Parliamentary Election Hustings - CANCELLED

Due to the horrific incident in Manchester last night and the suspension of election campaigning today, we have decided to cancel the hustings that was due to take place this evening.

We are looking to see if it would be possible to rearrange prior to the election and will keep you informed.


The Forest Hill Society and the Sydenham Society are organising an election hustings for candidates for our next MP on Tuesday, 23rd May from 7:30pm at JK Banqueting Hall at 15 Perry Vale, SE23 2NE, in the centre of Forest Hill.

Confirmed candidates attending:
    Shaun Bailey - Conservatives
    Ellie Reeves - Labour
    John Russell - Liberal Democrats
    Karen Wheller  - Green Party

A full list of candidates standing in Lewisham West and Penge can be found here.

The History and Collections of the Horniman Museum

A Talk by Finbarr Whooley, Assistant Director, Curatorial and Public Engagement at the Horniman Museum
7.45pm on Tuesday April 29 at the Golden Lion
116 Sydenham Road SE26 5JX
Admission £3
 

There are over 350,000 objects in the Horniman Collection.
Founded in 1901 by Frederick John Horniman, heir to the world's biggest tea-trading business, the museum first housed Frederick's eclectic collection of objects from around the world.
But the collection slowly grew adding to the museum's core focus on  Anthropology, Musical Instruments and Natural History, making it a local favourite and an institution of world renown.  

Organised by the Sydenham Society

An Eventful Time

Potting Up for the Edible High Road
Saturday 27 April, 10.00am, Devonshire Road Nature Reserve
Potting up and decorating of the fruit trees. Please come along if you can lend a hand potting up to 70 trees prior to the official launch of the Edible High Road in Forest Hill and Honor Oak.
Organised by Forest Hill Society and Lewisham Gardens

Open day at Dacres Road Nature Reserve
Saturday 27 April, 12-3pm, entrance via Catling Close, off Dacres Road SE23
As Dacres Wood Nature reserve is a bit of a hidden gem, there's a plan to have regular open days on the last Saturday of every month from spring to autumn. The next one is this Saturday. There will be refreshments and tours of the reserve, and opportunities for those visitors coming with sturdy gloves and secateurs to help with some conservation work.
Organised by Friends of Dacres Wood

Sydenham Market - street food, craft & vintage
Sunday 28 April, 10am-4pm, Sydenham Station Approach
Organised by SEE3

Forest Hill Food Fair
Sunday 5 May, 11am-3pm, Forest Hill Station
A Forest Hill Society Event

Syd Soc event: visit to the Brunel Museum & Thames Tunnel, Rotherhithe
Friday 17 May, 10am
The Brunel Museum in historic Rotherhithe is directly above the Thames Tunnel which opened in 1843. We'll be taking part in a one-hour tour of the tunnel, followed by a visit to the museum and lunch at the nearby Mayflower pub. The cost of the visit is £6, payable in advance. To book your place and arrange payment, please email jacquelinealdridge [at] gmail.com
A Sydenham Society Event

Edible High Road Launch Day
Saturday 18 May, 1pm, Forest Hill Station
Official launch of the Edible High Road, with a celebrity guest!
More details at http://www.foresthillsociety.com/2013/03/the-edible-high-road.html
Organised by Forest Hill Society and Lewisham Gardens

Lewisham Hospital Public Consultation Meeting

The Sydenham Assembly Coordinator's Group and the Sydenham Society have arranged a Lewisham Hospital Public Consultation meeting at Sydenham School, Dartmouth Road starting at 7.30pm on Thursday 6 December. Dr Jane Fryer, Chief Medical Advisor to the Trust Special Administrator, will present the draft recommendations set out in the TSA report. Please come along to this public consultation meeting - the TSA will be bringing along the short video and consultation packs - so please make your views known through the feedback forms as well as asking questions, giving comments and offering any alternatives.

