Lewisham Council has rejected the results of the public consultation, which had overwhelmingly approved the Bell Green Neighbourhood Area. They imposed an alternative area, one third of the size, which excluded over thirty Forum members, and therefore the Forum was rejected as well. This decision is against the word and spirit of the Localism Act, and the Forum has appealed to Simon Clarke, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities.
The red boundary shows the Bell Green Neighbourhood Area we applied for. The area shaded in blue is Lewisham Council’s imposed BGNA. It is one third of the size of our area, and is only 50 per cent residential.
The resident and commercial responses to the public consultation were overwhelmingly positive. This was overturned at the behest of five ward councillors, with no valid planning justifications given. As the area applied for crosses four wards, eleven councillors are involved, and eligible to vote. The councillors have been given a disproportionate influence over the Neighbourhood Forum, which must, by statute, be resident-led.
This decision is timed to limit our involvement in the final draft of the Lewisham Local plan. Once this plan is approved, the Forum can’t challenge anything in it; the current draft has very broad-brush statements approving the area for buildings over 20 storeys high. No public transport or pedestrian comfort improvements are included, and there is no indication as to how the retail park redevelopment will be laid out.
It is noticeable that Lewisham’s imposed area excludes areas that are directly affected by the current and future uses of the redevelopment area. It gerrymanders out social housing estates which are some of the closest neighbours of the redevelopment area. This may relate to the Lewisham Plan’s tall building zone for Bell Green / Lower Sydenham.
The entire area shaded orange has been zoned for redevelopment with buildings of over 20 stories high. This includes social housing estates including Fambridge Close, which is low-rise, and owned by Lewisham Council, via Lewisham Homes. Residents of Fambridge Close have been excluded from participating in the Bell Green Neighbourhood Forum, despite the fact that Lewisham appears to have redevelopment intentions for their homes.
Lewisham claims to have rejected the BGNA as it was too large. The map, created by Neighbourhood Planning London, shows their imposed small Bell Green Neighbourhood Area, circled in red. It is much smaller than the ones they have already designated, and our original application, three times that size, is still only half the size of the Grove Park Neighbourhood Area.