Chair's Report

Unfortunately, our Chairman, Peter Irby, has been unwell for a few months now. We all wish him a speedy recovery but until then the honour of writing the Chairman's report has fallen to our vice-chair, Michael Abrahams.

We have had an eventful few months with visits to areas of nature conservation, a pub crawl, a general meeting plus our regular events from the 23 Club. Behind the scenes, we have had lots of meetings about swimming pools, planning issues, transport, swimming pools, improving the natural environment, and ... swimming pools.

All these issues and more came up at our General Meeting at The Hob on 7th May. Thank you to everyone who came along and shared their views. You can read the full minutes on our website www.foresthillsociety.com.

Beyond the Forest Hill Society, we have seen some great things happening in SE23 despite the gloom of the global recession and the flu pandemic raging around us. There’s investment going into our parks and gardens (see below) and, although we have seen a few shops closing recently, we have also seen some new shops opening including a gym in the former site of McDonalds, and Tapastry is now twice as big but with the smaller name of Try. This bodes well for developments in the coming year as we see TfL take over the station this Autumn and the East London Line starting next summer.

We are particularly pleased to see fewer bins in Dartmouth Road and London Road with daily collections being arranged by Lewisham Council. Honor Oak Parade is looking better than ever thanks to the support of the Friends of Honor Oak Park.

So this Summer, don't fall for all this gloom in the outside world. It's a bright future in Forest Hill - we might even have a swimming pool one day!

Thanks to everybody who has continued to support the Forest Hill Society. Attending events and helping out in any way allows us to do so much more. So if you would like to get actively involved, please let me know - don't leave it all for others to make Forest Hill an even better place to live.