Petition by iPetitions

Future of Police

Doubts have been raised by the Safer Neighbourhood Ward Panel about the future of Sydenham Police Station on Dartmouth Road. The Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (which took over from the MPA in January) are reviewing the entire property portfolio as part of a London-wide review of Police station provision.

The Metropolitan Police (MPS) may want to sell off the building to raise much needed cash and relocate the Forest Hill, Sydenham and Perry Vale Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNT) and the Rapid Response Team to Catford.

The Station may open only Part time to the public, but is home to our SNT. Relocating the SNT to Catford will result in them spending less time policing the very streets they are supposed to protect and is contrary to the idea of local policing. We feel that this is far from ideal and are calling on the MPS to review the situation.

Borough Commander, Detective Chief Supt Burton, will 'neither confirm nor deny' the rumours and will only say that there is a review of Police Stations happening across London that will look at counter provision across Lewisham.

The Forest Hill and the Sydenham Societies held a protest at the Station on 18 February, which was supported by Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick and are calling on their members to sign the petition available in local shops or online at www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-sydenham-police-station/ and email Detective Chief Superintendent Jeremy Burton: Jeremy.burton@met.police.uk

Environment & Leisure

The Environment & Leisure Committee continues to work to promote SE23 as a green, clean and exciting place in which to live, work and play.

Volunteers worked with Lewisham's Nature's Gym to plant hedgerow whips and create a stag beetle loggery in the Horniman Triangle on Saturday 18 February and we ran our fourth Bring and Take Day on February 25, this time at Holy Trinity Church hall in Sydenham Road.

Following the success of the Christmas tree-lighting event in the station forecourt, we are working to use that space again on Sunday 22 April for a St George's Day themed food market featuring the 'best of English produce'.

Our gardening volunteers are hoping to improve on our 2011 In Bloom 'thriving' award by adding summer planting to brighten the station platform planters and, in the nearby town centre, new planters will be added and planted up on April 28th. New granite planters will also be installed at the entrance to Honor Oak Park station.

A joint trip is being planned with the Sydenham Society for a guided tour of Lullingstone Castle and its World Garden in Kent on Saturday, May 12th. Anyone wishing to help or join in with any of the above activities please contact Environment@foresthillsociety.com.

What is Neighbourhood Planning,and why might it be relevant for us?

The Forest Hill Society and The Sydenham Society invite you to a neighbourhood planning workshop on 21 September 2011 at 7.30pm,  Upstairs at The Hob (opposite Forest Hill Station).

You may have heard about a range of changes to The Planning System that the Government are proposing.  One of the positive things to come out of the draft legislation is the proposal for Neighbourhood Plans that allow communities to put together their own vision and plan for the future in a way that can then become planning policy.

The Forest Hill Society and the Sydenham Society are hosting an event on the 21st September at the Hob to consider the neighbourhood planning proposals, to discuss how it might be relevant for Forest Hill, Perry Vale and Sydenham and whether it is something we should to do.  The idea is that the event gives information about Neighbourhood Planning and Localism, but that it also focusses on the specifics of the areas we are interested in and gets people to think about what could change for the better and what the key issues might be?

We want to include people who don't know anything about this at present but who are simply interested in the area(s).  We don't have a set view about whether a Neighbourhood Plan is the answer or not yet, or how it would work, but understanding the issues behind this is one of the purposes of the event. We particularly want to attract people with good ideas and thoughts about what could be done to improve the area.

The meeting is open to all, from SE23, SE26, and those further afield who are interesting in what neighbourhood planning might mean to them.

Visit to see Brogdale in Blossom

Can it be possible that spring is here? To celebrate, we’ve joined forces with the Sydenham Society to organise a trip on Saturday, April 17th to Brogdale Farm in Faversham, Kent - the home of the National Fruit Collection.

The aim is to arrive at Brogdale by 11.00 and have a cup of coffee; do the guided tour of the collection of blossoming fruit trees (approx 1 hour); lunch in the Brogdale cafe and either browse the rest of the site at leisure or linger in the gift shop. You can read about the farm at www.brogdalecollections.co.uk

We’re going in individual cars rather than a coach but the idea is that drivers with spare capacity offer lifts to other members. Contact should be made with Jackie Aldridge to let her know how many to expect.

