Save Catford

the mayor of london’s propaganda rag came through the door yesterday containing a middle page spread headlined ‘Mayor’s 50% affordable housing target delivers for first time buyers’

now setting aside the fact that the figures quoted within the article itself show that only 17% of new builds in total were affordable (the article quotes 4,686 low cost homes being built in london in 2006/7 out of an overall total build of 27,000 which is just over 17% ), the breakdown of the 4,686 affordable homes by borough shows that lewisham built a grand total of 21 affordable homes in the year. Out of the 33 london borough they were the 8th worst in terms of absolute numbers and given the smaller populations of some of the boroughs that built fewer affordable homes than lewisham (city of london, westminster, kensington & chelsea etc..), lewisham must be pretty near the bottom in percentage terms

the latest monitoring report on the mayor’s london plan shows that in the previous year a total of 916 new homes were built in the borough, 21 affordable homes out of this represents just 2%, a long way off even lewisham’s stated target of 35% let alone the mayors 50% target

for all steve bollocks huffing and puffing about the need for more powers to be granted to borough mayors, he doesn’t seem to be that keen on using any of them to ensure he meets his own policies let alone those handed down to him by others

Shortly before christmas I sent a letter to the council asking for some clarification and responses to certain aspects of the development, to date I have not yet received a reply

I have read over the planning documentation in relation to the above development proposal and have the following concerns/comments that I would appreciate some feedback on:-

1. Why are the developers allowed to state that 57% of the homes offered for sale will be affordable. Only 36% of the homes offered truly meet the definition of affordable. The other 21% which are categorised as affordable do not even have to be offered to qualifying key worker purchasers in the first place, let alone any safeguards in place to ensure they will remain available to this category in the future.

2. So with the actual affordable percentage at 36% this is some way below the 50% proportion set out in the Mayor of London’s London Plan. As i understand it, it is possible for the affordable element to be less than 50% if the development will bring about other benefits to the existing community. I would appreciate a run down on what these benefits are expected to be, my following concerns appear would appear to denote that far from the development bringing benefits for the existing community it poses several significant downsides.

3. What plans are in place to deal with the expected 17% increase in peak hour rail travel brought about by the development. The development transport document proposes that nothing needs to be done to cope with this substantial increase as they expect existing rail travel to reduce year on year up to 2014 which will offset the increased usage due to the development. Is the council comfortable with this rather cavalier assumption, and are they happy that this assumption is consistent with statements elsewhere in the transport document that road congestion will not be a problem due to the encouragement of the use of public, namely rail, transport?

4. Is the council happy with the assumptions made in relation to growth assumption in road traffic made in the transport assessment document? Only two different scenarios are looked at, i) a reduction in traffic over time, or ii) no further growth in traffic. Should a third scenario not have been looked at, that of rising road traffic? Additionally where is the expected reduction in rail usage going to come from if people are being encouraged to drive less and use the rail network more?

5. Are the council happy that because the existing Catford Road/Ravensbourne Road junction is already deemed to be unsatisfactory in terms of Ratio of Flow to Capacity (RFC), that the increased usage of this junction brought about by the development is being categorised as having no impact on traffic flow, i.e. because it’s not satisfactory at present, adding a substantial amount of additional traffic to it won’t have any effect, because it’s already unsatisfactory. This binary logic used by the development documentation seems incredibly naive

6. Will existing residents of sub-standard social housing in the borough (i.e. Milford Towers etc..) be offered first refusal on properties in the development?

7. As i understand it, over 4,000 homes have been consulted in relation to this development. However only one person out of this vast amount of people will be allowed to speak at the planning committee meeting in relation to the development, and furthermore only for a period of 5 minutes. The chance for the local community to input into this process seems to be severely restricted, especially given the no doubt substantial amount of time that the development consortium will have had to put their side of the case to the council. In terms of practicalities can you outline how this one person will be chosen and how you can ensure that they will be able to articulate the no doubt multi-faceted objections that will exist within the community?