It looks like some minor changes to the proposed development have been put forward including a reduction in the number of flats from 76 to 75. Revised plans can be seen on the Lewisham website. The Council had originally planned to have a recommendation ready for the planning committee meeting on 22 January but this has been delayed. In the meantime a total of 296 objections have been lodged including 4 petitions. It is not too late to object if you wish to do so.

The Council's Planning Officer has now produced his report and he is recommending approval of the scheme. The report has been sent to the Planning Committee B who are meeting on Tuesday 31 March. It is up to them to decide whether or not to grant planning permission.

The meeting is at 7.30 pm in rooms 1 & 2 of the Civic Suite at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford. Members of the public can attend and representatives of the 300+ objectors will be arguing that planning permission should be refused.

A copy of the Planning Officer's report is attached.

If you can attend please do, a large turn out by local residents will greatly increase the chances of planning permission being refused.

I shall keep it brief. We won. The development was rejected.

Thanks go to the committee who unanimously rejected the application, to John Russell for his speech and work behind the scenes, and to local residents for showing their support through petitions, letters to the council, and for attending the meeting and giving us their support.

That is fantastic news.

Congratulations to all those who put in so many hours over the lengthy process (several years).

Well done to those who spoke at the councile mtg.

Am sure we will see some kind of new proposal in the not to distant future but hopefully it will be more in keeping with the area / space and not trying to build an entire new town on one plot.

Reasons for the rejection are now on the council website:

The development is back! The Christian Fellowship Gardens are once again under threat as the developer (Loromah Estates Ltd, 146 Balls Pond Rd, N1 4AD) has put in another application to develop the site. You can view the proposal on the Lewisham website planning reference DC/09/71953/X. They propose to build 67-71 units with parking undercrofts, access being from Tyson Road. This time they have lots of greenwash to sweeten the pill, living roof, raised timber access paths and planting in the style of the Devonshire Rd Reserve. It still seems to be overdevelopment with the same old potential problems that got it thrown out the last time. I don't suppose they will ever give up on this.

It is very similar to the last proposal. They appear to have taken account of some of the concerns expressed by the Forest Hill Society and others regarding the security of the undercroft parking, some of the heights of the blocks may have been reduced at the edges of the site, and they have left a few extra trees and shrubs.

However there are a number of features that once again show that this development is too dense for this site. I am currently wading my way through the documents but the fundamental problems of the previous proposal remain in this new development. A reduction from 74 units to 71 (or even to 67 as included in option 2 in the application) does not address the over-development on this site, unsuitable for a backland, sloped, green site.

Yesterday evening (around dusk) I was in my garden (Taymount Rise) watching a bat flying round in circles. If you live near Tyson Road please keep a look out for bats flying around the area. Some have previously been identified flying over the area, but no record exists of them roosting there or using the meadows as a source of food. Look out for what looks like a small bird, that darts around, changing direction rapidly, when all real birds are already asleep. Please post or photo if you see any bat activity around Tyson Road.

Not again! Grrrrr Michael, can you forward a draft of the type of things that will positively impact the councils decision against this development. Many thanks

Obviously we need many more one bed flats in Forest Hill - not. KEEP OUR GREEN AND OPEN SPACES!!!!! I HATE OVER DEVELOPMENT!!!!!!

Michael,
If it is of any help, in my garden, a couple of weeks ago I saw a bat flying up and down foraging for insects.This is in Dunoon Road, which, of course is close to the proposed development.

Yes, please Michael, if there is an appropriate draft objection that touches all the right buttons I would be keen to use it.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I have set up an online petition for anyone who wants to object to this latest planning application. See here:

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/29948.html

In Canonbie Road, some three years ago now (time flies past so quickly), developers converted two adjoining five bedroom family houses into eleven flats.

The road of a morning and evening is like a car park and with this part of the road having become much busier traffic at times finds it difficult to pass each other in opposite directions. The residents in the two properties are transient never staying very long before moving on elsewhere.

Even on Langton Rise next door to the electricity substatiion further in filling is taking place with a new development emerging from the "waste ground/rubbish dump"

So PLEASE do all you can to prevent futher development of the area.

and prevcent Honor Oak road from becoming like it was yesterday - complete traffic nightmare!

any chance we could persuade them to overhaul the Tyson Road estate instead...? To Michael and others, would be very interested to hear your views once you have had a chance to look through the application in detail. I have just been through the Design and Access Statement as well as the layout plans and as developments go it doesn't look like the worst I have seen. Parking issues must be a concern, however the development does seem to come with 59 car parks, which is a reasonable number for 71 units. I am ready to object but would like to hear more views from members of the SE23 community. I am not sure who they are targeting from a sales perspective, but if a reasonable proportion go to owner-occupiers, then perhaps it could be good for the Forest Hill shops which are in serious need of revival!

Further to my last post, is there public access to the proposed development area? It looks like a beautiful wooded area (from what I can see by walking up Tyson Road), but I have never been in. From a previous post on this thread I understand that the area is used as a garden by the Christian Fellowship centre. Is it their land?

Mike has raised some interesting issues.

Starting with Tyson Road. Why is it that it has suffered from anti-social behaviour in recent years? Is it because there is an area outside the shop which encourages groups to congregate or is it because it gained a local reputation as a place to hang out?