United against train service cuts!

In an unprecedented show of force, volunteers at every station from Sydenham to New Cross Gate handed out flyers on the mornings of 17th and 18th November telling passengers about the proposed cuts to their services. The Forest Hill Society worked hard on this with the Sydenham Society, Telegraph Hill Society, Brockley Central and the Honor Oak Park Residents Association because only a tough, co-ordinated campaign is going to Save Our Services.

We need to spread the message about the extent of these cuts and what they mean in practice which is why we’re investing so much time, effort and a little money into this fight. Many of the commuters we spoke to as we handed out the flyers were completely unaware that these cuts were being planned.

Our online petition is gaining support by the hour and now has over 2600 signatures. We’re working hard with councillors and London Assembly members to see if there is any way to stop the cuts. We’ve also co-operated with local councillors of all parties to secure a clear and cross-party statement from Lewisham Council against cuts to our services.

We’ve written to the Minister for Transport, both privately and in an open letter, requesting a meeting. We’ve received a reply but he has not agreed to meet us, despite multiple requests. So, why are we so strongly opposed to these cuts? Well, much as we’d like it to be otherwise, the pessimists sometimes get it right. Those people who predicted that the East London Line Extension through Forest Hill and Honor Oak Park would be at the expense of existing rail services seem to have been spot on. From May 2010, our daytime and evening peak services will be cut from six trains per hour to four per hour.

Using the figures we’ve been given by London Overground, we believe that the ELLX coupled with the REDUCED rail service to London Bridge will do nothing to relieve the current level of overcrowding on our commuter services. This is because passenger numbers are expected to rise substantially – by 30% according to London Overground.

Yet, once the ELLX does become overcrowded, there is no scope for increased capacity. This is because the signalling system on the core section in East London can’t cope with more trains than are currently planned. It’s also difficult to see how the operator could simply add extra coaches given that several stations along the route can’t take the longer trains.

True, the ELLX gives us 8 trains per hour interchanging with the Jubilee Line at Canada Water and continuing to Shoreditch. By then, we will also have direct trains to Victoria in the morning peak. But we believe these additions do not make up for the fact that many of us will have fewer trains.

And that’s not all. It is now inevitable that from December 13th Southern Railways will cut our direct evening and Sunday services from Charing Cross. There will still be four trains per hour in the late evenings but they will all start from London Bridge. There will be no additional trains running between Charing Cross and London Bridge. There seems to be a complete lack of joined-up thinking on the railways in South London.

If you would like to support our campaign against rail cuts please sign our petition at http://nototraincuts.notlong.com

NoToTrainCuts! Article on East London Lines

The following article has just appeared on East London Lines

Funeral for last direct train to Charing Cross

Last Saturday commuters marched through Charing Cross station laden with an empty coffin to mark the end of Southern railway’s Charing Cross service.

 The protesters, many dressed in funereal black, had travelled into the West End on the last direct Sydenham to Charing Cross train.

From here on Southern services will terminate at London Bridge, forcing commuters who board at Brockley, New Cross Gate, Honor Oak Park, Sydenham and Forest Hill to change trains for Charing Cross.

Commuters opposed to the cut argue Southern’s Charing Cross service was vital to residents of southeast London, a claim supported by figures from the Office of Rail Regulation which show nearly 11 million people used that stretch of line in the 2007/8 financial year.

Dan Woods, 31, played the accordian during Saturday’s memorial. He said: “The train service has been getting increasingly worse and increasingly crowded. Now I take my bike into town. They’re doing a great job of promoting cycling by making the train service worse.”

His partner, Amy Ip, 30, added: “We’re both actors. If we’re working in town, we depend on the Charing Cross service, especially at night.”

The weekend’s protest was organisd by a collection of Lewisham civic groups angry at the service cuts. A petition for their campaign NoToTrainCuts has attracted 3,000 signatures so far.

