What would be churlish would be for 'the community' not to take advantage of this opportunity to do something good with Louise House.

By listing the building there was no expectation that the building should be used for the community or for housing. As long as it remains standing that is all English Heritage care about. The council quite rightly want to see something happen quickly with this building, before it ends up as more of an eyesore than it already is (boarded up windows, tarmac driveway, missing letters on the facade).

I want to see this building kept in community use and the council are willing to give the building to the community to do something special. How often do such opportunities come along?

Lewisham Council has just invested ?12.5m into a leisure centre next door, I think it would be difficult to expect them to now find even more money in the capital budget for renovating this building and turning it into an arts centre.

I hope that the 3000 people who wanted to keep this building will now support the arts/community centre proposals. This is going to be a big project, but with yesterday's victory I feel a little more confident that the community might be able to make this happen. In the next couple of weeks I intend to set up an action committee for Louise House to develop some ideas for arts/community uses of the building. We have a huge project ahead of us - we need to raise at least ?2m (but probably closer to ?4m) to refurbish a listed building, make it DDA compliant, and begin to offer some permenant uses of the building.

We need all the people we can get, particularly if you have experience in the performing arts field, community education and schools, running theatres and cinemas, project management, fundraising, architecture, and people with contacts in the organisations that might be able to help with funding. Please get in contact if you have any of these skills or if you are willing to give up some of your time to help turn this building into something very special rather than more housing.