Neglected areas in Sydenham

[Kingfisher78]

I walked from Sydenham High Street to Bell Green Sainsbury's and decided to take some pictures of the neglect that I saw in our town. Can anyone tell me what is going on with these places in Sydenham?

it seems as though they have been completely overlooked by the council. Lower Sydenham especially seems to be suffering from serious neglect.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/141849971 ... res/E1dm5q

[angela53]

I think it would be worth sending these pictures to Lewisham council and asking them what their plans are for improvement. Well done for highlighting these ugly areas

A

[leenewham]

These do look pretty poor. The green upholsterers was up for sale a while ago and is used. with a coat of paint it could be great (it's one of the few original shop fronts in the area).

Unfortunately most of these are nothing to do with the council as they are private property. Council shave a lack of funding, officers or will to do anything about this.

It's more to do with landlords, shop owners, advertisers, BT etc.

If we had a proper traders group or engaged councillors or bodies to work together to solve these problems and encourage people to take care of their property and have pride in the area, things might change. It's a similar story in many different areas.

The shops at Bell Green are really shocking. But these things are difficult and expensive to change.

[appletree]

Why does no one start a traders' association or join with the Forest Hill one?

[Search East]

The tyre place and the shops at Bell Green are open all the time and busy, whatever they look like.

Search East's Girlfriend

[Kingfisher78]

Thanks for replying. I remember when the Mayor of Lewisham came to my school a few years ago and he said that when something has been privately bought or rented there is not much that they can then do about it when the owner's don't look after it. But why is it that just because someone buys a retail space or rents it, the council cannot then intervene in any way when it is neglected? For example, why can't a fine be imposed? The high street belongs to us all. I certainly don't want to go to a restaurant if I have something that's been completely neglected and is falling apart next to it. It discourages customers and it discourages new businesses opening. Eventually it means whole sections of the high street become disregarded.

I took a picture of Sydenham Tyres to show how awful it looks, with rubbish right outside of it and paint peeling off and the shops in Bell Green to show that though they do have customers, they could put a lot more effort into making their businesses look more presentable such as Jerk Garden up the road, Wellbeing or On the Hoof.

[Kent House R]

In Nunhead high street there was some kind of co-ordinated effort to improve external appearances of shops with new signs and fronts done up using similar styles and design palettes. It's made a real difference to first impressions of the high street.

I'd be prepared to donate some money to a crowd funding initiative towards improving some of the neglected shop frontages you describe. Id also donate my time for painting, cleaning, weeding, sprucing up etc.

[leenewham]

The Nunhead scheme was by Jan Kaitten Associates and was funded by the Outer London Fund which we were advisors on. It cost over £1 million (including the new public space).
https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/re ... ct-nunhead

Jan Kaitten are good and do really nice work. Nice people too. Some of the signage was done by the same guys who did Brown & Green (Butler Associates). They are also good (he's doing a shop for us in Mitcham at the moment).

More info on the project in Nunhead: http://www.jankattein.com/pdfs/nunhead_projectinfo.pdf

Crowd funding rarely works for shop fronts. I've seen bid groups try it without success.

What has amazed me is that, even when offered thousands of pounds of free, shop fronts and signage, many shops just don't want it, even if their current shop is really shabby. Believe it or not, it happens a lot.

I think high streets need to be managed, vetted, supported and controlled so that shops aren't allowed to get into a state, follow a highly localised design guide to make areas unique and distinct (most high streets look the same these days with similar generic shop fronts and signage) that is controlled locally by traders and BID (Business Improvement Districts) groups so it includes traders and helps form a community.

[robbieduncan]

In extereme cases the council can use compulsary purchase orders to buy neglected property: https://www.brent.gov.uk/council-news/p ... es/pr5770/

[parker]

Lewisham don't care about any of this in the slightest, why do you think they won't repair the Legible London signage by the station? I'd love to see how they would deal with these things if an area of this borough covered a high profile central area like the way Lambeth covers Southbank. Would such similar signage etc (by the London Eye) be left neglected in an area like that if it was under Lewisham's control, or is this just good enough for Sydenham?

When you're passing through the boundary from LB Lewisham into LB Bromley, i.e. Bromley Road by Bromley Court Hotel you can see a marked difference in the appearance of the two borough's presentation. Road signage being the tip of the iceberg.

[_HB]

Lewisham clearly deserve criticism for this sort of stuff. But this is to be expected when you have rampant neo-liberals in charge forcing cut after cut in local authority budgets. There is simply no money to deal with the cosmetic things when social care and housing are in such crisis. You should train your fire back towards central government.