Southern’s Charing Cross service was axed to make way for Britain’s fastest commuter train, SouthEastern’s Javelin, which shuttles between London and Kent at 140mph and began full service on Saturday.

Despite the cessation of the Southern service campaigners do not believe the battle is lost. Barry Milton, Chair of the Sydenham Society, said: “We believe we can still get the service resurrected.

“We’re trying to get the mayor of Lewisham and our MPs to go to the Department of Transport. If they want to get themselves reelected they need to get in and make them change their minds.”

Southern also plans to cut the number of trains traveling to London Bridge in the afternoons and evenings from six an hour to four to allow for the East London Line overground service due in May 2010. The ELL will run eight trains an hour.

A Transport for London (TfL) spokesman said: “TfL is not cutting any services. We are in fact extending the East London Line and it is because of this Southern has decided it can afford to cut their trains as fewer people will be using them.”

Mr Milton disagreed: “We love the East London Line, it’s the best thing to happen to us for years, but it’s only going to serve 30 per cent of commuters. We believe the core service must be retained.”

Southern say the cuts are out of their hands.

Demonstration against Train Cuts on BBC TV

 
Saturday's demonstration against the cuts in service made it on to the BBC London news.

Farewell to Direct Services from Charing Cross

Thanks to @terryduffelen

Death of Charing Cross Direct Service

Today we bid a sad farewell to the through trains to Charing Cross.

A funeral procession, complete with coffin, will assemble on Platform 1, at 1 pm, at Forest Hill Station and will take the following train (back coach) to Charing Cross to mark our tragic loss.

13:09 - Sydenham
13:12 - Forest Hill
13:14 - Honor Oak Park
13:17 - Brockley
13:19 - New Cross Gate
13:26 - London Bridge

Ironically we will have to change trains at London Bridge due to Engineering works.

13:38 - London Bridge
13:47 - Charing Cross

Everyone affected by the unfortunate occurrence will be welcome come to the to the funeral, suitably dressed of course.


Funeral directors: Brockley Cross Action Group, the Brockley, Telegraph Hill, Sydenham and Forest Hill Societies

200th Anniversary of the Croydon Canal

Over 120 people from the Forest Hill Society and Sydenham Society celebrated the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Croydon Canal with a walk from Sydenham station to Forest Hill station, via the last remaining section of the canal in the area in Dacres Wood.

Steve Grindlay provided the historical details with stops along the route and a talk and slide show at the Hob.

We had traditional bargeman's songs along the route provided by Andrew King, including a special song composed for the opening of the Canal 200 years ago!

After the walk many of us went to the Dartmouth Arms, where a traditional bargeman's lunch had been prepared of beef or vegetable stew with beer.

If you have other good photos from the day, please send them in for us to include on the website, and we hope to make the slide show available soon. In the meantime, you can read the article on the history of the Canal from our latest newsletter.

109 Kirkdale Planning Application

The Forest Hill Society has written to object to the proposed development at 109-111 Kirkdale.

Our main concerns are on the impact to the streetscape, access to the rear building, issues of overlooking, inadequate amenity space, lack of parking provision, and the effect this development could have on the redevelopment of the Willow Way site for employment use.

Details of the application can be found on Lewisham's website.

Full details of the letter of objection from the Forest Hill Society can be read here.

General Meeting, Picnic, and the Pools

Thank you to everyone who’s been supporting our social events recently. There have been a lot of them and we know you can’t get to them all. There are still more events to come this month. We always like to see new faces so do take a look at what we’ve organised.

Most importantly, we have our General Meeting on 7th May at The Hob. This is a chance to discuss the major issues facing SE23 (I guess the Pools might crop up) and the way forward for the Forest Hill Society. If you’d like to become more actively involved in the Society’s work – in whatever capacity – do make yourself known to us at the meeting.

You should all have received a consultation form the Council asking for your views on the future of Forest Hill Pools. At the end of this email, we’ve included a message from Hilary, one of our representatives on the Stakeholder Group, explaining more about the Society’s position.


