A volunteer (thank you) helping with No Demolition Without Designs stood outside Forest Hill Station today fro one hour. In that time they collected 125 signatures for the petition. They found people very willing to sign and said that if there had been three people doing it there would have been 300 signatures in the same time.

There really is widespread public support for our position: and it is a commonsense one.

Has anyone had any feedback from the council on this issue yet?

BTW - did anyone see the The Politics Show on Sunday that had a piece on the Government's latest sound bite 'free swimming for the old and young' noting how rich this was given there are hardly any pools left in London for people to swim in! They didnt have to focus on Lewisham's appalling record. It's such a crime.

Update on the pools is now available on http://foresthillsociety.blogspot.com/20...eting.html
reporting on the latest stakeholder meeting which took place on 11th June.

Why isn't the National Lottery being tapped for additional funds? Anyone know?

I've heard on the grapevine that local residents will be "consulted" on just one modern scheme with three different housing options, all based on a similar design but with low, medium or high density housing to provide the funding to pay for additional leisure facilities (eg a community meeting room etc). The "high" density housing option appears to be the most popular with the Council as it would provide the local area with community facilities not available from the other options.

But high density housing would mean 60 housing units on the site. To achieve this, a 7-storey high building would be built on Dartmouth Road, the lower two floors forming part of the pools/leisure complex and the upper five storeys being used for private housing. This is described as a "Gateway" building. Some Gateway!

A further 5-storey residential block for social housing would also be built on the site.

Obviously the promised ?7.5m funding from the council and ?2m from housing cross-subsidies does not go far enough. Is anyone surprised?

So there we have it ? to reach its housing targets Lewisham will be building more flats in Forest Hill, providing there are developers prepared to get involved. In return local residents would get a pool/leisure centre with community facilities.

My concern is that in the current economic downturn the much-loved Victorian streetscape will be demolished before a planning application is approved and before a developer commits to actually building all of this.

It you too are concerned, please let Lewisham Council know by signing the petition at http://www.gopetition/online/19745.html

A 7 storey high building?

The council have surpassed themselves. They claim they're anxious to preserve the character of the conservation area, yet are trying to justify this!

Be honest, do we really need a community meeting room? We have several church halls in the area that function perfectly well for that purpose.

I note from the stakeholder's meeting report that each of the options also includes a cafe. What about Provender which has served Forest Hill and Dartmouth Rd so well over the years - why do they have to be sacrificed in the stampede to demolish some of the most interesting buildings Forest Hill possesses?

Just to confirm that link again. It should be:

http://www.gopetition.com/online/19745.html

Prior to reading this post my overriding concern was to have a swimming pool in the area instead of having to take a mortgage out to go to Beckenham Spa. However, having read the various posts I am OUTRAGED about the way the council has gone about closing the pool and then proposing a development with yet more 'high density housing' - why can't we just have our pool back?! This wouldn't happen in Dulwich.......

I haven't read the stakeholder report in detail are the council looking for one partner to build both the pool and housing?

Another question, how many housing units does Salcombe House contain? On option 2 was an indication of the likely height of the housing given?

The petition states:

"We, the undersigned, welcome the news that Lewisham Council aim to build a new pool at Forest Hill but demand that there be no demolition of the existing swimming pool frontage or Louise House until a full public consultation, which considers a number of designs and layouts, has been concluded."

A representative of the council confirmed at the last stakeholder meeting that indeed they would not demolish the pool until the public consultation (in the form of a public exhibition in the library and a public meeting) has happened.

Yes - but the crucial part of the petition says: "which considers a number of designs and layouts".

There will be ONE design. That design has already been decided by LBL - read the notes above - and a sketch of that single design was shown to the last stakeholders group. What locals will be consulted on is not the layout, design or look of the building but merely whether they want high, medium or low density housing.

This isn't consultation, nor is it an "architectural competition" as some locals had hoped for. It's a take it or leave it design with no option to keep the existing buildings or their frontages.

I don't think that type of "consultation" is what local people want. They want real options.

On page 4 of this thread, post 75, Michael has provided a link to notes that Stakeholder representatives of the Forest Hill and Sydenham Societies took at the 11 June meeting.

The link is at http://foresthillsocietyblogspot.com/2...eting.html

In reply to questions:

It has not been made clear at this stage whether the council is looking for one partner to build pool and housing. The designs have yet to be presented for the community to consider and comment on. This is due to happen by mid-July, we understand.

In Option 2 there would be a 5-storey block of housing on the building line with Salcombe House (sorry, dont know details of number of units contained within Salcombe House). There would also be a small stand-alone housing block on Dartmouth Road. Total housing units would be between 25-30 for Option 2.

Just to try to clarify the answer to the question about housing units on Option 2 above. Below is the note I took about Option 2:

Option 2 had one pool and one learner pool, 2 studios and a fitness suite and its size was 3000sq m. There would be housing to the rear of the pocket park on a building line with Salcombe House, responding to housing needs/targets. A small housing unit would front Dartmouth Road, separate to the pools building. The housing to the rear of the site is social, housing onto Dartmouth Road would be private.

Nasaroc, there were three options presented to the stakeholder group, not one. The designs are at an early stage and they certainly were not presented as a fait accompli.

"We, the undersigned, welcome the news that Lewisham Council aim to build a new pool at Forest Hill but demand that there be no demolition of the existing swimming pool frontage or Louise House until a full public consultation, which considers a number of designs and layouts, has been concluded."

Surely it is implicit in this sentence from the petition that one of the designs should include the swimming pool frontage and/or Louise House. Or what exactly is the point of hanging on to them?

The petition could have been worded so it was logically and legally water-tight, but it would no longer have been so easily understood.

The council have no intention to meet the demands of the petition imo.

Pat,
Thank you for the answers, I was trying to judge how big the residential building would be in option 2, think I have a fair idea now.

Looks like option 2 will be the one adopted?

I think the last two postings sum up where we stand: LBL intend to knock down the existing buildings and set up a sham "consultation" in which locals are clearly expected to vote for Option 2 with no say on the layout and style of the existing buildings.

This is little more than you'd expect from an increasingly desperate local Labour Party who can see no other way of sorting out years of pool neglect than adopting a bulldozer approach both to proper consultation and to the existing buildings so they have some chance of reviving their vote before national and local elections in 2009/2010.

But what of local FH Lib-Dem councillors? After all, they were elected in large part because they promised to give local people the pools they so badly need. Are they in favour of this sham democracy? Their recent newspaper indicated that they wished to retain as much of the existing pool structure as possible - a view that I believe is supported by a majority of locals.

What if anything do they intend to do about the situation we now find ourselves in?

2 weeks ago I emailed Steve Bullock, Alex Feakes and Jim Dowd regarding the 'no demolition without plans' issue - and I have received no response from any of them.

As already mentioned the Lib Dems were meant to be fully supportive of the pool in Forest Hill. It's a disgrace they appear to show no interest and that we should be rail roaded into accepting a high rise block of council (sorry - socially affordable) flats in the place of our lovely elegant Victorian public buildings.

At the rate flats are going up in Forest Hill we will need to campaign for more pools in the area. It's a joke.

NO NO NO! to high density housing. NO NO NO!

WHY CANT WE JUST HAVE OUR POOLS BACK? why cant the council find the money? given how much our council tax has gone up over the past few years, the council should have set aside the money to refurbish the pools. It's not a surprise cost after all.

It seems rather odd to me that at a time when there was exterme poverty in the UK (as far back as the 1930's), there was enough money to keep swimming pools open for the general public's use. As we are now a much wealthier society, we are somehow no longer able afford it! Odd.