Public Meeting: Development Proposals for Livesey Hall and Environs

[JGD]

A fairly high quality leaflet from the Livesey Design Group was posted through doors in some areas in recent days. It contains many proposals, some of which, in principle, are very welcome.

It has an invitation to engage in two public workshops to be held in January 2023 at the Livesey Memorial Hall.

Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 January 2023 from 6 to 8 pm

Successful participants will be paid £25 per session attended. on condition attendance is made to both.

It also invites applications to join the Livesey Design Group with the stated objective of helping to "design the future of Livesey Hall and Bowling Green as part of the Livesey Quarter Development. " It specifies the totality of provision of 120 residential units and is silent on what proportion of that total will be affordable housing. The leaflet does not describe who are the beneficial owners of the Livesey Quarter site and development but Barrat during their presentation named them as Apex Capital Partners.

It seems clear that this is a separate proposal from Barratt Homes's project, also in public consultation phase, for the former gasholder portion of the wider site.

An array of consultants is listed as having been engaged to manage the project.

The leaflet contains some Interesting terminology, “The LDG are a demographically representative group of local residents…”.

It is to be wondered who has been appointed to participate and why the leaflet says “are” and not “will be”. Has the LDG been formed and local residents pre-appointed? I have not heard of or am I aware of approaches being made to any party, local residents or businesses from Bellingham or Perry Vale wards who for instance, as such, would be considered valid and prime candidates for inclusion. Any up-to-date information on that front would be helpful.

The Bowling Green is named specifically for redesign.

It failed some years ago, I think through lack of interest and membership mainly. So, whilst re-instatement of the space and a pavilion may be more than welcome and fits well with proposals submitted for the Draft Local Plan, why define it so narrowly as being just a bowling green?

The combined development of the wider area, gas holder site and Livesey Hall and its environs by two separate owner developers makes for an interesting challenge to joined-up design and coherent development. Whilst Barratt were happy to name the new owners of Livesey Hall at the presentation for their gas-holder site development they expressly stated there was no joint development proposals in the offing. Lewisham Council as our LPA may have insufficient powers to influence a two stream design process sufficiently to ensure production of an overall design that meets locally specified needs.

The Livesey Quarter Commonplace website does not display any meaningful content particularly about what the redesign of Livesey Hall actually means and links to see project details or scope return the user to the landing page:

https://liveseyquarter.commonplace.is/

[JGD]

Progress on The Livesey Quarter Commonplace website:

The website has been updated and access to content about options for redesign of Livesey Hall and links to other project details and scope now work and more info is visible:

https://liveseyquarter.commonplace.is/

The scope is subtly different in that the 120 homes proposed has grown to 140 in number.

Amongst some artistic elevations projected from Perry Hill, a four-storey block, sited to the left of Livesey Hall and behind the current position of the Bowling Green is depicted. There is no visual depiction of a replacement pavilion and some trees appear - possibly in the middle of the bowling green.

All done with a little artistic licence of course and at this stage some of the early options for the site and The Livesey Hall' development appear imaginative and innovative.

Well worth a look - and proposed ideas will take a lot of perusal.

[JRW]

Excellent news to have a consultation, although sadly their plans would remove sports ground - an area of four hard tennis courts - from our Asset of Community Value. Given the total loss of the Bridge Leisure Centre, this would be a blow.

To clarify the status of this consultation, I asked Emma Talbot, Lewisham's Director of Planning. She said that Lewisham officers have not been informed about the consultation, and nor have they been shown the plans. The Planning Service is not in discussion with Apex over this redevelopment, but is only addressing the neglect of the listed building, and its planning enforcement process. I have forwarded Emma the consultation link, as requested.

Look at the plans and think about them by all means, but remember that their viability and legality has not been checked by planning. Atm, they are just castles in the air.

[JGD]

Excellent news to have a consultation, although sadly their plans would remove sports ground - an area of four hard tennis courts - from our Asset of Community Value. Given the total loss of the Bridge Leisure Centre, this would be a blow.