Monday 4th May - May Bank Holiday Revels on our own Millennium Green
The Forest Hill and Sydenham Societies are joining forces for the Bank Holiday on the 4th of May. We'll be celebrating spring with a day at a hidden green space on the border of Forest Hill and Sydenham - the Albion Millennium Green.
The Green, formerly a tennis club, was landscaped into an attractive, informal park at the turn of the century under a government scheme to develop 'Millennium Greens.’ Its entrance is at the end of Albion Villas Road (just off Sydenham Park Road), one of the prettiest streets in the area.
It's a haven for flowers and wildlife but it does need a little sprucing up. So we'll start the day with a group tidying up session and then savour the fruits of our labours with a picnic (please bring your own), games and traditional May Day activities for all the family.
So mark your diaries now. It'll be a great Bank Holiday day out - just around the corner.


Thursday 7th May - General Meeting. 7.30pm at The Hob pub opposite Forest Hill Station.

We’ll be upstairs and the bar will be open so there’ll be plenty of opportunity to socialise as well as take part in the more formal part of the evening. Doors open from 7pm. See you there.


Saturday 9th May – Dawn Chorus Walk, One Tree Hill - 5am
This is organised by the Friends of One Tree Hill. At this time of the year, the air is full of birdsong as each bird gets up in the morning. This annual, guided walk is an experience everyone should have at least once in their lives! So wrap up warmly and come and see how many different birds we can identify. Meet at 5 am at the gates to St. Augustine's Church, One Tree Hill, Honor Oak Park SE23. If you wish to find out more about the walk on their website


Saturday May 23 at 8pm – 23 Club

The Thai Orchard, 3 David’s Road SE23 3EP Phone 8291 3901. Please book directly with the restaurant making it clear you’re with the 23 Club or Forest Hill Society. We look forward to seeing you there.


FOREST HILL POOLS CONSULTATION STARTS
By now all of the households in Forest Hill, Perry Vale and Sydenham Wards should have received Lewisham Council’s latest questionnaire on the future of Forest Hill Pools.

This consultation is about whether people think that a pool is better in Dartmouth Road (with a bit of a wait) or Willow Way (which they think can be delivered sooner). It also asks questions about how often people use the pool and their age group etc.

If you have lost, recycled or someone else in your household has already filled in the printed questionnaire, then it is available to complete online.


The Society’s Forest Hill Pools Stakeholder Representatives are generally of the view that:
• A new pool should be built on the existing pools site as a way of helping regenerate the town centre and attract a wider range of shops and services; and
• That the pool should be delivered as soon as possible, and certainly much before the 2015 date that the Council set out in the questionnaire.

The Council says in the questionnaire that the Willow Way site can't be used to cross subsidise the pools on the Dartmouth Road site because housing is not going to be an acceptable use for this site, given its current designation as an employment site.

So this leaves us with a bit of a difficulty as neither of the options as they are presented in the questionnaire really meets the needs of Forest Hill. A number of the FHS Executive have been working to try and get the Council to reconsider the current options as they stand. The work that has been done indicates that it may be possible to redevelop Willow Way for live/work development or mixed uses including employment and that this development COULD then be used to cross subsidise a new swimming pool on the Dartmouth Road site. It may not meet the whole funding gap that has currently been identified but it may well go some way towards doing so. In that case, it may be possible to deliver a new pool on the current site much sooner than 2015.

We also think that if the responses to the questionnaire support the idea of a new pool on the current site then it may be possible to persuade the Mayor to reconsider the current options on the table and work to find a solution that delivers it sooner.

If anyone has any questions about the Pools project and the Council’s current consultation then please let us know. We are very keen that Forest Hill has a pool back soon and that it is in the best place for the majority of residents of this part of Lewisham and for the regeneration of our town centre.

