It would seem that the building of the Woods Road development is now probably a foregone conclusion, on the 26th September I received an email from Mr Gary Rice (head of development management at Southwark Council) kindly informing me that the Council Planning Committee will meet on the 7th October at 1900 hrs at the council offices 160 Tooley Street SE1 2TZ to consider his recommendation to grant planning permission for the gigantic project planned for Woods Road, you can have a look for yourself on the website here: Woods Road Development planning the application number is : 14/AP/1872 .
The meeting of the Planning Committee to decide this will be held at the Council Offices at Tooley Street, London SE1 2TZ on Tuesday 7th October 2014 at 7pm. (near London Bridge Train station. If you are free please come along and let the council know your views. If you are coming, it would be a good idea to emailSarah.Koniarski@southwark.gov.uk who is the meeting secretary, as they plan to allocate only a total of 3 minutes for ALL objections to be heard. Sarah wished to know if we will be requesting more time from the Planning chairman as 3 minutes for so many objectors is too short, so the more people who email her the more likely it is that the case will be granted extra time.
If you read the complaints, it becomes fairly apparent that mistakes have been made, when we first heard of this development, we discovered, on visiting their planning exhibition, held in the Scaffolders office the Georgian house at the entrance to the yard, that they had misnumbered all the houses on Consort Road as a result some residents never received their correspondence inviting them to the exhibition.
It seems that density has been addressed in a rather cursory manner, this is an awful lot of flats and pretty high too, seven storeys in one part, a reduction by two dwellings seems to have satisfied Mr Rice on the density front.
According to the, much better informed than me, People’s Republic of Southwark website a lot of building is about to happen in Peckham and this little area will become, well quite dense.
Surely density of developments of new dwellings should be judged on all of those projects planned not just on the individual one being discussed here?
I have an interest, I live on Consort Road and have done for close to seven years, way before it became the ‘quartier;’ of choice in London.
Apparently, according to the planning report, the issue of the new flats overlooking mine and other peoples houses on Consort Road won’t be a problem as the building is ten metres from the boundary and we have gardens measuring 22 metres, so that should be alright.
The view from 7 Consort Road from the back of the house as it is now:
and now a CGI of what they are proposing to build:
I fail to understand why having a big garden reduces the ability of a resident in the new flats to overlook my house which currently is not overlooked, when I look out of my window I see only green (lucky me).
I recall the problems 15 1/2 Consort Road had in getting planning permission to build their exotic new build as featured on Grand Designs, how delicate their approach had to be, being so close to such beautiful Regency buildings such as mine, how times have changed, that doesn’t seem to matter anymore, if they were to build their house now could they build their house to the dizzy heights of four storeys. I doubt it.
But please don’t get me wrong, I do not oppose the development, I think it can only be a good thing to have well built and well considered dwellings in Peckham, after all we all want stuff to get better right? Not worse…
But this development seems to be taking us back to the 60’s, below, still in peckham, an example of the kind of insensitive development just of Lyndhurst Road that we are trying to avoid in Peckham.
The Design Review Panel (DRP) made up of professionals whose business it is to create well considered and esthetically pleasing buildings, evidently do not approve of this development as they could not back it in it’s present form, they asked for many changes some have been addressed but the key concerns on the scheme raised by the DRP, which have not been addressed or provided are:-
A contextual model is required to inform heights of the proposed development and impact on the historic context.
The ‘S’ layout of the proposal remains the same and the DRP stated:
- They felt the relationship with the adjoining park was poorly considered.
- The singular building at 75m in length, would appear overly dominant in this context and introduces an alien form in this setting.
- They question the choice of a singular expression especially the reason why it remains largely unchanged in design whether it faces the park, the street or the listed buildings.
- The ‘S’ building raises concerns of massing and an attempt to resolve this has been made by stepping in height and changing materials and form, but this is not successful.
- Architects to provide analysis of alternative options.
- Choice of materials inappropriate and ignored the local context.
When looking at the plans all those months ago I pointed out to the architect that the building he was describing to me, the one that would overlook my property, as four storeys was actually five storeys, because there was another floor on the roof that was set back, but he was not counting that one, I kept pointing at it and calling it the fifth floor, he eventually relented and agreed it was another floor, I left that meeting with such distrust in what they were proposing.
So as lay persons we have seven working days, actually fewer as the report was not put online as described but actually some time later, to examine the fifty page report as prepared by Mr Rice and the many experts and contributors.
We are allowed seven days to understand the technical language from the world they all inhabit, this is just not possible and frankly an unreasonable request.
If we disagree with his recommendation we have three minutes to speak, yes three, three minutes to reply to the points contained in a fifty page document, a document that I can barely make head nor tail of, and I consider myself to be fairly well educated.
So why bother going to the meeting? I will be there if only to feel the wool be drawn over my eyes, believe me it will be palpable.
I want this build to happen but why should it, as it is planned now?
Why should it be allowed to overlook my property?
Why is the pre application advice offered by the council to the developers not available to me?
Why, if you disagree are you only allowed three minutes to voice your objections?
The council get three months to decide, we get less than seven days, why?
The Council seems to want to grant planning (we understand it is mainly their own land that they are selling and they wish to get the best price by squeezing as much development on to it as possible). Also interesting is that the report states that part of the land (M&R) Scaffolding is owned by the applicant (Kitewood), they are undoubtedly confident of a positive outcome.
There are objections to the scheme from more than 50 people. Objections range from scale, domination, design, impact on listed buildings, desired use of the land for education, impact on the John Donne School, security, traffic, pressure on services like GPS and schools, lack of parking, overlooking, loss of light and open space, community integration and the size of the other nearby proposed developments at Woodene and Carlton Grove, which will altogether total around 500 new homes in immediate proximity with no extra services for residents.
This is council owned land, could there be a conflict of interest?
Also the removal of the listed building from this phase of the scheme, could this have been to speed through planning approval.
The Design Review Panel could not support the development as planned and asked that the Architects go back to the drawing board and come back with a design that was more fitting with the existing surroundings, to a large extent they have been ignored, why ask their advice in the first place?
It is impossible to put together a coherent argument in the time allowed.
So Design review panel members, those involved in the PNAAP, the supporters of Codesign for the station in Peckham, the protect rooftop views from Peckham, this is undoubtedly much less sexy as a cause, but nonetheless it will affect your/our Peckham and so will all the other developments proposed for this area, a more holistic view surely must be adopted and this development needs to be redesigned so that it becomes a credit to Peckham not just a method of extracting funds from Mayor Johnson.
That is how some of us feel on Consort Road, is there anything we can do? Is there anything you can do to help?
Please come to the meeting at the Council on Tuesday 7th October at 1900 hrs 7pm
Co written by Lionel Cherruault and Sonia Larsen
twitter: @Lord_Peckham
No comments:
Post a Comment