New housing coming to Forest Hill

Look’s like there’s a lot of new housing coming to Forest Hill
https://londonnewsonline.co.uk/lewisham-council-reveals-locations-of-1000-new-homes-including-a-19th-century-listed-site/

That’s a good article by Grainne Cuffe, giving a comprehensive summary of the sites proposed for development in the Lewisham Local Plan, which was previously covered in the following topic: Lewisham Local Plan is open for consultation from today (15th Jan) until the 11th April 2021

Having read some of the plan documents myself (there’s a lot), one thing that they contain is that Lewisham has a good supply of primary schools, but may need an additional secondary school to be built in future. I didn’t find any proposed site for a new secondary school, though if all the housing were to go ahead, perhaps some new primaries maybe needed, or existing schools enlarged where possible.

Hopefully any redevelopment of the GP sites (The Jenner and Sydenham Green GP are both listed for development in the plan) would also expand their capacity, as well as providing housing and refreshed commercial units.

I was told that the Church of England were thinking of building a new secondary school in Lewisham. The plan does not seem to be making much progress.

40 new homes at the Jenner GP site!? Don’t know how that would be possible without building a massive tower block.
And with Brockley Road GP closing last year, where are people in Honor oak meant to go?

We’ve been bumped to Hilly Fields - over towards Ladywell since Brockley Road closed.

Not ideal. Seems like HOP residents are going to have to rely more on Forest Hill practices

There aren’t any GP surgeries in Forest Hill ward. I go to Wells Park in Sydenham but they’re dreadfully over subscribed. I’d have thought the Jenner was a good site for a practice, as it’s on bus routes.

The Willow Way Council owned depot would be a good site for a medical centre as that’s in the FH ward and also a Local Employment area, where neighbouring industry could be put at risk of being driven out by complaints and rising land prices if it became residential.

I find the local plan misleading though. Surely the Sydenham Police Station development is well under way? Seems a bit weird to include it as a proposed development site.

I went to a presentation at Forest Hill Pools a few years ago where they were putting forward the idea of changing the designation of that Willow Way/Dartmouth Road wedge to residential. But I agree that a decent size GP surgery would work really well there.

The number doesn’t sound unrealistic to me as the site is actually quite large. Assuming the ground floor would be used for GP practice, pharmacy, and possibly some retail, you could fit 40 homes with an average of 75m2 (generous 2-bed) across two storeys above and still just use about 40% of the site’s footprint, leaving ample space for communal areas, parking etc.

A three storey height would be in line with existing height and other buildings on Brockley Road so this would seem realistic to me, although I wouldn’t be surprised for it to be topped with some kind of penthouses (for both financial and aesthetic reasons).

I don’t think you’d want to go much lower at this location as it’s a focal point for the area and also the height provides a degree of noise protection from the South Circular for the residential areas behind. One down side is that it would probably make the Honor Oak Pub garden less sunny.