The assertion that an area of four tennis courts would be removed from "our" ACV has not been borne out by supporting evidence that the ACV process actually embraced that specific portion of the site - or indeed if anyone can recall any tennis courts being used there in recent memory.

In any event all ACVs applied for by SydSoc "en-masse" (all signed on the same date by the same person) in and around Bellingham and Forest Hill area have now got a very short shelf life left in their period of validity and will expire soon. There is no legal instrument available to any LPA to extend the ACV status for any period of time. The applications were all ill-thought through and were all done at haste without much thought about what any real benefits would be delivered by the premature acquisition of such status. It is my recall that Lewisham as LPA declined to intervene using ACV statutes in the disposal of The Livesey Hall - it has the effect of questioning what value ACV statutes have in any case.

A similar "en-masse" batch of applications were made to have public houses Listed Locally (not applicable here as the Hall has a National Listing) - it was almost as if SydSoc, blinded from any air of reality, saw it as some objective a la Holy Grail to layer unwarranted and unrequired and unrequested levels of protections on pubs.

To clarify the status of this consultation, I asked Emma Talbot, Lewisham's Director of Planning. She said that Lewisham officers have not been informed about the consultation, and nor have they been shown the plans. The Planning Service is not in discussion with Apex over this redevelopment, but is only addressing the neglect of the listed building, and its planning enforcement process. I have forwarded Emma the consultation link, as requested.

Look at the plans and think about them by all means, but remember that their viability and legality has not been checked by planning. Atm, they are just castles in the air.

Not sure it's relevant that an LPA must be advised about the existence or proposal for every consultation being undertaken on its patch. In any event we must not forget that Cllr Bell stated publicly that Lewisham was in consultation with a third party about development proposals and that as the Consultation was part of a formal process, they, as LPA, were unable to disclose with whom and about what discussions were being conducted. It is to be recalled, Cllr Bell pronouncing in chamber that he would write to JRW on that point.

It may be or may not be the case that Apex was that third party. It may be the case that Emma Talbot is still bound by those confidentiality rules and is unable to elucidate further.

Status for viability and legality will be flow from a design development process managed by the developer and an appointed team and proposals will be tested in further consultation with the LPA and ultimately when a planning application is made.

It is to be wondered what "addressing the neglect of the existing building" means in relationship to "its planning enforcement process".

Any LPA would recognise that a new owner, investing in a development proposal would seek to approach this matter prudently in commercial terms and with both positivity and sensibility to the fore.

Unless the LPA has received some negative response from Apex that indicates that Apex feel they have no such obligations, it might be anticipated that Lewisham will utter many words of encouragement to Apex over many phases before moving to an Enforcement stance.

[JGD]

Right on the specified date, I received a cordial reply to my application to join the LDG, informing me my application had been rejected.

Interestingly it reports the Group had been overwhelmed by the number of applicants and that selections had been made randomly on a demographics basis.

We’d like to thank you again for applying to be a part of the Livesey Design Group (LDG). We have been overwhelmed by the number of applicants, it is great to see so many people interested in shaping the future of their area.
The aim for the group is to be demographically representative of the local community and this is the basis for successful and unsuccessful applications. Applicants are randomly selected based only on their demographic information. Unfortunately, on this occasion you have not been selected to be part of the LDG.
There are still plenty of other ways to provide feedback on both the Livesey Memorial Hall and the plans for the site more widely.

The Group did not include any requested response or information on what terms and conditions would have to be observed by successful candidates. It did not provide any info on the number of applications made and at what stage was this volume deemed to be "overwhelming".

On a very positive note the Group repeats its assertion that there will be many opportunities to provide feedback.

Are there any successful applicants out there who may have received more details and can throw light on the unanswered questions put to LDG and whether there are any freshly selected candidates or any that may have been part of the Group that pre-existed before this process was launched?

[Sideofham]

To help inform debate on this issue my impartial view to LDG members regarding local opinion on this issue is:
90% - WTF is the Livesley hall?
9.9%- knock it down and build a drive through KFC
0.1%- won't someone think about the children