A Society for Forest Hill, London.
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The first stakeholder consultation meeting to find out about plans to
invite proposals for the future of Louise House in Forest Hill is
taking place on Wednesday 13 June 17.00-19.00 at Forest Hill Methodist
Church, Normanton Street, London SE23 2DS.
Staff from the relevant Lewisham Council departments will be present
and the agenda for the meeting will focus on an overview of the
tendering process, with an opportunity to ask questions.
Please RSVP to louisehouse@lewisham.gov.uk if you would like to attend.
As you may be aware, Sydenham School is due to be re-developed as part of the London Borough of Lewisham’s Building Schools for the Future Programme.
The developers are in the process of putting together proposals for the site and will display the current plans at an exhibition for local residents and community groups. You will hav ethe chance to view the designs and meet with members of the project team. The exhibition will take place on Monday 11 June, from 4-8pm at the Svdenham Girls' School, Dartmouth Road, London, SE26 4RD and will be facilitated by Quatro Consults.
This will be an opportunity to provide feedback and ask any questions regarding the new school prior to finalising the scheme and submitting the planning application to the London Borough of Lewisham. Refreshments will be provided.
There has been progress on the application for 55-59 Honor Oak Park (the former Honor Oak Tandoori) to turn three shop units into one. The Council held a public meeting on 19 April, to which both objectors and supporters attended. A short additional consultation period was added because the address on the paperwork didn’t include no. 55 and was therefore incorrect.
It has been confirmed that Sainsbury’s want to open a convenience store in the new unit. Some objectors are concerned about the effects of a supermarket chain on existing grocery shops, and some are against supermarket chains in general. However, in planning rules competition to existing businesses is not a valid ground for refusal.
Issues that are valid in considering planning consent are traffic and parking. The meeting heard that deliveries would be made via the front of the store, by four vans a day, outside of peak hours. Parking was not thought to be a concern because there are already short-term parking spaces along the parade. The neighbouring funeral directors need to maintain access to the rear of their premises during the building work and assurances were given at the meeting that this would be accommodated.
There are arguments that having a major supermarket chain on a high street can have a positive effect for local businesses because it increases footfall and can bring extra custom to nearby shops. Plus, such stores have a free cash machine and this makes it easier to access cash that can be spent locally. Examples are cited where existing competing businesses have survived and even thrived by adjusting their offering to complement a new supermarket. However there is no certainty that all local grocery stores would survive and it's understandable that local traders fear they may lose customers and their livelihoods.
Good news for fans of Honor Oak Recreation Ground (’the Rec’) is that Southwark
Council's cemeteries’ strategy makes burying people in the Honor Oak Rec the least
preferred option available to them.
Southwark recently consulted over options for burials in the borough. Despite
increases in the size of Camberwell New Cemetery, the borough is running short of new
burial spaces and they needed to look at options for new capacity.
The report was presented to Southwark’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 8 May, and
includes a number of short and medium term options that prevent the use of the Rec.
This will include the use of the old Honor Oak Nursery site to the south of the Rec,
some additional grave in the west of Camberwell New Cemetery, and using ground that
had been used for common graves, with additional top soil to enable new graves to be
placed here.
In the medium term Southwark plans to reuse some graves that are older than 75-95
years and beyond 2045 more graves would be able to be used in this way. With luck and
barring major health disasters in the next 30 years, this will allow the Rec to be
used, as it is today, as a playground and well used football pitches, for the next 30
years.
But although this is good news for users of this park, we are keen to see more
permanent protection for this park so that we don't face the same crisis in 30 years
time, or sooner. It is important that all local councils have sensible long term plans
for burials but it is equally important that we don't lose useful public sports
grounds to graves.
We have seen this playing field threatened a number of times and need to put this
matter to rest. We will be looking at ways to ensure this space is kept for long term
public use for sports and play.
If you would like to find out more about Honor Oak Rec and the continuing campaign to
save it visit honoroakparkrecreationground.blogspot.com/
Film cameras came to Forest Hill at the end of March, when Sydenham cameraman Sean Cameron and Forest Hill architect Ed Holloway took up our call for someone to make a video to support our bid for £97k Portas Pilot funding.
The fund offers 12 areas across the UK a share of £1.2 million to regenerate their High Streets. The video was a precondition of entering. At the 11th hour, Sean and Ed took up the challenge and spent a mad three days zipping through Forest Hill, Kirkdale and Sydenham interviewing some key folks with big plans for the area.
