A New Building for a New Century

Forest Hill Methodist Church has been in Stanstead Road since 1896. However, in recent years the congregation has recognised the need for a more modern, user-friendly building and a desire to move away from the busy, light industrial area. Much more importantly though, was the desire to be at the heart of the community.

Fortunately, the Church owned some land with a thriving sports club in Normanton Street. Over the years, the club premises fell into disrepair and the site became derelict. Thus the decision to move to Normanton Street was made. For more than ten years, we were hampered by a host of challenges. But our ambition to become part of community life will be realised in April 2007 with the official opening in May.

We now have a new, modern, landmark church building with fine facilities. They are for not only for Church use but also for the local community and will be available to rent. We particularly look forward to welcoming Perrymount School who will be using some of our facilities each week.

The two outdoor tennis courts can also be used for 5 a-side football and basketball. There are large garden spaces and an ecology / conservation area. The indoor spaces include two large halls, a medium-sized meeting room and a consulting room. It is wheelchair-friendly throughout and all areas are flexible in their uses.

It is truly a wonderful place with great atmosphere and many opportunities for the residents of Forest Hill. Thanks to the congregation who, in 1923, had the vision and courage to buy the land and to the 21st Century congregation who have transformed it into a modern place of worship! Now we are fulfilling our greatest ambition – to be at the heart of the community.

Forest Hill Society Survey

When we designed our membership forms we included a section in which we asked you to indicate your areas of interest so that we would know where best to focus our resources. Here’s what your answers told us.

Shops and amenities were identified by the most people, perhaps reflecting disappointment over the current state of our high street. Transport was also seen as important, against the uncertainty surrounding the East London Line extension.

Crime was identified as an issue by fewer people than almost all other issues. While we should not be complacent, we hope that we can take some satisfaction from this and continue to enjoy living in an area that is rather less affected by crime than most of London.

Trains to Forest Hill Discussed in Parliament

Today the House of Commons discussed train services to Forest Hill in an Adjournment Debate: Impact on Network Rail services of the Southern extension to the East London Line (Jim Dowd).

You can view the debate on Parliament TV website, jump to approximately 90% through the broadcast to view Jim Dowd MP proposing the motion. Jim Dowd made the concerns of the Forest Hill Society and local residents very clear to The House and praised the Forest Hill Society and other local groups for their campaigning on this issue. The debate covered many of the key issues for the Forest Hill Society and made sure that the Department for Transport is very aware of the concerns of local residents in Lewisham.

We would like to thank Jim Dowd for raising this issue with the minister in parliament.

Hansard transcript of this debate currently available here.

Sydenham Society Public Meeting - Wednesday 14th March

THE EAST LONDON RAILWAY HOW WILL THE NEW LINE AFFECT ME?

Peter Field, Director of London Rail Development (the man in charge of ELR) will explain the new line and answer your questions.

Michael Abrahams, Chair of the Forest Hill Society, will be presenting the findings of the Forest Hill Society survey and petition.

Naborhood Centre (next to the post office), Sydenham Road, Wednesday 14th March 7.30pm

Organised by the Sydenham Society & supported by the London Borough of Lewisham.

Historic Tour of Forest Hill

A big thank you to Steve Grindlay from the Forest Hill Society for a brilliant tour of Forest Hill's historical highlights! About 70 people took part, undeterred by a bit of rain and the cold. From the lowlands of South Road, Steve led us ever higher up the Hill finally reaching the summit at the top of Canonbie Road. He really is a fantastic source of information and conveys it with great enthusiasm.
The event was obviously very popular so we shall try to persuade Mr Grindlay to devise another tour in the not-too-distant future!

To view photos of the tour click here.

History Tour of Forest Hill

On Sunday 25th February Steve Grindlay will be taking us on a 2 hour historical walking tour of Forest Hill starting at 2pm at Christ Church, South Road and concluding in London Road at 4pm. Steve knows a huge amount about local history and you are guaranteed to learn something new about the area.

Gulbenkian Prize 2007

The Horniman Museum in London Road, Forest Hill, has announced it has been nominated for the Gulbenkian Prize 2007.
See article in the NewsShopper.

You can read about all the nominees and vote at http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh/ART43382.html

Obviously you should vote for the museum that you think is best and most deserving of the £100,000 prize, but the more Forest Hill residents who vote the better!

