planning Disaster

In terms of people and communities, however, the elevated motorway was a disaster. Planned before the revolutionary Buchanan report of 1963, which called for new road schemes to take social and environmental factors into account, no attempt had been made to integrate it with the area through which it passed. The route was marked out on the map, the way cleared, and the road built. If an end of a street or a block got in the way, it was chopped, leaving houses in some cases less than 20 feet from passing traffic, their luckless inhabitants unable to claim compensation. As for the land left derelict under the motorway, the planners had given no thought to restoring it to local use.

At the official opening of the Western Avenue extension in July 1970, local residents expressed their feelings. Shouts of 'Philistine!' and 'Get us rehoused now!' met the arrival of Michael Heseltine, Parliamentary Secretary at the Transport Ministry. Arriving by lorry the wrong way up an 'unopened' slip road and evading a police block, protesters from Walmer Road and Pamber Street advanced down the motorway causing total confusion among the procession of official cars. Some sang 'uncomplimentary songs, especially composed for the occasion', according to the Kensington Post. The ministerial cavalcade later drove the length of the twin dual-carriageway, stopping opposite a row of three-storey terraced houses in Acklam Road, North Kensington, where residents had hung, 'Get us out of this Hell- Rehouse Us Now' on a huge banner outside their windows. It took residents and housing action groups up to two years of protracted lobbying and wrangling with the Greater London Council before all those most immediately affected by the motorway were eventually rehoused.

Will the Authorities Learn?

'Was anyone surprised when North Kensington gave a collective (and not always figurative) two-fingers sign to its �30 million motorway on Tuesday?', commented the Kensington Post three days after the opening. 'It is tragic that the energies, the talents and the involvement that North Kensingtonians can give, are having to be squandered once again - in fighting to preserve basic human dignities instead of working towards an exciting new environment. Acklam Road's problems will be sorted out after the usual sequence of threats, accusations, pleas, promises and delays. But will the authorities learn this time that North Kensington is determined to shape its own environment?'

" The social and physical fabric of this twilight area is inadequate in every way. The houses are old and decayed, the area is densely populated and there is limited provision for children to play. Poverty is a conspicuous problem with large families living on low incomes and paying high rents. "

Kensington and Chelsea Planning Committee report, 1968.

Rachman and Riots

The energies and skills of North Kensington had grown during a decade of determined community activity in the 60s. The new style action was imaginative and effective in goading dilatory authorities to start tackling the atrocious conditions. North Kensington, the predominantly working class area of the borough of Kensington (and, following local government re-organisation in 1964, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea), showed the classic symptoms of inner city decay.

Years of neglect by private landlords meant that by the 40s, when Christie the murderer was living in Notting Hill, much of the area had degenerated into a seedy, depressing slum characterised by leaking roofs, rotten windows, damp basements, outdoor wash-houses and privies, peeling paint and cracked stucco. The Rent Act of 1957 decontrolled rents with out giving security of tenure. Unscrupulous landlords and their agents, like the notorious Peter Rachman, put up rents, neglected essential repairs, used intimidation to force tenants to vacate property and let out one and two room units to whole families. Newly arrived immigrants from the West Indies, needing to live near to central London for work in the service industries, were charged exorbitant rents. In the summer of 1958 white gangs roamed the streets of Notting Hill attacking black people and their property.

" We had it very difficult with racialness when we came here. If you wanted somewhere to live you would go to somewhere to let. As soon as they saw that you were black they shut the door in your face. On the bus when we sit beside the English people they pull up themself from us as if they scorn us. "

Florence E/lis, local resident.

Spotlight on Notting Hill

The first of their kind in Britain, the riots caught the headlines and drew public attention to the area for the first time. The Mayor set up a committee to examine how race relations could be improved. The North Kensington Family Study, funded by the City Parochial Foundation, was set up to investigate the social and housing conditions which gave rise to the riots. Pearl Jephcott's book, 'A Troubled Area. Notes on Notting Hill' (1964), based on this study, provided seed-corn for many later reports and action programmes. The Methodist Church, with strong links in the West Indies, sent in three young ministers to build a multi-racial congregation. The Group Ministry which they formed started the Notting Hill Social Council in 1960, a forum where clergy, community and social workers met to pool perceptions and plan action on housing, infant welfare and the needs of disaffected young people. Bruce Kenrick, a Presbyterian minister who went on to start Shelter, the national campaign for the homeless, setup the Notting Hill Housing Trust in 1963.

Overcrowding, Bad Housing

Although some initiatives were successful, Notting Hill's problems - racial tension aggravated by fascists (in 1959 Oswald Mosley had stood for Parliament in North Kensington), bad housing, overcrowding and lack of safe, traffic-free areas for children to play-needed to be tackled in a different way. A survey of the area's housing undertaken by the Notting Hill Summer Project of 1967 documented the intense pressure on living space in North Kensington. Population density was twice that of the borough as a whole and one of the highest in London. Nearly half the children lived in overcrowded conditions. Three quarters of all households lacked an adequate number of bedrooms. The Royal Borough had the lowest number of council houses in London. Three quarters of all households lived in privately rented accommodation. In the Golborne & Colville wards, now facing either side of the new elevated motorway, 70% of households were living in multi-occupied accommodation and either shared or had no access to a bath or a shower.

The Council had yet to develop a firm policy on private landlords. Though prepared to fund housing associations to develop a non-profit housing sector, it was sparing in using its powers when it came to the private sector. And it showed little concern for improving the amenites of the neglected northern part of the borough which provided such a stark contrast to the pleasant leafy avenues in the south. The lack of urgency was seen by North Kensington as the indifference of the better-off part of the borough whose Conservative majority always dominated the Council.

North Kensington is a running sore on the rich fleshy arse of South Kensington. The Council wants to forget that it is

there. We must ensure that it hurts; that the longer the Council sits on it the more it will hurt. And that if it is not healed it will infect the whole body of the Borough. "

From The Hustler, a radical black broadsheet, July 1968.

Community Action

Community activists began taking a different, grass-roots approach to forcing the changes required. Tenants' associations successfully pressured landlords to open up private communal gardens as children's play areas. Alliances and networks were developed. The Notting Hill Community Workshop, started in 1965, played a leading part in the growing network of New Left socialist centres aiming to help local people 'fight to wrest from the authorities whatever they decide their community requires'. The London Free School, based on the American idea of self-organised learning for adults, set up classes on housing and immigration. It opened a neighbourhood advice centre, helped to organise the first Notting Hill Carnival in August 1966 and developed an adventure playground on part of the land cleared for the construction of the new motorway. In 1967 the Notting Hill People's Association was formed in response to the collapse of Henry Bowen Davies' �8 million property empire, with over 40 residential premises and a number of businesses in North Kensington. The Association's aims were to improve living conditions for tenants, fight exploitation and discrimination and provide playspace and recreational facilities for children.

In the same year, the Community Workshop initiated the Notting Hill Summer Project. Conceived by ex-CND campaigner George Clarke and organised by a coalition of churches and local groups, it was carried out by local people alongside 100 student volunteers drawn from colleges and universities all over England. The Project started a register of North Kensington's 11,000 houses, set up three neighbourhood centres staffed by volunteers, including lawyers and social workers, and established new play areas for local children. The work was to have a lasting influence. The register was continued and, when its Interim Report was published in 1969, made a national as well as a local impact. North Kensington Law Centre, the first neighbourhood law centre in the country, grew out of legal advice sessions held at All Saints Church hall. And a Housing Service, set up in 1968 as a result of the survey, led to the country's first Housing Action Centre getting established - under the Westway motorway. The late 60s and early 70s saw North Kensington successfully confronting landlords, squatting empty houses, liberating private communal gardens, marching on the Town Hall and forcing changes and about-turns in Council policy. It was these action networks that were to sustain the campaign which eventually persuaded the Council and the Greater London Council to take the unprecedented step of handing over the land under the motorway for community use.