As Ed says on the film, “We could show you all the negatives, but you know that already – they are common everywhere. What we’d like to show is the unique stuff…the people, the places that make these spaces activated. There’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm around here and we want to show you just how good it is.”
The pair took a special interest in local businesses that ‘blend’ such as Canvas & Cream, Stag & Bow and Alhambra. All of these mix community and cultural activities into their core retail trade. Our bid aimed to unite all three High Streets. trendy Forest Hill, quirky Kirkdale (still in Forest Hill Ward and the original Sydenham High Street) and leafy Sydenham, home of the annual arts and music festivals. It was great to meet Sean and Ed, and amazing to find out how many people we knew in common or could put each other in touch with. In the weeks after filming many fantastic working relationships were consolidated and formed.
Sean’s allotment buddy, Ky Lewis, put on an exhibition of pinhole photography at Alhambra. Kirkdale local Aaron came along to the private view and interviewed her as part of a film he is making about Kirkdale for his portfolio. Vicar Ed Olsworth at Holy Trinity on Sydenham Park lent us his beautiful church hall for a photo-shoot.
Kirkdale Village Traders and Community Group needed a room for a public meeting. The Grove Centre on Jews Walk loaned us its small hall. (Lucky, as more than 50 people turned up!)
Alhambra has always had culture and community at its core with a programme of exhibitions, classes and events. Over the past few weeks I have been overwhelmed by the goodwill coming our way as Kirkdale Village, which I chair, makes its final push to get our Street Beautification project complete in time for the Sydenham Festival Arts Trail in July.
Kirkdale Village was awarded £1000 by the Forest Hill Assembly last year, which the Kirkdale Traders have match-funded. With aspirations bigger than our pockets, we planned planters, signage, street art, trees… At the May Local Assembly meeting we reported on progress. By the end of the night we were talking to Kerry Hagger from the Arts Befriending Service about an inter-generational mosaic project, and to pop-up cinema queen Erica about another arts project. Someone else put us in touch with St Barts School.
Sydenham artist Joyce Treasure offered to do some fabulous street art (plywood paid for and supplied by Wooster & Stock). Joyce kindly allowed us to reproduce one of her artworks. Forest Hill printmaker Sam Topping quite out of the blue, offered to run our Schools’ Flag-making Project and to print the flags, and a staff member from Kelvingrove School came into the shop and expressed a firm desire to get involved, too!
Following up on Stag & Bow’s Local Traders’ Loyalty Card last Christmas, Janis Hendrikson at JH Skincare on Kirkdale has volunteered to develop a local currency or loyalty card scheme.
A local lady, Diana Hawk, has enlisted Urban Design students from UCL to help us position our new bike stands and planters. We’re on the hunt for a forklift truck - hopefully a local company will lend us one.
Sadly our Portas Pilot bid was unsuccessful. There is a second round of applications, so we will put in again. (More on this in our next edition.) Who knows if we will succeed? But, in a way, I feel as if we have already won. Working together on the application has brought us so much closer with some excellent new alliances.
If you’d like to meet local businesses and get involved, there’s a new networking group run by our very own marketing rock star Louise Brooks of Bake (www.bakelondon.co.uk). She’s also chairing a new Empty Shops Group. Check out the Kirkdale Village Facebook page www.facebook.com/kirkdalevillage, and you can pop into Alhambra to talk to me, www.alhambrahome.co.uk. When Sean offered to start a Kirkdale Village television channel back in March, I wondered what on earth he was going to put on it. Now it seems there is no shortage of filmworthy material!
Becca Leathlean runs Alhambra Home & Garden at 148 Kirkdale (free event Fri 29 June), and chairs the Kirkdale Village Traders and Community Group.
Excitement is really building for the unofficial opening of the new Forest Hill Pools in July. Everything appears on track for a 'soft' opening that allows everything to be tested and to gradually work up to full capacity. Tiling is done, sprung floors are in and the pools are being filled. Fusion, the company that will run the pools for Lewisham, are working on activity and pools programmes and getting key staff members in place.
In order to make a real fanfare of about the Pools, to celebrate the achievement of delivering the project and to make sure that every single resident knows about it, Lewisham Council and Fusion are working on an 'official' opening on 22 September. They are planning a big event with lots of activities to include the library, local shops and businesses and hopefully The Horniman Museum. They have asked the Forest Hill Society to be involved and we are working on what we could help with that would tie in with what they are planning.
