Democracy in Name or Process?
picture of Joe Bhangu
CASH member Joe Banghu has frequently challenged members of Southall’s political institutions on their capacities to uphold and represent the voices of the people they represent. Many like Joe have grown to feel that those who propose, draft, write, and approve local government policy have too much power, can be easily swayed, and whose only oversight is an election cycle.
Once the ballot box is closed, so does accountability. This has very much been the case of a community advocating for the people who politically represent them to stand alongside and fight for them. It became apparent to us during a call with Ealing Council’s leader, Peter Mason, on this project that despite being acutely aware of the problems the community was facing, planning and property law meant that it is very hard and legally (and politically) risky stop the development taking place unless it was demonstrably in real time breaking the laws under which its consents were granted - Britain is arguably built on the epistemological basis of property ownership is everything.
When reviewing the initial 2008 planning documents for the Southall Waterside development it was clear that all parties were aware of the problems of contaminated land. Even to the extent of drafting the following language in West Southall Environmental Statement, Volume 1, Part D:
“Excavation activities during construction or once the Site is occupied may disturb contaminants currently immobilised within the soil profile to create new, or extend existing, pathways. This would introduce additional contaminant sources with new or faster pathways to identified receptors. Potential health effects could occur including ingestion of toxic heavy metals and skin irritation caused by contact with hydrocarbons. These human health pathways and effects are most likely to concern on-site workers, with limited exposure to off-site receptors...
“…Remediation works will need to be managed in accordance with best practice and controls [sic] measures used during these works so as to reduce the likely significant effects as identified above. If no measures are introduced, the existence of contaminated land at the Site is identified as potentially causing moderate adverse effects to local receptors (local controlled waters, construction workers and local residential areas)” .
Frequently during construction members of CASH were aghast to see the tarpaulins of soil hospitals flying around in the wind. This was not a case of illegal activity but of poor compliance and oversight - who is there to hold people accountable to the nuances of planning applications and conditions of approval? Reporting mechanisms between citizen-to-authority-to-accused are laborious and often a battle. Anyone who has tried to report neighbourly issues to authorities have often given up or found themselves acting as pseudo-detectives building a case against another person, not something we should need to do to uphold a sense of dignified living.
Therefore, when we think about the term ‘democracy’ in light of the WHOs guidance we chose to expand what this could mean from a systems perspective. For us, democracy in this case was seen more in terms of governance. What systems are in place to ensure that a community-led voice has the ability to feedback on the successes of compliance? This meant that for us that the ecosystem in which the HIA is performed is as crucial as the assessment itself. We chose to rewrite the rules and ignore current political hierarchies and imagine what would make a successful HIA in a community's eye.
There were some key issues to resolve: who owns the data; who owns the process; who oversees the process; who validates the outcome? For us this meant redesigning the system:
The community owns the HIA and is requested by the applicant.
A member of the community is nominated to oversee the process.
Results are fed back to the community in a discursive format in order to co-design solutions.
A member of the community is nominated to oversee the compliance of the HIA related planning conditions.
The completed HIA is returned to the community and made available to all other community organisations across the UK.
This challenges the status quo in how an HIA is performed, often done by individuals with no relationship to the local community or area and at times without technical or professional insight/qualifications on health, and the results are rarely shared with members of the public and stored within inaccessible (to the lay-person) planning websites.
Again, it is not the form that is wrong but the method/function, the cart leading the horse. Upholding democracy is predicated on robust governance systems and transparency.