Southwark Conversation, online survey.

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Let's Talk

You will find the on-line survey at www.southwark.gov.uk/talksouthwark

If anyone you know wishes to respond but does not have internet access they can call a duty number 020 7525 3326 and someone will respond to assist.

Southwark, like the rest of London, is changing. The council wants this change to work for all our residents – to help you and your families enjoy life, be healthy and thrive in Southwark.

With or without the council, the next few years will see new developments and buildings, new businesses and technology, and an ever-changing skyline. Southwark’s population will also continue to change, as more people choose to make our borough their home.

We have been bold in our plans to encourage home building and, with rapidly reducing budgets, finding ways to make sure private developers help pay for the thousands of new council homes we are building, the new leisure centres and libraries we have opened, and new cultural and open spaces.

We are also helping residents to take advantage of the opportunities around them, and have helped 5,000 people into work, as well as creating nearly 2,000 apprenticeships for local people. We’re also ensuring that as our population grows, we have the new schools, health services and transport improvements that our residents need – despite massive cuts in funding from national Government.

But we don’t want to make assumptions – we want to build on previous consultations to make sure we’re getting it right for you and your families now, and for future generations. We want to hear direct from our residents about how the changes are affecting you, how you feel about the future, and whether there’s anything you think we can do differently.

While we don’t have a magic wand, and the Government, the Mayor, the NHS and the private sector all play an important role in influencing our lives, the council does have some powers and levers that we can use to help make Southwark an even better place to live, work and play than it is today.

We want to hear from you – please take a few minutes to fill in our questionnaire, and come and speak to us as we travel around the borough on our most far reaching engagement with the people who live and work in Southwark.

Headline feedback will be published by the end of February

OBVNF Meeting 18th October: Local List, Site Briefs and Area Extension

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Meeting6.30pm Wednesday 18 October

 Globe House | Corner of Bermondsey Street & Crucifix Lane
 
On the agenda
Local List 

St Thomas St Site Briefs and the Southwark Plan 
Area Extension

Local List
Nominate your favourite local buildings

Following the introduction of the ‘Local List’ at the last forum meeting we now need to get some momentum from the Council with its development. A nomination form and a copy of the working list are both available from the OBF website:

http://oldbermondseyforum.org/protected%20building%20nominations.html

Please take a moment to nominate some further local heritage assets and/or to help fill in the details for those which have already been identified. At the meeting we will discuss ongoing nominations and selection criteria. In response to our policy proposals  to the Council last year they indicated support for the idea of a local list and we have now asked for clarification on how they see the Local List developing.  They have been invited to attend this meeting but at the time of writing they have not responded.
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obvnf18oct3 Area Extension
Three weeks ago we submitted an application to extend the OBF Area. Our long-standing followers will be familiar with the history of the Forum’s Council-imposed area boundary but for the benefit of new subscribers to our mailing list (who may have signed up at the Bermondsey St Festival) we will review the argument for recovering the key parts of our originally proposed area.  Cooperation from the Council permitting, we will update the group on the progress of the application.

St Thomas St site briefs

Closely related to the area extension application – and following up on our extensive consultation on the Council’s aspirations for St Thomas St (‘NSP53’) – we will be discussing the development of site briefs for the crucial St Thomas St sites. These will become the focus of intense developer interest once the Station is completed and Network Rail ceases its temporary use of the former car park site.  This is now only about a year away and it is a safe bet that, on the quiet, the Council are already cosying up with prospective developers and looking to prepare the ground for high-rise schemes and the demolition of (our listed) Becket House and what should be the iconic Vinegar Yard warehouse.

How can we create a coherent imaginative working vision for the south side of St Thomas St?  And how can we force the Council and prospective developers to have regard to local opinion on the treatment the key sites?  From proposed uses to massing and architectural detailing, what should be the community brief that binds together and protects St Thomas’ Street, the Vinegar Warehouse, the Horseshoe Pub and the Melior St garden? A framework for a development of a working brief will be presented for discussion.

In dealing with specifics and representing real local knowledge and opinion OBF Site Briefs can offer what cash- and target-driven Council Area Visions cannot. What other sites in the neighbourhood would benefit from OBF site briefs? And crucially, how do we make the Council respect local opinion?

And Finally
Here’s some salt for the wounds of those who supported BVAG since the challenge to Network Rail and the Council over the needless demolition of the London Bridge trainshed and the South Eastern Railway Offices on Tooley St.  BVAG’s case was that the reason for the heritage carnage wreaked by the Grimshaw-designed station was the determination of Network Rail (and the DfT) to fund the low-budget scheme with the creation of a massive retail premises rent roll.  Network Rail told the Administrative Court – right up to the Court of Appeal – that nothing of the sort was afoot and that there was to be absolutely no increase in retail space at the station as compared with its former incarnation.  That blatant deceit complemented their claim that they had to build the station around the London Dungeon because they couldn’t touch the unassailable lease they said owners Merlin Entertainment had on tens of thousands of square feet of the viaduct.  The latter deception was long ago exposed when, under the Freedom of Information Act, we got a copy of the expenses claim (redacted of the figures) they had long before made to the DfT for the buyout.  Now they are getting close to being unable to continue to conceal the retail-rent driver of the heritage wipe-out here are their first public pronouncements that they took the Courts for a ride.  In reality the Court of Appeal BVAG went before was just not interested in the evidence when they had a government department to protect; that Network Rail obviously couldn’t be lying was the only axiom they needed to support their decision (and costs order) against us.

There was a time when Court of Appeal Judges weren’t ready to protect the public sector establishment no matter what.  Not any more.
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Photographed in the emerging London Bridge shopping Mall

OBF meetingsare open to all  – All welcome

info@oldbermondseyforum.org

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