Analysis of Public Comments on Twickenham Riverside Planning Application
Background
The Twickenham Area Action Plan was adopted by Richmond Council in July 2013. This aims to transform Twickenham for the benefit of residents, businesses and visitors. Twickenham Riverside is identified as a key site:
The future use and appearance of the Riverside is critical to the success of Twickenham as a destination. Any proposals will be required to meet key design principles to ensure they do not adversely impact on the character of the Riverside and provide high quality facilities for the local community.
A comprehensive approach is proposed in order to ensure connections to the Riverside are enhanced and to make Twickenham a more attractive destination.
Over the last two years, the council has run consultations on a number of proposals. These proposals have struggled to gain widespread support and campaign groups such as Riverside Action Group and Twickenham Riverside Park have promoted alternative ideas.
On 27-Nov-2017 the council submitted a planning application for Twickenham Riverside. This was for a very similar development to that featured in the most recent Autumn 2017 consultation. It should be noted this had scored an average of 3.6 out of 10 when respondents were asked to rate their overall level of agreement. Would the planning application fare any better ?
Purpose of this Analysis
The aim is to summarise the overall levels of support for the application and establish how this varies by location.
It should be noted that the council website does not restrict the number of comments an individual can make. In some cases, multiple comments have been submitted. One reason for this is that the length of each comment is restricted.
This analysis was performed in R and the output published using R Markdown.
Importing public comments data
Comments associated with the planning application are publicly available on the Richmond council website:
http://www2.richmond.gov.uk/lbrplanning/Planning_CaseNo.aspx?strCASENO=17/4213/FUL
Three types of comment are possible: Support, Object and Observation. The website lists the address and date for comments of each type.
Tidying the data
The imported comments data was consolidated with comment type used as a factor. The postcode for each comment was extracted from the address as a distinct variable. Addresses were converted to all upper case.
Identify Missing Postcodes
A number of comments were submitted on behalf of organisations and did not have postcodes within the address listed on the council website.
| Description | Date Published | Type | Postcode |
|---|---|---|---|
| RICHMOND CYCLING CAMPAIGN | 2017-12-25 | Object | NA |
| THE TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | 2018-01-03 | Object | NA |
| RIVERMEADS RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION | 2018-01-03 | Object | NA |
| 11 THE EMBANKMENT | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| 18 BARONSFIELD ROAD | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| 2 FLOOD LANE | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| 6 GOULD ROAD | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| 62 COLE PARK ROAD | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| 7 HOLMES ROAD | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| 9 BRIDGE ROAD ST MARGARETS | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| FLAT 1 10A KING STREET | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| MCDANIEL WOOLFE LTD 32 LARKFIELD ROAD | 2018-01-16 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | 2018-01-19 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | 2018-01-25 | Object | NA |
| THE TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | 2018-01-31 | Object | NA |
| TRPT PETITION COMMENTS 24/01/2018 2 PT 01 | 2018-02-02 | Object | NA |
| TRPT PETITION COMMENTS 24/01/2018 2 PT 02 | 2018-02-02 | Object | NA |
| TRPT PETITION SIGNATURES 24/01/2018 | 2018-02-02 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | 2018-02-02 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM PT 01 | 2018-02-02 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM PT 02 | 2018-02-02 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM PT 03 - PROPOSED VEHICULAR MOVEMENT, PARKING & SERVICING ON THE SITE | 2018-02-02 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM LIDO PETITION | 2018-02-05 | Object | NA |
| EEL PIE ISLAND CLUB - STAND UP PADDLEBOARDING | 2018-02-17 | Object | NA |
| THE TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | 2018-02-23 | Object | NA |
| 4 RUE TRIANON ARLES FRANCE 13200 | 2018-02-23 | Object | NA |
| 63 RIVERMEADS AVENUE | 2018-02-26 | Object | NA |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | 2018-02-26 | Object | NA |
| 14 MARYS TERRACE | 2018-03-05 | Object | NA |
| THE TWICKENHAM SOCIETY | 2017-12-27 | Support | NA |
| THE RIVERSIDE ACTION GROUP TEAM | 2018-01-03 | Support | NA |
| EEL PIE ISLAND ASSOCIATION | 2018-01-05 | Support | NA |
| THE TWICKENHAM SOCIETY | 2018-01-14 | Support | NA |
| DAWSON DESIGN ASSOCIATES | 2018-01-14 | Support | NA |
| EEL PIE ISLAND ASSOCIATION | 2018-01-05 | Observation | NA |
| RIVERSIDE ACTION GROUP TEAM | 2018-01-22 | Observation | NA |
| RIVER THAMES SOCIETY | 2018-01-24 | Observation | NA |
| TWICKENHAM LIDO | 2018-01-29 | Observation | NA |
| YORK HOUSE SOCIETY | 2018-01-31 | Observation | NA |
| EEL PIE ISLAND CLUB - STAND UP PADDLEBOARDING | 2018-02-01 | Observation | NA |
| TWICKENHAM ALIVE | 2018-02-19 | Observation | NA |
| TWICKENHAM ROWING CLUB | 2018-02-28 | Observation | NA |
Assign Missing Postcodes
The missing postcode values were assigned by extracting them from within the PDF document linked to the respective planning comment.
