| Author |
Message |
Kk
Joined 04-03-2005
| | Posted on Monday, 31 October, 2005 - 10:40 am: | |
King’s College has put in for planning permission to improve the sports facilities at their Honor Oak Sportsground. The planned development includes two all weather pitches, increased floodlighting and a new pavilion and spectator stand. On the surface this seems like good news, however for the residents around the sports ground it causes several concerns.
As a resident my main concern is that the college claim that, in order to provide the funding for the project, they have to build housing on part of the sportsground. This is coming from a college that has a turnover of £348 million and recently sold the Cobham Sportsground to Chelsea football club for £1.3 million (this sale was approved on the grounds that this money would be invested in improving the college sports facilities).
The “fund raising” housing isn’t for students, it’s not affordable housing that could benefit the local community – it’s a mews consisting of seven houses aimed at the “high end to luxury” segment of the housing market. I believe that building on the small amount of green space that we have in London is wrong. If King’s College wants to improve sports facilities for it’s students then it should be prepared to fund the entire development.
KCL claim that the community will benefit from the improved sports facilities, as they will allow members of the public to have access to them (for a fee!). Personally I don’t believe that Lewisham is currently under resourced in terms of sports facilities. KCL has over 40 sports clubs many of which will be both practicing and competing at Honor Oak Park should the development go ahead. The small proportion of our community that want to use the facilities will always take second place to the student sports clubs, so a small proportion of the community will sometimes be able to use the facilities – not a massive benefit!
Local residents already experience problems with the sportsground in terms of:
Traffic
Noise
Light pollution
Disturbance from students
Improving the facilities will result in a huge increase in usage of the sportsground and subsequently an increase in all of these problems.
KCL needs to ask itself if this very residential area is the right place to develop “world class” sports facilities for their students. For more details on the development you can look at the KCL website – http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sportsgrounds/hopredevelopmen t.html.
Members of The Brockley Rise Resident’s Association and the Honor Oak Park Resident’s Association will be making their concerns known to Lewisham council.
If you would like further information or contact details then please let me know. |
Brian
Joined 18-04-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 01 November, 2005 - 07:18 am: | |
Hello KK.
We have the same problems from time to time with the Dulwich Estates to try to encroach house by house onto Sydenham Hill Woods.
The area at the moment is made liveable by the ammounts of green space.
We must fight every attempt to build unless on sites that already had houses. |
Baggydave
Joined 19-05-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, 01 November, 2005 - 12:29 pm: | |
When Two Jags came up with the policy of building zillions more houses my belief was that Lewisham said that their allocation could be accommodated on brown field sites. Hopefully they will stick to this. See the new earth.google.com to see how much green space we have compared to other parts of London |
Brian
Joined 18-04-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 01 November, 2005 - 01:17 pm: | |
What right has the overfed gent from Hull to tell us where houses should be built in our neighbourhood.Perhaps should stick to stewarding on ferries. |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 01 November, 2005 - 01:29 pm: | |
An application to build new houses/flats on a site in Perry Hill has been refused. Puzzling! |
Brian
Joined 18-04-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, 03 November, 2005 - 07:46 am: | |
Sherwood
Which site is this .??
Sounds like good news
More houses , mean more cars , more congestion.
Also the railway working at full capacity in rush hours. |
Loneranger
Joined 29-10-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, 03 November, 2005 - 01:51 pm: | |
Baggydave, the council has already agreed to building on open space. What was part of Deptford Park is being built on, partly because there was a house there 60 years ago. Does anyone know what was on the piece of open land beside Forest Hill pool? |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, 03 November, 2005 - 02:14 pm: | |
Brian,
The site is the FBA catering shop on Perry Hill. I was told permission has been refused, but I have not seen any confirmation myself. |