I haven't seen anything in the latest planning application to suggest that the Developer is going to do something to improve the current situation. Having said that is it really their responsibility? Shouldn't it be down to Lewisham and the Police to deal with these issues?

Arguably, Tyson Road would benefit from the development going ahead in two ways. Firstly, 15 to 17A Tyson Road, which are currently unoccupied and derelict, would be brought back into use albeit as modern blocks of flats. Secondly, the shop in Tyson Road would get more business.

However, it is worth asking why 15 to 17A are currently derelict. These buildings are owned, and have been owned for many years, by the Developer. Indeed, the Developer used to rent them out. They are derelict because they have not been maintained. So, if you think that the development should go ahead because these buildings are derelict then in some ways you are rewarding the Developer for neglecting the buildings and keeping them out of the housing market.

If you look at the other Victorian buildings in Tyson Road they have been maintained and, as a result, are perfectly habitable. Indeed, it is quite easy to see that if these houses were in East Dulwich or some other fashionable location they would be considered highly attractive and desirable period properties.

Looking at the parking issue I think that the proposed number of parking spaces will be too few and will resulti in the residents of the new development parking in Tyson Road and the surrounding streets. Why do I think this? For a start when I read the transport statement for the previous planning application it suggested that because of the location of the development a ratio of 1 car parking space to 1 flat would be appropriate. The location hasn't changed since then nor has the housing mix.

The development is for one, two and three bedroom flats. The proposed element of social housing is fairly low and so I would expect that the target market will be young professionals working in Canary Wharf or the City. If they can afford one of these flats I expect they will be able to afford a car and why shouldn't they? If you shop in the FH Sainsbury's and then walk back with your shopping to Tyson road you will be well on your way to doing to recommended daily exercise. Forest Hill is, hilly and for the residents of the blocks in the farthest corners of the site a 15 minute walk from FH town centre. In other words the location of the site isn't central enough to encourage a car free culture.

As for the layout and style of the Development it has been presented in the best possible light by the application documents. However, if you scratch the surface and look at the floor plans, layout and elevations things aren't quite so rosy. The rooms look cramped and I would imagine the flats could be quite dark. The number of windows has been limited to restrict the problem of overlooking and quite a few of the windows will be shaded by the trees on the site. Look at Block 7 for an obvious good example.

There is also the inconvenient truth that under the latest plans there is no vehicular access to Block 7. If you think that putting your wheelie bin out is a chore imagine having to take your rubbish down two flights of stairs and then carrying it over 100 feet to the nearest bin store. And that is just the rubbish. Shopping, furniture and visitors will have to make the same journey on foot. There is no parking outside the building and no lift.

In some ways this one example sums up the latest planning application - it is pretty much the same as before, the changes that have been made are largely superficial and the underlying problem of overdevelopment remains.

It is probably obvious that I don't think that the garden and woodland part of the site should be developed but if it is to be developed then we should insist that the planners make sure that we get a good development which will provide a safe and happy environment for its residents.

Finally, after an over long post, the Developer owns the whole site and there is no public access. There are some photos of the site here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tysonroad/

and if you attend an event at the Christian Fellowship Centre you can get a good view from there.

It's an interesting point you make Woody, regarding developers leaving buildings to decay. If anything the council should order a compulsory purchase on the developers rather than allowing them to resubmit the same type of application over and over again. I recall the lovely old victorian property in Cannonbie Rd, that the owner of the reservoir behind it, allowed to rot - until a mysterious fire meant it had to be pulled down. I havent looked for a while, but nothing has been replaced in this spot and every now and again the developer puts in an unaccpetable development plan for the reservoir site.

Thanks Woody for those interesting thoughts. I had not realised that the buildings were allowed to become derelict under the developer's ownership; that is interesting.

I will look again at the plans in detail. Take your point about overdevelopment. One residual concern I have would be the alternative for the land. We are assuming that there is a binary choice here - either the land is developed by the present owners or it stays as woodland. But there might be an unpalatable third option. What if the land is sold to the council and the Tyson estate is extended? Same overdevelopment problem, but 100% social housing and the potential to exacerbate the problems linked to the existing Tyson estate. I am not in any way trying to talk down to the people living in the estate but it's a simple fact of life that a minority on estates tends to make life miserable for the law-abiding majority. Or in a best-case scenario, if the area was turned into a park or public area, would this simply become the new hangout/troublespot on Tyson Road and a no-go area for the public?

In terms of trying to rid Tyson Road of its trouble hotspot status, while I agree that this is primarily the responsibility of the police/council and not the developer, why not make it the responsibility of the developer to the extent that they do get approval! It would also be in their interests. If, as you say, the target market is young professionals (which makes sense), having an aggressive/surly group of teenagers standing across the road when arriving for a viewing would not be a great start! I am not sure what could be done here - lighting? CCTV? paying for extra patrols? putting in a large flower garden??

I'm not familiar with this area in Tyson road where the hoodies hang out. Sounds like an episode of the Wire.

"hoodies" is your description not mine or Woody's, but the area outside the shop on Tyson is indeed a point of congregation and has witnessed a concentration of anti-social incidents over the years. Speak to the local neighbourhood watch/police if you want the stats; the police are very familiar with it. Anyway I don't think Americans would know what a hoodie was - it's more the Bill than the Wire.