CHAPTER TWO - CAMPAIGN FOR THE TRUST

The Notting Hill surveys of the '60s highlighted the appalling housing conditions. They also revealed a glaring lack of open space - according to GLC standards there should have been at least 173 acres for North Kensington's population of 77,000. Instead there were less than 20. The shortfall of over 150 acres � about

two and a half times the size of Holland Park in the well off southern half of the borough - meant that large numbers of children had nowhere but the streets to play. On average a child was injured in a traffic accident every five days. The need to establish safe play space was urgent and soon became a renewed focus for community action.

North Kensington Playspace Group

Local freelance photographer Adam Ritchie had just returned from five years in New York's Lower East Side. There he had been impressed by the direct neighbourhood action he witnessed: at Tompkins Square, contractors who had dug out a huge mound of earth to build the foundations for an open-air theatre discovered that local children had claimed it for play. When they came to remove it, mothers and children made a human chain and refused to budge. The City Parks Commissioner, summoned to sort out the dispute, announced the mound could stay. Back in North Kensington, Ritchie saw a similar spontaneous process at work on land cleared for the motorway and temporarily claimed by the London Free School for the summer holidays in 1966. He was amazed by the 'complex, wonderful structures' children had created for themselves after he left out a hammer and saw and some nails. He was determined to do something to save the playground when motorway construction started in September.

At the last meeting of the short-lived Free School project, Ritchie called for volunteers to keep the playground open. The North Kensington Plays pace Group was set up a week later with the 26-year-old Ritchie as its chair. The secretary was 27-year-old John O'Malley, a trained teacher and sole fulltime worker with the Notting Hill Community Workshop. The initial aim of the group was to get some of the land under the motorway designated for play space. Over the winter they got an architect to draw up plans for a permanent adventure playground and sent it to the GLC, then the owners of the compulsorily purchased land and clients to the construction team led by John Laings.

Realising the Space

The realisation that land was suddenly becoming available in congested and run-down North Kensington, fermented an intoxicating brew of possibilities for all kinds of other much needed amenities. The Playspace Group spent the next year (1967) trying to find out from the GLC what plans, if any, had been made for the land underneath the motorway. Putting in collectively 70 or 80 hours a week, they canvassed the views of local people to find out what they wanted once the road was built. From their determined detective work, it became clear that apart from a large area designated for open space at the western end beneath the roundabout, the only other GLC plan was for a car park in the central section. 'A more inappropriate and negative use for the space could not be imagined', commented Ritchie at the time. And when they checked with the Council, the Playspace Group discovered the GLC had no legal authority to build a car park - they had omitted to put in a planning application. So the Playspace Group put in their own for a comprehensive scheme of local amenities. The Council, now under local pressure to take on board the issue of the use of motorway land, called a meeting of officials and councillors drawn from the GLC as well as the Council.

No Parking

For this landmark meeting in April 1968, the Playspace Group - wanting to shift the public authorities' grudging perception of them as the upstart group who had forced them to the table - fielded an impressive group of 'local heavyweight politicos' including Sir Hugh Cas son, architect and president of the Royal Academy, and Peggy Jay, a GLC committee chair and a local JP. And they brought a brochure hot off the press that outlined 'a scheme of amenities, play facilities and open space for North Kensington'. Based on a survey of local opinion and hundreds of hours of discussions with individuals and local groups, it identified a list of uses from study rooms to shopping centres, from restaurants to an art school.

Obviously well-researched and extremely well designed, the brochure so impressed the meeting that a joint working party was immediately set up with the Council, the GLC and the Playspace Group. The Inner London Education Authority were also represented - they were to prove consistently constructive towards the scheme's education opportunities which they later helped to fund. The working party's brief was 'to produce detailed planning proposals for developing the motorway site for recreational, social, educational and related community purposes'. It threw out the car park proposal at its first meeting. One immediate tangible gain was an adventure playground for the summer of 1968, carved out of the motorway site at St Marks Road by the contractors John Laings, who graciously footed the bill. After a year and a half of graft and lobbying the Playspace Group had at last won official recognition for their imaginative, community-generated scheme for the motorway land.

The Price of Council Backing

ut keeping the initiative was to prove more elusive. Because the scheme was multi-faceted and cut across so many council and agency boundaries, the Playspace Group, renamed the Motorway Development Trust (MOT) in November 1968, wanted to form an independent organisation dedicated to putting the plans into effect. They recommended setting up a charity, with representation from community users of the land alongside the local authorities.

The Council could have run the scheme itself. But this would have meant full funding from the rates-a non-starterina Tory borough. In any case, the large housing association schemes, then working their way through committee, showed the Council preferred voluntary organisations to carry out social projects rather than to get directly involved itself. Interested in the idea of the development being done locally, it recognised that the MDT's proposal for an independent organisation was sensible. The new leader of the Council, Sir Malby Crofton, baronet, landowner and stockbroker (Eton, Cambridge and the Guards) had come into office with a determination to do something about the social and housing problems in North Kensington. He supported the idea of a new organisation and was attracted by its potential as a charity to go elsewhere than the Council for its money.

Implicitly the motorway land was considered marginal, the risks too high and the returns too low to interest private developers. An independent community organisation might fill the gap that established development agencies were unwilling or unable to. Combining the public, charity and private sectors and tapping the energy and resourcefulness of an active community seemed the best way to create amenities in an area where little would otherwise happen.

" A kind of community strip, a bustling social market place, complementing the commercial activity of Portobello Road. ,.

Robin Moore describing the Motorway Development Trust's vision for the centre section of the motorway land. HELP, January 1969.

Politics North Kensington Style

However the Council's view of the community activists who had come to prominence in North Kensington was that they were 'politically dangerous' and 'administratively incompetent'. Throughout the 60s, they had not given the Conservative Council an easy ride. Over the campaigns for better housing, the Council had often been the object of attack. Radical politics emerged alongside the traditional political boundaries of the Borough's north-south divide (Labour councillors were only ever elected to North Kensington wards; the rest of the borough voted Conservative). The New Left, action centres, anarchists, communists and the student movement shaped and enlivened the community politics of North Kensington. A range of broadsheets and newsletters lambasted the Council. And the 60s saw the emergence of new political styles that challenged the established order. Representatives of community groups disputed the legitimacy of Council rule. Direct action challenged decisions of Council committees. Open forums criticised Council debates 'behind closed doors'. A network of community alliances with good links with the local press kept North Kensington politics on the front page.

Crass Proposal

Against this background, the Council wanted to be sure of control over the new body that was to develop the motorway land. And through its lease with the GLC, it had the power to influence the nature of the organisation to which it would sublease the land. The first constitution proposed by the Council in mid-1969 met stiff opposition from the Motorway Development Trust who objected to the built-in Council dominance and the limited

local accountability. The Council was eventually forced to back down on several strategic points. MDT allegations that the Council had hijacked the community scheme were well covered in the press. And local concern was reinforced in November 1969 when a crass proposal for legislation was sought by London Transport to allow them to build a huge bus garage under the motorway between Ladbroke Grove and Portobello Road with no obligation to consult. Although London Transport backed down in the face of local and Council opposition, the incident was not reassuring. It was seen as yet another example of the insensitive behaviour of a public authority in the face of local needs. No wonder the MDT were so nervous and jumpy about local authority control of the scheme.

