Development Management Local Plan Community Meeting

[Tim Lund]

When: Wednesday 30th January 2013
Time: 7 pm – 9pm
Where: Room 2, Civic Suite

As with the earlier public planning consultation, which I commented on the thread 'Round up the usual suspects', I'm not going to be able to get to this meeting, which will be a shame.

The Council is preparing a Development Management Local Plan (DMLP) which will set out detailed planning policies to complement and implement the Core Strategy. The DMLP provides new planning direction for a number of issues such as protecting viable local pubs from change of use, controlling family size house conversions and limiting the concentration of take away food shops in the borough. You can view the DMLP on the Council’s website:
http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/p ... ptions.pdf

On 28th November 2012 the Council approved a DMLP Further Options Report for public consultation. The consultation runs until 31st January 2013. The purpose of this round of consultation is to give members of the public and other stakeholders the opportunity to comment on what options should or could be taken forward into the draft DMLP, before the Council prepares a submission version and then submits it to Government for approval.

As part of the consultation, the Council would like to invite community representatives and stakeholders to a public meeting, to hear views from the local community regarding the proposed policies contained in the DMLP.

The Council will be holding a meeting on Wednesday 30th January 2013, from 7pm till 9pm. It will take place in Room 2 at the Civic Suite, Catford Road, Catford, SE6 4RU. An agenda for the meeting is attached to this letter.

This is your opportunity to get involved in the DMLP, and to shape it’s content. If you have any queries please contact the Planning Policy Team. If you would like to attend the meeting, please phone on 020 8314 3885 or email angela.steward@lewisham.gov.uk to reserve your place.

Yours sincerely


Brian Regan
Planning Policy Manager

AGENDA

1. Introduction and review of what’s been done so far

2. Discussion of draft policies

a. Housing conversions

b. Development on infill, backland, garden and garden amenity areas

c. Retaining Pubs

d. Hot food takeaway shops

e. Other

3. Next steps

4. AOB

[leenewham]

All sounds sensible to me.

[Tim Lund]

Dear Mr Regan:

I would like to get involved in the Development Management Local Plan (DMLP) and help shape its content, but I cannot be at the meeting this evening.

I would like the DMLP to address directly the question of how we can get enough of the sorts of places where people want to live - and work - in Lewisham, with appropriate consideration taken of the environment. Development control should be mainly about basics, such as safety, and flexibility, so that the existing stock of buildings can be reused for whatever changed uses are sought. Flexibility here refers not just to the present, but any future changes; if the current pressure is for fewer bedrooms, then this should be accepted, but developments which make properties harder to convert one way or the other later should be resisted. Conversions of existing offices and retail space to residential should be accepted, and seen as opportunities for architects to show how it can be done well. It is a shame that so many local pubs are threatened by the pressure for more housing, but we also have the example, in the Sylvan Post, of redundant office space being successfully converted to a pub.

This morning I saw the following retweet from a member of one of our local amenity societies:



Please don't let Lewisham be the bureaucracy which holds back professional creativity.

There should also be a recognition that the immediate concerns which development naturally raises, e.g. the need for more local services, should be offset by the additional resources development brings to the Council, now incremented via the New Homes Bonus, and in principle available via the provisions of the Localism Act to benefit the areas where the development occurs directly. Development will also increase the viability of local businesses, and a more vibrant urban community, beyond purely commercial considerations.

[Tim Lund]

Worth watching this - The Planners

[Eagle]

Interesting Tim

I notice the agenda is for
retaining pubs
hot food takeaways.

I am all for retaining MOST pubs , but not carte blanche.
I am the destruction of most hot food take aways . They are the reason most younger people are over weight.