Tucked away, quietly along Kilmorie Road there is a Youth Project that offers a variety of programmes to schools and other agencies within the Borough of Lewisham. The project has been in existence since 1974 and in its present location since 1991.
It is probably best known, at least by the young people that have been involved over the years, for being a motorcycle project but there is so much more on offer these days.
The aim of the YLP is to help young people gain confidence through achievement and to enhance their abilities through effective communication and teamwork. It provides ‘young person centred learning’ by tailoring their courses to suit the needs of the young people who take part.
The Lifeskills Programme includes carpentry, gardening, cooking, plastering, painting and decorating. There is art, design and clothes-making for after- school groups, bicycle maintenance and off-road cycle rides. And yes there is the Motorcycle Maintenance course and off-road riding training.
Over the last two years we have developed our garden and allotment which has completely transformed our project, making it a far more attractive place to work as well as giving us fresh produce.
Working with 100-150 young people each year, YLP progression routes include further education, work placements and recognition of the importance of taking personal self-responsibility. To find out more see our wonderful short video of the project http://vimeo.com/32079836 and go to our website: http://www.younglewisham.org.uk/
Dave Newman, YLP Programme Coordinator
The green and hilly housing estate of Windley Close in Forest Hill has recently been awarded funding to start up a community garden.
Residents came together with the idea to start a garden growing herbs, vegetables, fruit and flowers. In April they were awarded funding by Lewisham Council, Capital Growth, and are now working in partnership with their Housing Association London and Quadrant. As one resident said “Our aim is to make Windley Close a happy and healthy place to live for residents and wildlife - next year we hope to add a nature reserve”.
For advice on how to start up a community garden visit www.capitalgrowth.org - they are aiming to support 2,012 community food growing spaces by the end of 2012! For more information on the Windley Close Community Garden email us at letsgrowwindley@gmail.com
There may be a few members out there who are unaware of the tremendous
success of the Hob in not only promoting new comedy and bands, local and
less local, but also attracting worldwide stars such at Mickey Flanagan
(centre below), Daniel Kitson and Bill Bailey who try out new material
(even the junked sketches will have you in stitches), and will also
occasionally step in to MC.
Ron and Emma, flanking Mickey, started off over twenty years ago at the
East Dulwich Tavern, and fortunately for us saw the light relocating to
the Hob in the mid naughties. We will feature them further in the next
edition, meanwhile go to: www.edcomedy.com
Never has the weather forecast been scrutinised more thoroughly: in the week before, the chart was a constant parade of ominous grey clouds with raindrops slanting miserably out of them. Six am on the day, with nervous anticipation, the curtains were drawn back, to reveal clear skies and the sun, peeping through the scudding white clouds. Strike One for the Food Fair Effect!
Gathering on the forecourt at 8am, was a cheerful band of cooks, carrot peelers and bottle-washers; tents to put up, with tables to erect and delicious hand-made produce to display. Would anyone turn up? Had anyone seen the posters or read one of the 7000 fliers? What was that enormous banner for, flapping in the wind? Strike Two!
Ten-ten, the stalls already busy with eager shoppers, keen to sample the food on offer, giddy with the novelty of finding proper produce on sale. Pickles and chutneys, English cheese and ham, lovely ripe tomatoes and asparagus from Kent, fresh baked artisan bread, beautiful hand-made cakes and buns, variously flavoured Scotch eggs and the scent of freshly brewed coffee and hot Viennese sausages and goulash. People flocked down the high street. The town was alive! Strike Three!
Anxious shopkeepers scanned the posters: what were they selling down at the Station?
Surely this would ruin their prospects for a profitable Sunday? But wait: ‘No I’m sorry, we’re full right now; we should have a table in ten minutes if you’d like to hang on’. Queuing for tables on a Sunday morning, who were all these people? Trekkers on the Taster Trail? No time to ask, should have asked the assistant to do an extra shift! Strikes Four and Five!
Three-thirty, most of the stalls sold out long ago, the clouds finally roll in; time to pack up and go, before the rain comes back for the rest of April. What a great success! And the most frequently asked question? ‘When is the next Food Fair? You will do it again won’t you?’ And the answer is: Sunday 3rd June, 10am until 2pm (hot food and bar until 4pm). Strike Five for the Food Fair Effect!
The first stakeholder consultation meeting to find out about plans to
invite proposals for the future of Louise House in Forest Hill is
taking place on Wednesday 13 June 17.00-19.00 at Forest Hill Methodist
Church, Normanton Street, London SE23 2DS.