An Independent Trust?

The Council had come up against another important obstacle to its initial proposals when it encountered the realities of charity law. As a registered charity the new organisation would need to act independently to safeguard its charitable aims. This was incompatible with overall Council control- a point insisted on by the Charity Commissioners and by the City Parochial Foundation, a large city charity whom O'Malley and Ritchie had originally approached for funding and who were now discussing a possible grant of �100,000, spread over five years. The revised constitution that was announced in 1970 brought the Council just short of holding the balance of power. On the Management Committee for the new Trust there was to be an equal balance between seven nominees of the

Council and seven annually elected community representatives. Between them they would elect an 'independent' Chair. The Council gave up its right to veto elected community representatives (as originally proposed in its first draft constitution), but retained it for vetoing the Chair. And it insisted that the Town Clerk (as Honorary Secretary) and the Borough Treasurer (as Honorary Treasurer) should provide the secretariat for the Trust.

By laying stress on the independence of the Chair, Crofton gained the acceptance of the Charity Commissioners for the constitution. The City Parochial Foundation backed it, with some reservations, because they saw Council goodwill and support for the new organisation as essential to its success. The MOT however never accepted the details of the new constitution nor the secretive way in which they had been worked out. Unconvinced of the Council's willingness to allow the committee an independence free from political control, the group continued to campaign for some years after for increased community control.

'There was a time when everything in the area seemed to be flattened or surrounded by corrugated iron. People could hardly find their way around because roads has been chopped, rerouted or renamed.'

Mary Mclntosh, local resident.

Picking Partners

Fresh controversy arose over which local groups were to be invited to elect the seven community representatives. The Council wanted to pick a handful of respectable, moderate and non-political organisations to send forward their representatives, 'registered bodies', as Crofton said, 'with trustees that may still be in operation in a hundred years' time'. The MOT, who did not appear on the Council's chosen list of respectable organisations, wanted elections to be opened to the network of community groups in North Kensington. Finally four representatives were put up by organisations approved by the Council, while the other three places (with Ritchie and O'Malley occupying two of them) were filled by an election among community groups held by the MOT.

The Trust was to be billed as an innovative new partnership with the Council, a 'unique experiment' to carry out a development sensitive to local needs. But at the outset it was also a negative compromise between reluctant and mutually suspicious partners. The argument over representation and local accountability persisted.

A Daunting Task

Meanwhile, some months before, the Council had started looking for a founding Chair. It wanted someone whose name would carry weight with charities. An offer was eventually made to 61-year-old retired diplomat Sir Patrick Reilly. A former ambassador in Moscow and Paris, he had recently come to live locally (the constitution stated the Chair should live in the borough). At a press conference, Crofton announced that the Trust was going to be set up and that Reilly had agreed to be Chair. It was, as it turned out, a brave decision from a man who seemed on the face of it a most unlikely candidate.

On Friday 5 February 1971, seven months after the motorway had opened, a year after the Trust had been announced, and four and a half years after the formation of the Playspace Group that had campaigned for it, the North Kensington Amenity Trust was formally inaugurated at a party (to which the MOT had not been invited) at the Town Hall. A daunting task awaited it.

CHAPTER THREE - ORDERING CHAOS

'Out of chaos will come order' opined the inaugural document announcing the establishment of North Kensington Amenity Trust at Kensington Town Hall on5 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 up-beat H 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. 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 themselves.

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 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, but 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 fund-raise 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 were not coming 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 a'1d 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 make contact 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 invidious 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 1972,18 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 sub-lease 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 sub-lease 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 were 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 secure title, and no tenancy agreements could be drawn up. Meanwhile, the Council, who were retaining some 'prime sites' under the motorway, were getting on with their 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; 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 unfruitful process of open public consultation, it would come under increasing fire for 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 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

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 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.

CHAPTER FOUR - WOULD THE TRUST DEVELOP? Touch and Go

'It was touch and go whether or not it would be a success', comments Jennifer Jenkins, Chair of the Trust from 1974 to 1977. 'Here was an opportunity to provide jobs and community services in a densely populated and neglected area. But it involved reconciling two partners - a Tory borough with left wing community activists. I still think it was one of the most interesting and difficult things I've ever done.'

Commercial Development

Community organisations in the 1960s and early 70s were not generally involved in self-financing operations, let alone the commercial development of property. For most, the focus was on play projects and community associations, literacy schemes and welfare benefits, tenants' rights and housing campaigns. In North Kensington, many of the Trust's supporters had had bitter battles with private landlords and despised the idea of property development. So it was not surprising that some community representatives persisted with their wholesale opposition to the idea of the Trust developing any of its land commercially.

The North Kensington Playspace Group when campaigning for the motorway land had, as early as 1967, suggested that a proportion of income could be raised from rents. Commercial development of some of its land now offered the Trust the only realistic prospect of funding its ambitious plans for badly needed community facilities. Pressure from local groups, disenchanted with the Trust's lack of progress, influenced the committee. A majority now favoured the Trust undertaking some commercial schemes. 'We were anxious to get going whatever projects we could raise the money for - it was a question of seizing opportunities', says Jenkins. She steered through the Trust's first commercial project at Malton Road - the conversion of nine motorway bays into light industrial units to generate rental income. Two years after completion all the bays were occupied and, as an important consequence, brought jobs into an area of high unemployment.

Learning to be a Developer

The Trust was still feeling its way forward with the opportunities that came to hand. Funding for Acklam Hall came from the GLC through an initiative from a working party of residents from the neighbouring Swinbrook estate. The commercial mortgage for the Malton Road units was obtained through personal contacts. Financing of the charity offices in Thorpe Close started out as an act of philanthropy from a local developer. But in its new role as a developer, the Trust had some important lessons to learn. When Roger Matland, the Trust's new Director, arrived in 1976 he was shown over the charity offices being completed at No 1, Thorpe Close. The building looked fine on the ground floor. Upstairs, where the plans showed a second floor of offices, there was an empty concrete shell. The contractors were due to leave the site within weeks. A generous offer to pay half the capital costs of the building had been made by property developer Gabriel Harrison. But no formal agreement had been taken up by the Trust, and the offer lapsed with his death in 1975. Perry had stripped down the job specification in a desperate attempt to reduce costs. With some smart fundraising footwork by Matland and a prompt response from the Voluntary Services Unit at the Home Office, a grant of �75,000 saved the day. Thorpe Close was completed and provides two floors of charity offices, with a third of the offices reserved for national charities - a condition of the Home Office grant.

The Trust's first commercial mortgage, obtained for Malton Road, was another lesson in how careful the organisation had to be in the way it financed its schemes. With interest repayments at 17% fixed for 20 years, the light industrial units were not going to pay their way. Sir Frederick Seebohm, Chairman of Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation Ltd, agreed to release the Trust at no penalty from its loan agreement and the Trust refinanced with the Royal Bank of Scotland at a fluctuating rate of interest over a shorter period.

Taking Charge of the Land

Ownership of the land, once the lease had been obtained, focused Trust thinking in other ways. At last in a position to develop, it found that temporary occupations, allowed in the early years, were now legal minefields. Consents given verbally or on the basis of a letter turned out to be far more expensive and time-consuming to unravel than properly drawn up legal documents. Two decades on, the Trust is still dealing with the consequences of some of these casually made agreements. Conversance with property law, reading the small print, and working out the consequences of its actions for the foreseeable future had to be taken on board if the Trust was to take charge of its land. And the Trust came to appreciate that despite the desperate shortage of space in North Kensington, few voluntary groups had the time, confidence or resources to work up and develop their own building schemes.