May Bank Holiday Revels on our own Millennium

The Forest Hill and Sydenham societies are joining forces for the Bank Holiday on the 4th of May.
We'll be celebrating spring with a day at a hidden green space on the border of Forest Hill and Sydenham - the Albion Millennium Green.

The Green, formerly a tennis club, was landscaped into an attractive, informal park at the turn of the century under a government scheme to develop 'Millennium Greens.’ Its entrance is at the end of Albion Villas Road (just off Sydenham Park Road), one of the prettiest streets in the area.

It's a haven for flowers and wildlife but it does need a little sprucing up. So we'll start the day with a group tidying up session and then savour the fruits of our labours with a picnic (please bring your own), games and traditional May Day activities for all the family.

Good news for rail passengers from Forest Hill and Sydenham

Over the last year the Forest Hill Society and the Sydenham Society have jointly campaigned to keep our current levels of services to and from London mainline stations after the introduction of the East London Line in 2010. Jim Dowd, our local MP, together with Len Duvall, our GLA member, has also lobbied hard in support of our aims.

Last Autumn Network Rail published their draft Route Utilisation Strategy setting out proposed levels of rail services from 2010. It clearly suggested a significant reduction in services to London Bridge. There were doubts too about the continuation of the current off-peak services to Victoria.

However, new information recently received from Network Rail, via London TravelWatch, suggests that, as a result of our continued campaign, most of our concerns about their proposals have now been addressed.

Rather than a reduction in peak services to London Bridge the plan now is that the total number of trains between 7am and 10am will remain at the current level of 18 trains, with only a slight adjustment to the present hourly spread of trains. All trains are planned to be 8 carriages long, whereas some are currently only 6 carriages long. This represents an overall increase in carriages serving Forest Hill and Sydenham during peak time.

Indications are that the present direct off-peak services to Victoria may continue from Forest Hill and Sydenham, while at peak times the extension of the East London Line to Crystal Palace will reduce journey times to Victoria and Clapham Junction from our line.

The addition of 8 trains of 4 carriages on the East London Railway from 2010 is welcomed by both Societies as providing fast and regular connections to the Jubilee Line, Crystal Palace, Docklands and the East of the City of London as well as other destinations.

The services outlined above are dependent on the agreement of the Department for Transport and on their discussions with the train operators and Transport for London when the Franchises are renegotiated in 2009. We will therefore continue to closely monitor the situation over the next couple of years to make sure that these revised proposals become a reality.

Highlights:

• From 2010 Forest Hill, Sydenham, Honor Oak Park, Brockley, Penge West and Anerley will be connected to the Overground tube system
• New peak services to Crystal Palace allowing for interchange to Victoria
• Possible continuation of off-peak services to Victoria
• Journey times under 18 minutes to Canary Wharf
• Commuters working in the east of the City, travelling on a direct connection to Shoreditch, will benefit from cheaper tickets by avoiding zone 1
• Oyster readers on all stations on the line
• Southbound platform at Forest Hill to be made accessible to disabled passengers with money from DfT

Negative impacts:

• All services between London Bridge and Forest Hill/Sydenham will be stopping services, removing existing fast services
• No direct services to and from Charing Cross, from 2009

We will continue to campaign about the negative impacts and we will work with the rail industry to ensure further improvements in the future. In particular we will press for 10 or 12 carriage trains into London Bridge. This would require the extension of all station platforms along the route, but will become necessary as more passengers continue to use the rail services from our area.

Overall this is good news for people in Forest Hill and Sydenham who finally get to join the tube system.

For further information:

Michael Abrahams – Michael@foresthillsociety.com - Chair, Forest Hill Society

Pat Trembath - pattrembath@googlemail.com - Chair, Sydenham Society

Sydenham Society Public Meeting - Minutes from 14th March

Minutes from last week's Sydenham Society public meeting are available on the Sydenham Town website.

The presentation I made about the petition and survey conducted by Forest Hill Society can be downloaded from here. The presentation made by Peter Field from TfL can be downloaded from here but this is a big file (6Mb) so it may take a few minutes.