Is Dany Cotton prepared to be locally accountable? – August 2019

Is Dany Cotton prepared to be locally accountable? – August 2019

Will the London Fire Brigade make itself accountable for the disastrous community engagement efforts carried out by their partner, U+I, as well as the impacts their 8 Albert Embankment proposal on local people?

In July we started directly emailing Dany Cotton, Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade (the public body responsible for the U+I planning application ), asking her to review the public consultation and meet directly with the local community.  We felt it was important that, as the accountable public official who commissioned the proposed development she engage directly with us, rather than through the filter of her deputies or co-developer U+I, whom we have already met. 

We want Dany Cotton to review the public consultation and to hear directly about the impacts of the development on the local community. She will not get this from her staff.  

It is now August 19th and what we have had back from Cotton so far have been:

• Copy-and-paste stock replies from U+I 
• Offers for U+I to meet with the community (we’ve been through this one already!),
• Offers of deputy staff who would come on Cotton’s behalf, and
• Many long gaps between replies.

However in this period, Cotton found the time to write a publicity piece about the development for the OnLondon website, espousing the virtues of the proposal, without even giving a nod to the public opposition that has been building around it.  

What we have not yet had, is a commitment from her to meet those of us most impacted by the development. So while Cotton can sit at a keyboard and espouse the supposed virtues of her legacy project, she seems considerably more reluctant to come and meet the people who will live with it’s consequences and have legitimate challenges to both the consultation process and outcome.  

We appreciate that committing to come out to listen to a group of frustrated residents is not likely to be anyone’s first choice for a summer evening in London, but unfortunately, that is a part of some people’s jobs. Cotton is one of those people. 

We are still waiting for that commitment…