Westway Nursery Association

Westway Nursery Association was one of the exceptions - a group that did it themselves. Its members had already been involved in establishing local playgroups and now identified the need for integrated day care. Formed after a public meeting called by the Trust in March 1973, it took the Association five years of 'bureaucratic nightmare' to set up Maxilla Nursery - a pioneering day care centre catering for the needs of under-fives and working parents, with a nursery school combined.

The group, originally made up of six young women community workers, parents, child minders and teachers - took on a job they felt the Council should have been doing, but were determined to do it in their own style. 'It was our idea and we wanted to keep control' says Judy Wilcox, a founder member of the association and coordinator of the nursery today. 'We had done the research and the thinking and were close to local people.' Funded by charities and local and national government, the group guarded its autonomy. 'ILEA (the Inner London Education Authority) and the GLC put the building up. But we were the clients, in charge of design, construction and purchasing equipment. God knows how we got it through their legal departments', says Wilcox.

Raising the money took several years. Then there was a scare over lead pollution from the motorway, and building was delayed while tests were run. The results showed that children were no more at risk beneath the motorway than in their own homes nearby. The nursery opened in 1978 and has places for 88 children. Childcare experts across the country and from abroad continue to visit and to study how the centre works.

Difficulties for Independent Projects on Trust Land

The nursery centre had an intricate funding package and it is a tribute to the patience and stamina of the Westway Nursery Association members that it was ever put together at all. Their success in establishing and then maintaining the centre has relied on their ability to keep the public authorities behind them. Building in the nursery school as an integral part of the centre committed ILEA to a continuing involvement and financial input, which was taken on by the Royal Borough when it became the new education authority.

The success of the Acklam Road adventure playground, another independent project on Trust land, has also depended on attracting continued grant aid from the local authority. Where stable funding has not been forthcoming, the fortunes of independent groups seeking to build their own projects on Trust land have been more variable. For some, the difficulties of putting a funding package together left the high costs of building under the motorway out of reach. Others who succeeded in raising the initial funds to put up buildings found it difficult to sustain funding over subsequent years. This was to prove particularly the case with projects reliant on government training scheme monies. Several independent black groups who set up training schemes on Trust land were to find that changes in government criteria and a reassessment of the training they were providing left them without the income on which they relied.

" Under the motorway was just dead cats. People dumped rubbish and nobody cleared it. My idea was to have big archetypal figures and a continuing landscape of hills and green fields to bring a sense of space and freedom to the concrete bays. " Emily Young

The Trust has to Take the Lead

As the difficulties and extended timetables of developing and maintaining projects under the motorway became clear, the Trust could see that it increasingly had to take the lead. No-one else was coming forward to finance and develop the 20 derelict acres and 60 empty motorway bays that still stood out as eyesores in 1976 after the first buildings were completed. If the Trust did not take the initiative in getting funding and working up schemes, the land would remain derelict for a very long time indeed.

To tackle the job the Trust needed to be capable of seeing through long-term developments. And to become competent for the task, it had to establish its independent professional role, free from in-fighting for political control. The struggle which went on between 1971 and 1976 stretched the Trust to the limit before the issue could be resolved.

Committee Battles

The arguments and political battles had been a continuation of old struggles between the Tory Council and the community activists of North Kensington. They were waged in committee meetings and avidly reported in the local press. All concerned wanted to see the Trust succeed, but on their own terms. Crofton and the Council continually feared a left-wing take-over. The MDT, keen to ensure the Trust's accountability to North Kensington, was determined to see off Council control. Between the reefs of political polarisation, staff had tried to find the middle ground. For Perry, throughout his five years as Director, the political arguments were a constant headache.

A Change of Chair

In the early years, the failure of the Council to back the Trust with sufficient funding or an adequate secretariat had not helped. Reilly, as the first Chair, found he wasted 'grotesque' amounts of time chasing Trust matters at the Town Hall. Perry felt that having any dealings with the Council was 'like pushing a massive stone up the hill'. The usual response to one of his proposals, he said, had been' a reflexive no followed by a maybe'. Reilly said some fairly frank things about the Council in his speech at the Trust's second AGM in October 1973, concluding with the observation that, for the Council, the Trust 'had turned out to be, if not quite a Frankenstein, certainly a far more troublesome infant than it ever expected'. Chastened by his experiences, Reilly retired after that AGM.

Cold Feet

A successor did not prove easy to find. The constitution gave the Council a veto on the appointment of the Chair and Crofton wanted time to find his own candidate. In the meantime, the Council's Town Clerk, as secretary of the Trust, refused to call meetings - until a petition from a majority on the committee forced his hand. After a six-month interregnum, it was Jennifer Jenkins - the candidate proposed by the community representatives - who was offered the job. Although she had links with the Left through her husband, who was then Labour Home Secretary, she said very plainly that as Chair of the Trust she had no intention of being other than what the constitution required - independent and non-political. The Council who initially objected to the appointment on political grounds found they had to climb down in the face of such publicly respected neutrality. Crofton nevertheless got cold feet and put himself on the management committee as one of the Council's representatives. The committee then had on board both the leader and deputy leader of the Council. For the Left, it was the signal that the gloves were really off.

Political Games

At the 1974 election for community representatives three new left-wing members had come onto the committee, including two communists. Crofton had called for an enquiry into the elections, and again for constitutional changes to ensure that in future only representatives of 'respectable', nonpolitical organisations would be eligible to stand. Neither had happened. But this particular dispute inaugurated months, if not years, of wrangling and argument which turned management committee meetings into little more than an irrelevant farce so far as the practical work of the Trust was concerned. Facing each other across the meeting table, the two sides Council and community representatives - had routinely opposed each other's proposals, however sensible.

The councillors tended to fall in behind the flamboyant and imperious Crofton. The community reps would caucus in a pub beforehand and agree their line. During the meetings, two or three would regularly spin out 'matters arising' for as long as possible in order to exhaust councillors' patience and send them home early. Despite the fact that meetings had often lasted till midnight, little that was useful got done. For all except those who enjoyed playing political games, Management Committee meetings in the mid-70s had become a disagreeable waste of time.

A Change of Director

One casualty of this politicisation of the Management Committee had been Anthony Perry. Exasperated by 'the endless political pressure and the total lack of interest in the Trust's constructive work from the elected side', he developed serious health problems and left the Trust in 1976.

Although the political squabbling had brought the Trust to the brink, its expanding building programme, which started in the autumn of1974 just as the MDT launched some of its most bitter attacks, had continued. It showed that the Trust, despite the dire in-fighting, could still manage somehow to work after all. Jennifer Jenkins' resolute chairing and the 'icy politeness' with which she treated both sides of the political divide helped, in Perry' s words, to 'unite our motley coalition towards practical action'.

Roger Matland, the newly appointed Director to the Trust, had been running Dame Colet House - one of the old settlements in the East End.

Reviving it as a centre for community action had forced him to obtain considerable fundraising experience, and a decade of knocking on doors and arguing his case had given him a range of good contacts. Experienced in the management of voluntary organisations he had initiated pensioners' action groups, adventure playgrounds and tenants' coops. Through his involvement in setting up a neighbourhood law centre he had become familiar with the process of setting out coherent and well rehearsed strategies to win community battles.

