Examination of Witnesses (Questions 11280
- 11299)
11280. Dr Goodbody: All I am saying is
that I do not want to be in this position and I would like to
get as much protection from you as I can.
11281. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Dr Goodbody,
thank you very much for coming forward.
11282. Can I call the Spitalfields Small Business
Association, Mrs Kay Jordan.
The Petition of Spitalfields Small Business
Association
Mrs Kay Jordan appeared as Agent
11283. Ms Jordan: Can I just say that
I am very deaf and on my left side I am totally deaf.
11284. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Yes, we know
that. We have been told that.
11285. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Mr Mould.
11286. Mr Mould: Sir, I shall simply
say that the Petitioner is the Spitalfields Small Business Association
Limited, which owns and manages approximately 90,000 square feet
of workspace in the Spitalfields area in London, and a number
of properties are owned or leased by the Association. I will not
take trouble to read them all out, I am sure that the Petitioner
mentions those in turn if she wishes to draw them to the Committee's
specific attention.
11287. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Ms Jordan.
11288. Ms Jordan: I will start by introducing
myself and telling you a little about the organisation I work
for and I am representing today. I will then explain which properties
of the organisation are affected, as this gentleman said, by the
Promoter's proposals, and how the Promoter's proposals will now
affect the lives and livelihoods of our tenants and those in the
wider Brick Lane community.
11289. I will go on to explain how our organisation
and the wider Brick Lane community were excluded from the Promoter's
round 1 consultation process and as such were denied the opportunity
to participate in discussions concerning the route taken by the
Promoters in the Brick Lane area who were not told of the environmental
impact of such works on our physical and social conditions.
11290. I will explain that the Secretary of
State, whose recommendations to the House during the second reading
of the Bill, recognised our right to make these matters the subject
of your Committee's deliberations and recommendations. I will
go on to explain how we consider the proposed route and the ventilation
shaft in Hanbury Street to be not only ill-conceived but also
totally inappropriate for our tightly knit urban area and community.
11291. Finally, I will explain why the southern
alignment, briefly talked about by the Promoters but never considered
or explained in detail, is a more appropriate alignment which
should be developed and adopted even at this late stage of the
proceedings.
11292. For the record I will state that my name
is Kay Jordan and I am the Executive Director of Spitalfields
Small Business Association, known locally as the SsBA, and that
is how I will refer to it in my presentation.
11293. I trained as an architect at the Architectural
Association in the late 1960s and practised community architecture
working with, first, Calvin Kofte and then with the SsBA since
the late 70s. I come from a family of engineers: my grandfather,
father, brother and indeed my nephew are all qualified engineers,
and I too have worked, before becoming a community architect,
with major engineering companies, including work on gas pipelines
through Iran.
11294. When it did exist I was the Vice Chairman
of the IRP's community architecture group and I exhibited and
won architecture awards. In 1996 I was awarded an MBE for my community
work—
11295. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Ms Jordan—
11296. Ms Jordan: I know, you want me
to rush and I am trying to go as fast as I can but I hope that
you will be kind enough to listen to what I have to say.
11297. I will go on now to talk about the SsBA.
The SsBA is an extremely well known social enterprise with a national
as well as international reputation, and it has been in existence
for 25 years, and we are what is now known as a self-sustaining
social enterprise, and we actually get that self-sustainability
from our workshops. It was created in the late 1970s to help,
then, a mainly Bangladeshi community improve living and working
conditions in an area that then contained the worse slums in the
country. Through joint venture arrangements, working with the
housing cooperative, now known as the Spitalfields Housing Association,
it was to attempt to acquire and improve some of the worst buildings
in the area.
11298. Since incorporation in 1981 the SsBA
has created and improved and now manages some 90,000 square feet
of commercial space in the Brick Lane area, which it lets to approximately
120 tenant businesses and community organisations. They carry
out a variety of trades and activities, and like the housing cooperative
we are a membership to our tenants, so we are like the housing
cooperative but our tenants are members and therefore we are not
in the normal landlord/tenant relationship of a normal commercial
limited company.
11299. We pride ourselves on our multi-racial,
multi-cultural base, and as well as reviving small business premises
and economic advice we have a charity called the SsBA Community
Trust, which supports two training and enterprise projects, one
known as the Poetry in Wood for people with learning difficulties,
and another called Heba, a women's project which is based in Brick
Lane.
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