[P1971]

We (FH Traders) just recently came across BID (Business Improvement District) & a couple of our active traders had a first meeting with someone from the initiative earlier this week. It seems to be a great initiative from what we know so far and could possibly give us 50k per year to put back into our community. No area in the Lewisham borough is part of the scheme yet but when they get back to us with the additional information we've asked for & if the majority agree (we as traders would be contributing to this financially) to be part of the scheme we'll probably go ahead with it.

As FHTA has been mentioned on this thread I'd just like to add that at the moment there's only 6 of us on the exec & that are very active but by having our google group & being able to email everyone as a group we are able to organise community events & most traders get involved. By having our social last night (we had a great turn out) we're hoping even more will get active which will mean we can do more. The other bonus we have is that we work closely with Michael on behalf of FH Society who supports us in any community events/initiatives we are doing/trying to do.

I'd be happy (and am sure the others on our FHTA exec would be too) to meet up with any Sydenham traders that are interested in setting up a Sydenham traders association to discuss how we run ours.

[Pally]

We (FH Traders) just recently came across BID (Business Improvement District) & a couple of our active traders had a first meeting with someone from the initiative earlier this week. It seems to be a great initiative from what we know so far and could possibly give us 50k per year to put back into our community. No area in the Lewisham borough is part of the scheme yet but when they get back to us with the additional information we've asked for & if the majority agree (we as traders would be contributing to this financially) to be part of the scheme we'll probably go ahead with it.

As FHTA has been mentioned on this thread I'd just like to add that at the moment there's only 6 of us on the exec & that are very active but by having our google group & being able to email everyone as a group we are able to organise community events & most traders get involved. By having our social last night (we had a great turn out) we're hoping even more will get active which will mean we can do more. The other bonus we have is that we work closely with Michael on behalf of FH Society who supports us in any community events/initiatives we are doing/trying to do.

I'd be happy (and am sure the others on our FHTA exec would be too) to meet up with any Sydenham traders that are interested in setting up a Sydenham traders association to discuss how we run ours.

A traders association would surely make a difference in Sydenham ...as long as they were able to move forward alongside other existing groups ....that way, things might start to happen!

[owlwise]

Didn't SEE3 win funding to spruce up the High Street???

[Pally]

Didn't SEE3 win funding to spruce up the High Street???

Yes they did have funding as did Forest Hill.. it is quite hard to see the impact in Sydenham but FH has certainly changed in recent years.

[Chris Best]

SEE3 did receive £80k from the GLA with £100k from Lewisham Council from planning gain monies to improve the Town Centres of Sydenham, Forest Hill and Kirkdale. We started with a community hub in Sydenham - a vacant shop at 27 which is now let to Cherry & Ice. We ran pilot markets in the three town centres and have the legacy of the monthly market in Sydenahm. We opened 9 pop up shops - the Butchery is still trading in Forest Hill, 161 Food and Wine is trading in Kirkdale and we now have Bob's Wines, Beer Rebillion and Carnival Emporium as permanent traders in the pop-up shops in Sydenham - 5 different businesses in shops that were standing vacant. We had a Town Centre Manager that tried to get traders in Sydenham involved in a sustainable traders association but given that many traders are small independently run there wasn't the capacity to take on the running and organisation.

The traders support initiatives such as the Easter Bonnet parade, Halloween and Christmas entertainment. The Sydenham Halloween event is one of the largest in South London and is organised by the Sydenham Town Centre Steering Group.

I understand that the building that was Cobbs department store has now been sold. The Council granted a change of use to the owner of the old sorting office in Silverdale - to A1 in the expectation it was going to be used as an antiques warehouse.

I have been talking to some of the traders in Lower Sydenham to think about links with the library and Home Park - for example working on a summer family fun day. My Front Room is running the cafe in the library and the piazza is a great space for entertainment or an outdoor market. If anyone wants to help organise any events please DM me.

[Pally]

Chris, thankyou for the summary

[poppy]

What I can't understand Chris is why they created that piazza and then did nothing to the rest of the park.
It is such a shame the new paving was not continued along the 'walkway' which runs along the high street and a new wall built.
More investment in Home Park, in terms of how it looks - better planting etc - would have a big impact on how that end of Sydenham feels.

[leenewham]

Poppy, I agree with you. But regarding the Piazza, the money was very tight, it didn't go very far. What they did with the Piazza was very good for the cost and it was well assigned by the consultants. Their remit was only for the Piazza.

Lots of suggestions were made about Home Park over the years including the wall in front and the pathway in front of the park plus improving the playground, having a stage in the park, table tennis tables, a football and basketball court etc. This was consulted on years ago and the outdoor gym was chosen out of the proposals.

The playground in Home Park is poor (not just my opinion, also the view of every parent I'd spoken to in there). It would be great to see some more investment to this rather neglected park.

There was a Friends Of Group, but I don't think it's current.