Prudent Interests

Matland had also developed a taste for the law as it related to charities and was now able to underline the Chair's insistence on the committee's independent role. With a letter from the Charity Commissioners he drew the attention of members to their legal duties and liabilities. As individual Trustees they were required to act with prudence, in the best interests of the Trust. These responsibilities could not be served by the extremes of group caucusing that kept distracting the committee from its task. The reminder helped to re-focus the work in hand.

" Early impressions of the Trust land were of its emptiness. It was eerie walking past a boarded-up bay in the evening and seeing 30 or 40 vagrants there round a bonfire.� Roger Mat/and

Getting the Finances Under Control

Matland had discovered that the Trust was effectively bankrupt. This was brought home when the Royal Borough's Deputy Director of Finance (standing in for the Honorary Treasurer of the Trust) rang Matland to let him know the Trust's bank account could not cover the month's salary cheques. The incident made the financial issues very clear. The Trust had to claim its independence from the Council if it was to manage its own affairs. Matland insisted on the transfer of Trust finances from the Town Hall to the Trust's own office, under Trust control. Financial information needed to be instantly available and, if the organisation was to be effective in carrying out the big development task ahead, it needed a long term financial strategy. Hand to mouth financing was no longer adequate.

The New Approach

The move towards financial self-sufficiency in the late 70s was initiated by Roger Matland, David Wilcox (Jennifer Jenkins' successor as Chair), and Stephen Duckworth (a community representative and Chair of the Trust's Finance and Staff Committee). The new approach showed community representatives there was a better way of achieving independence and building amenities than endlessly demanding constitutional changes and fighting the Council for money. The emerging strategy provided a stronger common purpose and co-operation in committee. The contribution of individual members was now more welcome, their differences better respected and their skills and experience increasingly valued.

CHAPTER FIVE - BUILDING ASSETS, DEVELOPING SKILLS - The plan for self-sufficiency

By the late 70s; the Trust's funding needs were acute. It had to pay its way, maintain land, buildings and community facilities, service interest on loans and fund an expanding building programme. Sources of funding were diminishing as its running costs grew. Charities were switching grants to new ventures and public expenditure was being cut: With 40% of its running costs already met from rents received, the Trust was keen to achieve self-sufficiency. A survey commissioned from Wilks, Head and Eve showed the Trust it could be standing on its own feet from the mid-80s. But capital for proposed developments and help with the next ten years' running costs were needed.

Serious Money

The Council had expected the Trust to make its way in the world. It soon became clear the policy was unrealistic. To attract outside grants, the Trust needed continued Council funding - more than the �25,000 start-up grant and the waived �16,200 ground-rent (its share of the rent due to the Council). Under pressure, the Council was increasingly drawn in as a funder: first a �1500 grant for sports events; then a �10,000 grant for the Maxilla Social Club; next a loan of �75,000 for the charity offices in Thorpe Close and a guarantee on the Malton Road mortgage. By 1979 it was contributing over �40,000 towards the annual running costs. But the Trust needed more.

A business plan was put to the Council. 'The Trust wanted self-sufficiency', says Matland, 'so we produced a ten year plan that showed if Council funding increased, it would plateau and demands would become nil. The alternative was to keep us on a shoe string, constantly on the Council's grant-making agenda'. The Town Hall showed a marked change of attitude under the new leadership of Nicholas Freeman, whose strategic thinking about the Trust meant, that when other organisations were facing cuts, the Trust got a dramatic increase in revenue and capital support. In 1980, its annual grant rose to �75,000. The next year it got its largest ever capital loan - over �lm. Throughout, Roy Webber, Chief Executive of the Council from 1979, gave consistent and intelligent support on a wide range of issues affecting the Trust. He was no bureaucrat, and shared the vision of what the Trust could become.

Portobello Bays

Now backed by serious Council money, the Trust was at last in a position to go ahead with a major building programme. The fourteen motorway bays on either side of Portobello Road, home to one of London's liveliest and best known street markets, were in a key position. Local feelings ran high whenever new proposals came up. Since the earliest plans of the Motorway Development Trust, architects had envisaged a town square surrounded by shops between Cambridge Gardens and Portobello Road. Consultation with the public was going to be an essential part of the three phase development. On its success or failure would depend the Trust's reputation as a developer with the interests of the community at heart.

The Portobello Bays strategy was evolved under David Wilcox, the new and energetic young Chair who, as Planning Correspondent for the Evening Standard, was familiar with planning issues and planning battles across London. Design was by the Franklin Stafford Partnership; as community architects for the scheme, consultation was part of their brief. Feasibility studies and draft plans were put forward and modified in the light of comments from working parties and public meetings. Interest groups who wanted to work up their own schemes could get technical advice. They had to put their case at public meetings so the arguments could be sifted and it would become clear who the serious players were. The debates generated new uses and new users.

The development of an effective framework for consultation illustrated the new confidence at the Trust. It now had a mechanism for incorporating its existing informal users into the scheme � Acklam Road adventure playground, the Free Shop, the rent-free charity stalls. And it could be sensitive to new needs such as office accommodation for community groups and commercial premises for local businesses.

Packaging the Scheme

The building package was structured to provide a mix of commercial and community spaces. It quickly became clear to the parties involved in the consultations - local business people needing premises alongside others who wanted community facilities - that rents from the commercial side would provide up to 90% of the annual repayments on loans raised for the whole development. It was a way of resolving conflicting preferences: politically or financially it would be extremely difficult for one half of the scheme to be developed without the other.

The Portobello Bays were developed in three phases. Phase I, carried out between 1980 and 1981, involved Acklam Road on the east side of Portobello Road. Light industrial workshops, built in three bays, provided workspace and jobs, and income for the Trust. In the adjoining five bays, strenuous lobbying (notably by Trust community representative Herbert Bukari), and a grant from the Council, got the adventure playground upgraded with a play pitch, games rooms, arts and crafts facilities and workshops.

Middle Class Ponces

Phase 2, carried on into 1982, straddled Portobello Road, providing nine commercial offices and nine charity offices for community groups about to be made homeless by the demolition of the last houses in Acklam Road. The scheme included four shops in Portobello Road, and at Portobello Green an arcade of craft workshops, a youth and community squash club and a paved covered market area for weekend traders and outdoor events. Despite the extensive consultation process, a group of local traders and residents lobbied the Trust at the last minute with a range of grievances - there was too much commercial development; rents in the new scheme would be too high; and 'middle-class ponces' in the Trust were turning Portobello Road into another Covent Garden. The Trust agreed to a local opinion survey which showed a healthy majority happy with the scheme - it went ahead largely as planned but with some adaptations, notably the provision of the permanent market canopy for the traders now re-sited next to Portobello Green.

Civic Trust Award

National endorsement came in 1983 when the Portobello Green development won a Civic Trust award. In October 1984 the Prince of Wales unveiled a commemorative plaque. Phase 3, from 1984 to 1985, completed the scheme with the demolition of the remaining houses in Acklam Road, pedestrianisation and landscaping, and an extension to the Acklam playground for children to play in the open, out of the shadow of the motorway.

Encouraging Business

Densely residential North Kensington, when Westway was built, offered little space to the business community. As the Trust got further into commercial development it was often criticised for 'property speculation' despite the additional benefit being created - spaces for local jobs. For the Portobello Bays scheme, the Trust widened consultation by inviting potential commercial tenants to join the debate. They did not turn out to be 'pin striped, cigar puffing rip-off merchants', but plain speaking independent workers with local connections wanting to move businesses from leaking mews garages and tatty railway arches. Their presence and level-headed arguments substantially dissolved the earlier suspicions.

