Well no it isn’t, actually. But before a contract is signed for the River Centre and enabling housing the people of Twickenham will get the chance to make their wishes known at the ballot box.
At the end of a meeting of the full council on 20th October, LibDem Council Leader Serge Lourie made an announcement that stunned his audience. Because the Council’s chosen developer, Countryside Properties had filed delayed accounts for 2008/9, and those accounts showed a substantial loss for that year, it has been decided that it would be imprudent to proceed with this particular contractor without seeing their accounts for 2009/10. These accounts will not appear until the summer of 2010.
Before that, in May 2010, there is a local election. The Conservative opposition has declared it will not proceed with the Countryside scheme, but will instead consult with local amenity groups to arrive at a largely open-space scheme which will preserve the use of the majority of the Riverside land for the public.
This is yet another chapter in the 30-year saga of this site. But opponents of the Countryside scheme point out that a 9-12 month delay is still preferable to losing public amenity land for 999 years.
The May 2010 local election will have a special relevance for the residents of Twickenham.
