Foresters,

Live/work is a commonly abused concept by developers who seek to build residential on employment land. Unfortunately councils across London have allow poor quality live/work units to be developed far too often and this has had a negative effect on perceptions of live/work developments in general.

The Printworks development in Clyde Vale is not a good example of live/work and does little to enhance the overall development. However, we do have good examples of live/work development in Forest Hill and across the borough - the obvious example being Havelock Walk.

The Forest Hill Society has worked very closely with Jeff Lowe from Havelock Walk to develop a good plan for live/work. We believe that good quality live/work on Willow Way would be beneficial to the community in a number of ways: by providing maximum employment on the site and by building a creative hub and a community at this end of Sydenham. The site is surrounded by warehouses, retail, and residential, and live/work would bring these aspects together in a vibrant and cohesive way.

Ideally we would like to see a change of planning designation for the site to allow for mixed development which would include some residential as well as live/work, but the site could be developed as pure live/work if necessary and this would fit within Lewisham's planning guidance. The specific rejection in paragraph 9.11 rejects the use of the site as live/work but we have demostrated that it actually provides more employment than any other use of this site, this is because a live/work development could be developed to a greater height than any standard employment use. Even with some residential to complement the live/work component, the employment levels are higher than any other use of this land (other than an office block which would not meet the current employment designation either).

Our vision, developed over the last 5 months, is a development with one or two retail units facing onto Willow Way (probably a cafe). Then inside the development would be a small number of large units - twice the size of a normal house which would include living accomodation and a large workspace, ideal for artists with the two elements split across the ground and first floor. A number of additional units would be on the remaining sites on the ground floor, first floor, and second floor (possibly the third floor as well) which would be more suitable for architects, design studios, small Internet based businesses. Then what I would like to see is penthouse flats providing residential on the top of this development. These elements would work well together making it feel like both an employment area during the day, and a nice residential area during the evening and at weekends.

So, completely different from the Printworks development, and designed to allow the best use of this site and not just as a way to get round planning regulations or to safeguard swimming in Dartmouth Road.

Incidentally, if a small proportion of the top floors was allowed for residential units, and prices to return to 2007 levels, I would expect the development to generate ?2m-?3m for the council. This would give the council back about the same amount extra they might put into the pool on Dartmouth Road, from a site that they valued at zero in February!