Early Trust properties proved difficult to let. But as the area improved so did the take-up. 'The Trust has made a significant contribution to generating business premises in the area' says Trust Director, Roger Matland. 'Other developers would see our properties being let and move into North Kensington. Derelict buildings have been brought back into use, and that's music to a lot of people's ears.' With 200,000 square feet of space developed, the Trust is now landlord to 96 businesses providing 750 jobs.

Totters On the Move

Under the Westway roundabout other commercial tenants were getting established. The Trust had completed new stables in 1979 for the totters - rag, bone and 'any old iron' recyclers with a sound ecological trade going well back into the nineteenth century and long an established part of North Kensington's economy. Prior to the motorway, they stabled horses and sorted goods in cramped mews premises familiar from 'Steptoe and Son', some of whose location shots were filmed in the original Notting Hill totters' yards. Westway swept away their old stables. When the Trust inherited their temporary iron shacks, vulnerable to burglary and vandalism, a free survey carried out by Knight, Frank and Rutley drew attention to their useful recycling work: decent premises for the totters made economic sense and the adjacent land could be developed for other compatible uses. With �277,000 raised by grant and Council loan, the Trust carried out the Stable Way development - 52 brand new stables, five small industrial units and seven small yards for industries from scrap metal to car repairs. Some totters were happy to move into the new stables but others objected to the rent. A long dispute followed, the totters on one occasion driving to Buckingham Palace to seek the intervention of the Queen. Her Majesty requested the Secretary for the Environment to look into the matter. It was resolved when the totters agreed to form themselves into an association to take a collective lease. 'We've had some right battles with the Trust' says Alf French, the Westway Totters Association secretary. 'Now we've got a working understanding. They don't bother us, and we don't bother them' and the rent gets paid. " Consultation and decision-making do not rest upon co-operation in an amiable atmosphere. Conflict and negotiation are part of the everyday tapestry of Trust life. " From a paper by Frederick Stafford, architect to the scheme, 1979.

Westway Sports - 10 Years and £2 million

Next door to the totters' stables was the big eight-and-a-half acre site under the Westway roundabout, where the Trust planned a major sports and recreation centre. The 1972 Sports Weekend had set the ball rolling, focusing public attention on the sporting potential of the site and showing the demand - 5,000 young people took part in the 20 sports laid on. And a competition run by the Royal Institute of British Architects demonstrated how parks and gardens could be created alongside. The Trust knew it would be a long haul to work up plans for the big site and assemble the funds to carry them through - it took ten years and £2 million.

The partnership arrangements have been impressive - a good example of how the Trust packages funds. The Manpower Services Commission provided the extensive environmental improvements; the Inner London Education Authority funded pitches and changing rooms and a worker to coordinate use by local schools; materials and equipment were paid for by the Royal Borough, Campden Charities and the Trust. The Sports Council, keen to help put sports on the map in Kensington and Chelsea, has nurtured the project throughout, regularly funding equipment and pitches. It based Action Sport at the Westway for three years, before the Royal Borough took it on and developed its own sports development team.

Funding Education - The Future?

In the North Kensington Playspace Group's early plans, education projects figured prominently. The group had sought and obtained ILEA's support from the outset. Local schools had very limited recreation facilities and ILEA had to bus children to playing fields outside the borough. Seeing what the Trust was now making of its open space beneath the roundabout, ILEA made an open-ended commitment to build a sports centre, complete with pavilion, multi-use pitches, cricket nets, athletics tracks and jumps. The cost was over half a million pounds, met in full by ILEA who worked out a long term agreement with the Trust - now taken on by the Royal Borough, the new education authority. Local schools use the centre by day, with evening and holidays retained for community users and local teams. Future financial arrangements look more complex; current Government policy on local management of schools is likely to make its impact.

Greening the Motorway Land

In an employment project worth over £200,000, the Manpower Services Commission provided the bulk of the labour for landscaping and developed a people's garden and a large grassed space, a bicycle workshop and speed way, a kickabout area, a pony riding arena and a jogging track. Under the MSC's Community Enterprise scheme, the Trust extended its landscaping to establish Maxilla Gardens and Portobello Green. With the greening of the motorway land the Trust was putting the finishing touches to its schemes, creating open space amenities alongside completed buildings.

Profiting the Community

The Trust's main building programme came to an end in 1989. Over 15 years it completed 16 major projects at a cost (April '91 prices) of nearly £16 million, raised through a mixture of grants and loans. By 'twinning' commercial and community developments, the Trust found an effective formula for developing its land. This has become the key for unlocking grants and loans from charities, statutory bodies and the private sector. By showing how it could generate income and provide long term estate management, the Trust gave funders confidence that funds would not be sunk in a bottomless pit and loans and mortgages were secure. It now provides the basis for the Trust's financial self-sufficiency.

Because of the recession of the early 80s, initial progress towards its goal was slow and the cost of bankruptcies and unlet space had to be written off. In 1985 the situation improved dramatically with 99% of Trust premises filled. In 1986 the Trust made a small surplus for the first time and in 1987 received its final annual support grant from the Council. Income from rentals is now over £800,000 and self-sufficiency has at last been achieved. In a good year the Trust generates enough of its own income to balance its books. Any surplus goes to making grants to over 50 community organisations each year and to helping new projects.

Hard Skills

In the process, the Trust has had to acquire the skills of a property developer - conceiving schemes, briefing professionals, managing contracts, raising capital. Schemes presented to funders have to make hard economic sense. Costs have to be balanced with income, buildings marketed, tenancies drawn up, rents and debts collected. But unlike a property developer's usual habit, this hard-nosed approach is not taken to enable the developer to sell and move on. 'Of course, we could have brought in a property developer' says MatIand, 'or property management could have been put out to an estate agent. But by undertaking the process ourselves we've keptthe profits in the community. We've been keen to show the voluntary sector can own, develop and manage land and become self-sufficient in the long run.'

Success has depended on the Trust's ability to be strategic and tough in defending its interests. 'Never take no for an answer' has been one of the Trust's mottos over the years, as it learned to make its way by arguing its case withall-comers. When Development Land Tax was introduced it could have devastated the Trust. Ona�l million building contract, �100,000 tax was due to be paid on the day the contractor started on site. The Trust, advised by leading legal and accountancy experts that nothing could be done, took its own case to the Inland Revenue and won an exemption. A year later, new legislation exempted all charities from the tax. The Trust's original ground lease was for 70 years. With potential mortgage lenders wanting to see at least a 99 year lease, the Trust successfully argued the case with the GLC and the Royal Borough for an extension to 120 years, and for exemption from the consequential stamp duty charged by the Inland Revenue.

Cost-consciousness is also applied to monitoring project expenditure. When the cost of running the up-graded Acklam Hall became a drain on resources, the Trust sought alternatives. It found promoter Vince Power who knew the business better, drew up a management agreement with him and wiped out the deficit. As 'Subterania' it now operates as a successful West London music venue with weekly slots retained for community use. Savings allowed the Trust to put more money into grants to local organisations.

The Trust has learned to recognise its limits. It prefers to stay lean, rather than growing and controlling all activities on its land. It encourages independent projects with knowledge and experience in areas it does not have. And to make sure it has access to the advice it needs it makes selective use of independent professionals - surveyors, lawyers, architects, engineers, accountants, land agents. With hindsight, independent professional ad vice from day one might have done the Trust a power of good.

" A key characteristic of the area is the determination of the local residents to maintain it as a local community. Grand schemes and comprehensive plans have proved unacceptable and inadequate. "

Frederick Stafford, architect.