Exploratory data analysis
The total number of comments for each category are plotted in the following bar chart.
Since multiple comments can be made from the same address we can see where this has occurred and determine whether these should be combined. It should be noted that these are not duplicate comments and typically occur because of additional points or due to the character restriction imposed when submitting comments.
Because of this and so that comment numbers match those on the council website these have, for now, been left as distinct comments for the analysis.
| Description | Type | n |
|---|---|---|
| THE TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | Object | 10 |
| TWICKENHAM RIVERSIDE PARK TEAM | Object | 10 |
| 63 RIVERMEADS AVENUE, TWICKENHAM, TW2 5JF | Object | 6 |
| 18 FOURTH CROSS ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW2 5EL | Object | 5 |
| 29 POPES AVENUE, TWICKENHAM, TW2 5TP | Object | 5 |
| 29 POPES AVENUE, TWICKENHAM, TW2 5TP | Observation | 5 |
| 4 ORFORD GARDENS, TWICKENHAM, TW1 4PL | Object | 4 |
| 46 LION ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW1 4JF | Object | 4 |
| 6 GOULD ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW2 6RS | Object | 4 |
| 22 RYDENS ROAD, WALTON-ON-THAMES, KT12 3DA | Support | 3 |
| 24 CLIFDEN ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW1 4LX | Observation | 3 |
| 4 VICTORIA ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW1 3HW | Support | 3 |
| 41 HAGGARD ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW1 3AL | Object | 3 |
| 51 ARRAGON ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW1 3NG | Object | 3 |
| 7 HOLMES ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW1 4RF | Object | 3 |
| 87 SHERLAND ROAD, TWICKENHAM, TW1 4HB | Object | 3 |
Postcode lookup
The data now includes includes postcodes for all comments but in order to place these on a map geo coordinates are needed.
R package PostcodesioR provides an API wrapper to the postcodes.io UK postcode lookup and geocoder. Note the package is not yet published on CRAN so must be installed from github.
From the resulting data structure we require the longitude and latitude values which represent the geographical centre of the postcode.
Getting a map
We need a map on which to plot the geographical points. The R package ggmap enables this:
D. Kahle and H. Wickham. ggmap: Spatial Visualization with ggplot2. The R Journal, 5(1), 144-161.
In this case, the options were to source a map centred on Twickenham Riverside from google with a “roadmap” style.
Plotting map of all comments
The comments can now be plotted onto the map. In order to visualise where most comments originate, the comments are grouped by postcode with the plotted points being sized based on the number of comments i.e. a concentration of comments produces a bigger point to be plotted.
Google maps utilises a zoom level which must be an integer between 1 (world level) and 20 (building level). In this case, a zoom level of 10 allows all of the comments to be mapped
It can be seen from the plot that most comments are concentrated around the site of the planned development. There are a few comments made by those living outside the Twickenham area (Swiss Cottage, Walton-on-Thames, Staines, Bracknell, Chertsey, Wanstead) with the majority of these being supportive of the application.
Plotting comments from the Twickenham area
It is more informative to focus on comments made from the Twickenham area using a zoom level of 13.
Objections are fairly evenly spread around an area bounded by the A316 and the river. The largest cluster of objections is associated with the Twickenham Riverside Park Team.
By increasing zoom level further to 15 it can be seen that there are two distinct concentrations of supporting comments. Firstly, from Eel Pie Island which overlooks the site and secondly, from an area around Haggard Road / Victoria Road which would appear to coincide with the address given by the Riverside Action Group.
Conclusions
It has been possible to visualise the locations from which comments have been made and how these are distributed. The vast majority of comments have been received from within the Twickenham area. There are well over three times as many objections and these are spread fairly evenly across an area between the river and the A316. Supporting comments are more highly clustered.
Potential Improvements / Next Steps
- Review if multiple comments from the same address should be consolidated
- Plot Richmond-Upon-Thames boundary / Twickenham ward boundaries
- Perform analysis of the actual comment text to identify key trends
- Address any feedback received