Area Forum last night, TfL this afternoon

Darien Goodwin, Head of Transport for Lewisham Council, last night told hundreds of people at the area forum that there will be six trains per hour throughout the day going to London Bridge from Forest Hill. Everybody was pleased to hear this reassurance that the services would not be cut to 4 tph at off-peak times (including the evening services from London Bridge to Forest Hill).

Jim Dowd MP gave further information, predicting that the rumours of cuts in the service would be proved to be unfounded when the official consultation is published later in the year.

The news today was less promising. First we got a copy of the letter from Ian Brown (Managing Director or London Rail) to Deputy Mayor, Councillor Heidi Alexander. I will quote a couple of paragraphs:
"This service frequency [the East London Railway] combined with 6 trains per hour to London Bridge will provide passengers with a total of 14 trains per hour between Sydenham and New Cross Gate"

"TfL's analysis of the demand shows that the East London Railway will:

• generate 21% boarding increase in the northbound direction, whilst the most significant growth rate of 31% will be in the southbound direction;

• attract over 55% of passengers currently travelling in a northbound direction will use East London Railway services, compared to 44% using the Southern railway services to London Bridge. In the Southbound direction, 54% of passengers are predicted to use the East London Railway, whilst 46% will use Southern services."

"The level of boarding at Forest Hill station is expected to increase by approximately 27% in the morning peak, with a significant increase of trips to Canary Wharf via Canada Water. Therefore, there will be less congestion at London Bridge station, due to the direct connection on the Jubilee Line at Canada Water station."

Importantly this letter does not claim the 14 trains per hour will continue throughout the day, and current proposals only show 14 tph at peak times, with just 4 tph travelling between London Bridge and Forest Hill at off-peak times (including the evening peak).

TfL analysis suggests that ELR will be preferable for 55% of passenger in Forest Hill. Our own survey suggests that currently only 35% of passengers would benefit from the improved connections with the Jubilee Line, while the remaining 65% of passengers need to use the connections at London Bridge. While it is inevitable that there will be more passengers travelling to Canary Wharf and other areas of growth in East London, these growth predictions are quite remarkable considering new office space is still being built, and is still popular, in the centre of London and this does not look like changing in the next three years.

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At the meeting with TfL this afternoon we handed over the petition with 700 signatures and 30 pages of comments! (Many thanks to everybody who signed the on-line petition)
TfL were adamant that their modelling of travel patterns are accurate and have undertaken to give us more details on the results of the models.

They support plans to increase the length of trains to 10 carriages per train on Southern services on our line. This project would apparently cost £12million and is one of the best value for money transport projects in London! They are still waiting for approval of funding from the DfT / Treasury later this year but expect this to go ahead. This is good news. The bad news is that we will have to wait until 2016, six years after the reduction in Southern service trains on our line.

Despite a clear difference of opinion between Forest Hill/Sydenham Societies and TfL there were some interesting options that we hope TfL will consider further:

• Longer trains by 2010, with at least 8 carriages per train on all Southern services through Forest Hill
• Increasing the number of Southern service trains in the evening peak to match the morning peak of 6 tph (no reduction from current levels)
• Implementation of the increase to 10 carriages per train earlier than 2016 and preferably by 2010. This would make sense if TfL is taking ownership of the stations in 2009/2010 and need to bring them up to London Underground standard
• We continue to oppose cuts to both our peak and non-peak services to London Bridge and believe that TfL modelling does not take full account of customer preferences for an interchange at London Bridge (to any transport service other than Jubilee Line) rather than the slow train to Bishopsgate or an extra interchange at Canada Water.
  

Forest Hill Society Pub Crawl

A reminder that the Forest Hill Society Pub Crawl takes place THIS SUNDAY, starting at 7pm at Bar Equal. Please feel free to join (or leave) at any of the points along the route. Our guide for the evening, Charlie, assures me he'll wear something conspicuous to identify himself. So, here's the route and we hope to see many of you along the way.

7pm Bar Equal, HOP Good choice of wine and Czech larger.

8pm Tapastry - bottled beers and more wine (open by special invitation)

9pm General Napier, traditional back street boozer in SE23

10 pm Foresters - the coolest pub in SE23? Check out the hype and then return for the Jazz on R&B nights

More than 700 commuters sign crowded train petition

There is an article in the South London Press today about our campaign to keep existing train services to London Bridge.

You can read the article on the icSouthLondon website

If you wish to sign the petition just go to http://fhpetition.notlong.com