We are organising a SEE3 Town Team meeting on Thursday 30 October at Here For Good, 17 Sydenham Road at 7pm. The key topic will be the Mayor of London's High Street Fund. Up to £9million is available to support London's High Streets to become even better places to visit, to live in and to do business in.

Funding will be directed to places that have potential for growth and where there is the commitment and capacity for real long-term change. Successful projects will create vibrant, attractive places that underpin good growth.

The fund is flexible around the activities it will support, however it is focused towards places where groups [such as Town Teams] have formed.

The fund is open to Boroughs, Sub-regional Partnerships, Town Teams and Business Improvement Districts, Community Groups, and Charities within London.

The fund would like to see proposals from the following themes, however these are by no means exhaustive, and some examples are listed below;

Proactive Stewardship - Guiding the changes ahead:
• Help form traders' associations and town teams
• Bring together multiple stakeholders to coordinate collective action
• Establish a marketing strategy for a place.
• Deliver physical projects, such as a community hub or garden, that facilitate engagement and around which groups can form.
• Establish a baseline, as a snapshot of current standard and performance, as part of a monitoring regime or regular health checks.

Stimulating activity - Designing High Street to attract people
• Improve the look and feel of places
• Develop events and attractions, such as festivals or street markets
• Provide better wayfinding and signage
• Help with Licencing issues that can hold back use of the pavements by cafes, restaurants, shops and community activity
• Help traders, budding entrepreneurs and community groups to embrace digital technology

Occupying Empty Space - Ensuring a diverse and desirable mix of uses
• Explore Town Centre Investment Management models such as real estate investment trusts and joint ventures to pool and manage property
• Make it easier for businesses to find premises and move in
• Explore and exploit the evening economy
• Use empty premises for flexible workspace, pop-up shops, crèches, cafes, learning or making space.
• Create temporary uses for empty sites awaiting development.
• Establish Community food growing projects on unused public spaces.
• Ensure usable ground floor space in new developments, that makes a positive contribution to the street.

Accommodating Growth - Recognising the role of High Streets in Development and Intensification
• Defining a High Street vision
• Shaping New Development on or around the High Street
• Supporting High Street Investment Companies, Joint Ventures, and real estate Investment trusts that are well placed to pool, manage and redevelop property and deliver housing
• Making better use of spaces above and behind shops

If you are interested in discussing a bid for the area then please come along on Thursday and share your views on what next for the high street.

Looks like a full and interesting agenda Michael.

I will be away, unfortunately, but I'd like to propose a small and relatively inexpensive improvement to the gateway of Dartmouth Road's shops, pools and library etc, which I believe could be quite effective.

   

At present I think it looks quite dark and uninviting when you glance it from the main junction; mainly due to the bottle-neck at Bunka and the grimey brickwork above the shops.

I'd like to see the brickwork on the first few shops (at least) cleaned and brightened-up and Robert Stanfords' old sign above Bunka utilised (a la the new Kirkdake High Street signage) to promote the road's offerings and to coincide with the £650,000 worth of pavement and road improvements that are being done over the next 2 years.

How did the meeting go?

I'll attempt a brief summary, but just to say that there will be another similar meeting on Tuesday 18th November to follow up on the action points.

Attendance included local traders, committee members from FH Soc and Syd Soc, local councillors from FH and Sydenham, and other interested residents (about 20 people in total).

There was an update on the work accomplished by SEE3 and the improvements made to the local high streets over the last 2 years.

The main points of action were two potential bids to the GLA:
1. Up to £20k as a joint bid from Sydenham Arts and SEE3, hopefully involving the Horniman in a program of events for the local area.
2. A larger bid for improvements to Forest Hill town centre based on the planning workshop this summer. A meeting has been arranged with Lewisham council next week to discuss this.

Beyond these bids there was discussion about improving communications by SEE3 and about the Christmas calendar.

Anybody interested in hearing more or with skills that could help us develop SEE3 is welcome to attend the open meeting on 18th November, which is likely to be at the same venue (but I don't have confirmation).

Glad you liked the sign we designed for Kirkdale John, we have just another one in Bromley in addition to the others we have done in over parts of London. Unfortunately our local Cllr and SEE3 chair won't support the one we proposed in Sydenham or the additional one we proposed in Kirkdale despite having funding for it.

Good luck with Forest Hill Michael, I think FH are doing a fantastic job with some really good, forward thinking ideas. Hopefully one day such thinking will filter south to Sydenham.