Shaping Up for the 90s

Acquiring the hard skills has created new opportunities. At the Trust, it's policy first, money second. 'If the policy is right', says Matland, 'we go out and find the money'. The new Fitness and Snooker Centre on Portobello Green is an example: the Trust gave the go ahead to build it with only two thirds of the money raised. If the Trust delayed, costs would go up because the contractor had the right to re-assess his price. It was a commitment based on the Trust's conviction that the project was right. In the enterprise culture of the 90s, with diminishing government funds, it gets tougher for voluntary organisations. Marketing, customer care, contracts, value for money are the new buzz-words. It is just as well that, as a local developer, the Trust has learned to make its own way.

CHAPTER SIX- THE TRUST AND ITS COMMUNITY The People's Plan

In 1967 when the North Kensington Playspace Group was canvassing local ideas for uses of the motorway land, Adam Ritchie recalls taking a 14 ft map to public meetings. 'We handed out pens and asked people to write down what they wanted, where.' Twenty years on, there is a surprising continuity between those ideas, set out when the road was still being built, and the varied facilities to be found under the motorway today. This despite the shaky start, the fierce disputes, the improvisation and the opportunism the Trust has had to adopt to get the job done.

When the Trust was set up in 1971, its 23 desolate acres of rubble created a twilight zone dangerous to walk. Today, protected from all weathers by the motorway canopy, the mile strip of Trust land provides one of North Kensington's main pedestrian thoroughfares. Alongside the open space with its maturing trees and shrubs, the mix of commercial and community activity carries on unbothered by the six lanes of traffic overhead.

"Motorways create an opportunity for improving the local environment. It must be remembered that this is only an opportunity. Someone still has to do something - there is still a need for environmental management.

Arthur Styles, Planning Review, 197O.

Business Diversity

Occupying a fifth of the 23 acres, 96 business tenancies provide the engine for the Trust's charitable activities: heavy uses from waste disposal to the totters' stables under the roundabout at Stable Way; car repairs, greeting cards and a training centre for women in the building trades at Malton Road; solicitors, architects and a government inner-city Task Force in commercial offices at Portobello Green; bric-a-brac, antiques and exotic food on covered market stalls; goods from theatrical costumes to avant-garde hats in the craft workshops in the arcade off Portobello Green; hairdressing, whole food and take-away shops in Portobello Road; and businesses ranging from stage design to stationery at the workshops at Acklam Road.

Plants and People

With over 3000 shrubs and 500 trees, the extent of the greenery and the variety of plants and flowers on Trust land make it difficult to picture the desert wasteland of twenty years ago. Government employment schemes in the 70s and 80s helped with the major landscaping - a generation of employment trainees, school children and helpers on community service orders have created the paths and paviours, planting beds and gardens that today make up a varied ten acres of public open space. Now a professional ground staff team maintain the land, and the nursery and greenhouse under the Westway roundabout provide the plants needed to keep up with the heavy urban toll. Trust gardening has a personal touch - the advantage of an independent organisation in charge of a manageable estate. Close to the nursery and greenhouse, a scented garden at Blossom Dale provides a little haven for pensioners living nearby with winter flowering jasmine and honeysuckle, magnolias and narcissi in spring and roses and mock orange in summer. A wildlife area provides a resource for local school visits, with its pond life and habitats for kestrels, redwings, nightjars and wagtails alongside the robins and wrens. And with links back to the 60s and 70s, Trust gardens and open spaces continue to host some of the area's biggest annual events. Closely associated with the early days of Notting Hill Carnival, Portobello Green provides the central stage for its two day concert of live bands. London's largest Spanish festival takes place under the motorway; Maxilla Gardens provides the venue for Portuguese fiestas and the borough's biggest Bonfire Night event.

Sporting Chances

Sport and recreation figured large on the early plans but no-one conceived quite how big they would grow. They now take up a third of the land,24 of the Trust's 44 permanent staff and the largest single chunk of project expenditure. The Westway Sports Centre offers some of the best outdoor sports facilities in Kensington & Chelsea and has pioneered joint-funded school and community programmes with women, with the borough's ethnic minority communities and with elderly and disabled people. Two acres of pitches and all-weather facilities are used in term-time by a thousand school children each week and, in the evenings, by thirty five local adult teams. Through the year, staff organise a series of competitions, leagues, courses and one-day events for a range of abilities.

The Trust has been at the forefront of sports development in the borough and in setting up sports leadership courses - opportunities for young people to get ahead not just as users but as sessional workers and full-timers making their careers in sport. The Portobello Green Fitness and Snooker Centre, which opened in June 1989, has 17 permanent staff to run its mixed provision of weights, gym, exercise studio, squash courts, treatment rooms, snooker halls, restaurant and bar. Now its 3000 members, of whom 80% are local, enjoy first class facilities at prices they can afford.

Changing fashions continue to shape provision. The giant skateboard ramp has come and gone and the heyday of the Bicycle track may be over. With two decades of sports provision behind it, the Trust is experienced in responding to changing demands. It hopes next to establish the borough's first full-sized football pitch and a cluster of tennis courts.

" Inner city communities need long term efforts. They need projects like the Amenity Trust. They don't want people who come in and move on. That's why it was so important it was done by local people. "

Sir Bryan Nicholson, Chairman of the Post Office.

Support to Groups

Income from commercial lettings provides a 70% rent subsidy to the 23 voluntary organisations accommodated on Trust land. Diverse, yet inter-connecting, there is a lively network of groups ranging from the Portuguese Community Centre to Victim Support, from Pensioners Link to Club Cultural Antonio Machado, and from SHAPE's arts services for disabled people to the Women Prisoners' Resource Centre.

Its assets now enable the Trust to assist community groups beyond its own boundaries. Out of the financial surplus for 1990, the Trust gave grants to over 50 local organisations in Kensington and Chelsea. Grant giving was started on a small scale in 1985 with an annual budget of �2,500 that had risen by 1991 to �65,000. The Trust gives help: to small groups through the Small Grants scheme, to young people with Education and Sports Training Grants and to voluntary groups with innovative schemes through the larger New Initiative Grants. A new area of work may need a feasibility study; a group may need funding while establishing its credentials. Involved with the local networks, the Trust can see where innovative schemes need backing. By putting a significant sum towards the target the Trust improves groups' chances of getting matching money elsewhere. And through its community development work it puts time and practical resources into helping new projects get off the ground.

With its staff team of 44, the Trust is now one of North Kensington's largest voluntary organisations and smaller groups find it increasingly of use. They draw on its experience in recruitment and personnel issues, finance and property matters, computer technology, sports leadership and community work. They also borrow equipment and use its database, mailing lists, photocopying and franking facilities. Useful resources for the hard pressed voluntary sector of the 90s.

Mixed Press

With such a diverse range of users as its constituents, the Trust inevitably gets a mixed press. Many who use a single facility do not associate it with the Trust. To a tenant, the Trust is just a landlord; to a football team, the hirer of the pitch. To a dog-walker, the Trust is the groundkeeper; to a grant applicant, a charitable trust. For others the relationship is more complex. 60 local voluntary groups are member organisations of the Trust. Many of these are users of Trust resources - tenants of charity offices, users of sports facilities and meeting halls, grant recipients. As part of the local network they keep the Trust up to date on the issues and the criticisms. They also nominate and elect the seven community representatives on the Trust's committee each year.

" We feel it's important that the community has a voice on the committee. One worry is that as the Trust gets larger it becomes unresponsive. Consistently nominating representatives onto the committee is a way of ensuring community participation. "

Cynthia Jueguen, Chair of Notting Hill Social Council.

Who Likes a Landlord?

As a landlord, the Trust's profile is perhaps inevitably a contentious one. For commercial and charity tenants alike, no-one likes a rent rise, nor being chased up for arrears. ' Traders hit out at rent rise' ran a 1991 headline in the Kensington News, highlighting the currently sensitive area of rent reviews carried out by the Trust. The policy of keeping rents in line with rates on the open market sometimes means large rent increases. In periods of recession this can hit small businesses hard. Differences of opinion over rent reviews often go hand in hand with misunderstandings about the Trust's role as a local charity. The Trust is an unusual developer with an unusual portfolio, obliged by charity law to ensure its commercial activity brings a commercial return. Businesses cannot be shielded from the going market rate and for some tenants it can be a tough realisation.

Charities, despite rents set at 30% of the commercial rate, sometimes expect leniency from the Trust when hard pressed by funding cuts. Though prepared to be sympathetic to the short-term funding difficulties of its charity tenants, the Trust takes a firm line where a project's funding has run out or where it judges that charitable activities have ceased. With over 120 tenancy agreements the Trust argues it cannot afford, nor is it fair, to make exceptions. It is a delicate balance to keep - the price paid for self-sufficiency and the Trust's obligation as a land-holding charity.

Affording Priorities

Achieving its forecast income is the basis for the Trust's ability to make choices on where its subsidies and grants will go. Trust community representative Herbert Bukari says, 'Some of those who once protested against development schemes in the early days - because they didn't think it was the job of a charity - have now applied to the Trust and received grants themselves.' How the Trust exercises its choices is the subject of continuing debate. Some think the Trust should do more to assist small local businesses, others that community facilities should get bigger subsidies.

The Management Committee has become familiar with the need to balance community and commercial considerations. Plain-speaking chairing by Peter Scott, QC, in the 80s brought clarity and openness to debate. Standards were set for decision-making that finally shifted the unyielding positions taken by committee members in the early years. Over time, the balance of Council nominees and community representatives has proved robust and works well today. Council nominees bring their experience as councillors to policy-making in the areas of land-development, property management and finance. Community representatives, unrestricted by institutional concerns, bring an additional range of skills and flag up the implications of decisions for the local area. Differing views on priorities are nowadays debated within broad policies agreed by all parties.

Better Than We Feared

Perceived as a resource holder, with land, premises and funding at its disposal, the debate outside the Trust continues on the Trust's local accountability and the issue of who is in control. North Kensington is still coming to grips with its new-style development trust with its mixed profile of commercial landlord, charity and community resource. In the early days the issue seemed simple - community versus Council control. For some of the original activists, the Trust has continued to 'live too much in the pocket of the Town Hall'. Others, like Ritchie, take a more open line, 'It's not been anything like as dynamic as we wanted. We had a much more community-based idea with more involvement. But that's easy to say when you're not running it. The Trust has had to form a bureaucracy because you can't run things without one. I've no regrets and I'm proud of the way it has turned out'.

" It has been a very successful partnership between the council and a community organisation. It's been a slow grind and the Trust hasn't finished developing. But the alternative is to start on day one and discover seven years later that you've built something the community doesn't want. "

Roy Webber, Chief Executive at RBKC, 1979 to 1990.

A Child of its Times

Looking back to the optimistic 60s from the colder shores of the 90s, it seems the Trust has been a child of its times. Born of community action in the 60s, by the time the Trust was carrying out its developments in the 70s costs had risen and government grants to local groups were being cut. Having to shoulder the weight of development, the Trust has inevitably been shaped by its remit to develop and allocate the land. 'We're in a society that doesn't allow inefficient management of assets like land and buildings', comments Malcolm Allen, who advises the DTI's Inner Cities Initiative. 'The Trust has to operate in a commercial fashion otherwise its property would deteriorate rapidly.' Through the 80s there has been a mixed reaction as the Trust has asserted its right to manage, to set its own policies and to defend and regulate the use of its land. 'No community group can entirely represent a community', says Allen. 'I think it is a strength that there is not total satisfaction with the Trust. If there were, it could become moribund.'

Beyond Dependence on Councils

Persevering with its relationship with the Council has contributed to the Trust's mixed press in North Kensington. Yet despite the bumpy start, partnership with the Council has been essential- for planning consents, joint developments, grants and loans. Through them the Trust's financial independence has been achieved. And just in time. Cut-backs from the mid 80s to the role and funding capacity of local authorities provide a sharp reminder of the importance of the Trust's ability to generate its own income and to hold assests not vulnerable to being privatised or sold off. 'When you have gone beyond dependence on councils or government, then the local community is much more in the driving seat. They own funds which they can make choices about', says Sir Bryan Nicholson, commenting as the Chairman of the judges for BBC1's 'It's My City' competition in 1989, when the Trust got the top award.

Big enough to make an impact and small enough for people in the community to have an influence, there is growing national interest in the contribution locally run development trusts can make to their neighbourhoods. One of the first development trusts in the country and one of the very few to have reached self-sufficiency, North Kensington Amenity Trust has had a pioneer role. It is now helping to establish a National Association of Development Trusts and looking to swap lessons with the growing number of trusts more recently set up.

The Trust - 2000+

How well equipped is the Trust for survival? It is not hide-bound like a public authority nor as sharply entrepreneurial as the private sector but, unusually for a voluntary organisation, expects to stand on its own financial feet. The Trust needs to continue to be competent and effective and to defend its interests. Up for review in 1993 by the Department of Transport, the successor freehold er to the GLC, the Trust is considering its case against a potentially destructive ground rent whose basis was conceived in the late 60s and bears no relationship to how the land has been developed. The Trust also needs to stay strategic. In the current recession it has to keep up commercial lettings. In the contract culture fashionable with Government it needs to keep its sports projects funded. It still has to develop its remaining three acres of derelict motorway land. And while pursuing its own initiatives it must be able to help other projects conceived and run by new generations of community activists. As statutory funds dry up, established projects will be looking for replacement grants; the Trust will be challenged to ensure most of its surplus continues to fund new initiatives. Better placed than most, the Trust needs to find ways of helping voluntary organisations keep their innovative role as they are now threatened by new statutory policies of replacing their grant-aid with service contracts.

" We had to try to get the Council to accept the idea of setting up a trust - they were the only agency big enough to take it on we thought they would make a disaster of it. What has happened has been very good compared with what we feared. "

Adam Ritchie, Chair of Kensington Playspace Association, which campaigned for setting Trust.

Nobody Rules � OK

Imagination, flair and some times plain bloody-mindedness are the inheritance, history and culture of the Trust. Its flexibility has broadened on the back of its growing financial strength, allowing it to meet changing community needs. New roles and a larger vision can grow from its established base.

The ability to accommodate a wide range of constituencies in its community has meant no single interest group controls the Trust. The early rows produced no winners and the balance of power has moved over the years from conflict to a productive tension. To stay open and imaginative to the future, the Trust needs to hold to its position of 'Nobody Rules - OK'.

Commenting today, Eddie Adams, a long-standing local resident and one of the community representatives on the committee in 1974 to whose election Sir Malby Crofton took such exception says, 'There were no models. People basically knew they wanted the land developed but they were not sure how it would work out. Without the Trust it could have ended up as car-parks or warehouses. I don't endorse all they have done, but I am glad the Trust is there. The best outcome is a strong independent Amenity Trust not beholden to the local authority, with an income and a future of its own.'