Southwark Council to build 168 homes on Peckham park

Spotting a pattern with Southwark Council:

More tragedy. More of Southwark selling off the land for profit. Destroying the borough’s green spaces for corporate profit. And this by a Labour council.

I’m not sure this is fair. Over 70% affordable homes are on offer, and to let rather than sale. I’m sure the council had to push long and hard to achieve this. Of course one can always deny the issue of not enough affordable housing but I’m glad the councils don’t. I find the above description however slightly cynical.

I think calling this site a “park” is stretching it too far, it is merely a smallish derelict piece of land albeit one with a bit of grass and a few trees on it. As for quality green spaces, Sumner Road Park is just down the road, and Burgess Park a ten minute walk away. I know where I would prefer to have my pick nick…

Are we talking about the same thing here? This is the park being destroyed:

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There are certainly better parks in very close proximity. It also definitely used to be housing as the Southwark planning site overlays the 1883 map of the area, so it is legitimate to describe it as a brownfield site (unless it has been given a different designation - which hasn’t happened on this site).

My understanding from the Twitter thread is that this site was earmarked for a tram depot for a tram line that was suggested by previous mayor(s), but which came to nothing. So Southwark Council have always kept this location for future building.

One could argue that it should really be turned into a cemetery to allow Southwark to bury people without digging up the dead, the living trees, or the play parks. Personally I don’t have an opinion on this location as I don’t know it well enough to know what value it provides to local residents, and to weigh this against the need for private and social housing for Southwark residents.

I know that area well. I’ve never seen that bit of land look so good Its needs something doing with it as it is a magnet for drug dealers and users who congregate near the library most nights and leave their needles strewn over the park.

Somebody mentioned Burgess Park which frankly is a bit of way for local residents. But you can get their via the Surrey Canal Walk, one of my favourite walks in South London created when they filled in the old Surrey Canal. Great for picking wild garlic in the spring and blackberries and some sloes in the fall.

I know kids in the area are more inclined to use the nearby (one block) Summer Road Park which has been beautifully landscaped by the Council with a great play areas for kids.

If local resident’s are up and arms, might be a good chance to get the Council to support the amazing work already done to create the Peckham Coal Line as an new urban park for the are.

It’s not Peckham Rye Park is it?
I also agree that getting rid of the drug addicts would be a bonus. Surely that makes sense because of children playing.

You don’t have to be cynical to question everything that Southwark Labour, trading as Southwark Council, does.

We have seen how they have lied about their plans for our cemeteries, calling woods ‘scrub’, saying they are only cutting down 11 trees when in fact they cut down hundreds over many acres and calling destroying headstones as ‘removing to safety’.

Right now our children have to travel miles outside of the borough for sports fields as Southwark are using Honor Oak Rec ground for burial plots. Children need more open land to kick the football, to breathe, to experience nature, not less.

Lewis Schaffer
Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries.
https://www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk

Considering the actual nature and classification of the land in question, how accurate is the topic title? Is Southwark really planning to ‘destroy’ a ‘park’? Also, I know we’ve been following the cases that border on our area. But Peckham isn’t technically local, and we’re not in Southwark, so what’s the SE23 connection here?

Agree. And ‘destroy’ seems deliberately emotive language.

I’m sure Southwark council would be happier if we were to phrase it “improve a derelict brownfield site”…

But it looks a lot like a park to me (and this is how the tweeter, a senior residential researcher, describes it).

And it certainly isn’t going to be a park once it’s concreted over and the space is filled with high density housing.

If the park is not being “destroyed,” how would you describe what is about to happen to it?

Whatever way you look at it, and setting semantics aside, it’s not an SE23 issue.

You’re right.

But bear in mind that Southwark council is setting dangerous precedents that are likely to affect us. Some of the most beautiful and characterful parts of SE23 fall under their control.

One Tree Hill, Honor Oak Rec, Camberwell New Cemetery and Brenchley Gardens - all threatened, or potentially threatened, by a council which brazenly defies its own public consultations and brushes aside protests that have reached national media.

Like I said above, discussing the areas that border ours makes sense. But this? No ( for me). And one can be against the destruction of old and established public spaces and for the use of a square of grass that was never designated as a park. Or indeed vice versa. Hence the challenge to the use of the term ‘destroy’. You’ve posted something under the guise of public interest, but with the gloss of your own perspective in your choice of language.

Title reworded.

Not to mention Southwark Council’s “regeration” of Elephant & Castle which involved many under market value compulsory purchases, very little affordable homing and much of the new properties sold to oversea buyers. As Peckham is a neighbouring area, one I spend a lot of time in, and ifs development has a knock on effect on our very own SE23 - this is a post I am interested in. Thanks for sharing OP.

It is an open space. After Southwark is done with it will no longer be a open space. Therefore, it will be ‘destroyed’

Or ‘repurposed’ perhaps?

Doubleplusgood!

If it is not a designated park or a part of an estate and is seen as brownfield and provides badly needed homes then it is hardly being destroyed? It could be worse they could fill it with bodies for 100 years!

Sort of agree. If it’s not designated as anything, then let them have at it.

Actually, using the Peckham site as a burial ground makes more sense than than continuing to use other cemeteries

1. Southwark won’t have to cut down any trees - unlike the hundreds of trees blocking burial in Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries.

2. It is a level surface - unlike the 1 to 5 slope on One Tree Hill and in Camberwell Old Cemetery.

3. They won’t have the problem of disposing of memorials and headstones of local families’s dead. They won’t have find a place to dump the headstones or have to crush them up, as they are planning on doing now (even if they say they aren’t. I would like to see where they have denied it)

4. It is closer to more Southwark residents. Southwark Labour says it is very important to provide local burial for local people, even as they are selling new burial plots to people who don’t live in the borough.

5. Finally, No pesky remains of dead bodies buried underneath - of WW1 and WW2 service personel, blitz victims and their families. Most families don’t want their loved ones dug up and most plot purchasers don’t want their loved ones buried in a used grave.

We are against using inner any London land for new burial plots. And we are for preserving the openspace we have.

I support the stance over One Tree Hill, but think attacking any use of sites that happen to have some grass growing on them is counterproductive.

The reality is that more homes ARE going to be built in London, so I’d far prefer they use brownfield sites that are currently the subject of anti-social behaviour and direct energies into protecting genuine greenfield sites or rare exceptions like One Tree Hill that provided special social amenity.

If you don’t pick your battles and enter into emotive characterisations of an organisation, you dilute the strength of the argument.

I think you might be right, given the stark situation as it is.

However:

• a green field has been classified as “brownfield” not “greenfield.” If we tolerate one mis-classification, we open ourselves up to more.
• drug addicts are a problem, granted. However, if we imagine this is an argument for concreting over green space (rather than actually tackling the social problem), don’t we set an ugly precedent?

What evidence do you have that it isn’t brownfield Chris? The fact that it has grass growing on it doesn’t make it greenfield.

I stare at this image and ponder. Is it a green field or brown field? Maybe I’m not squinting hard enough, but I just can’t summon the Orwellian doublethink to call this a “brownfield” site, sorry:

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But I’m sure there are umpteen reasons why state bureaucrats and their enablers can describe this as brownfield, justifying its conversion into “no field at all.”

Don’t worry, I’ll book myself in to the Ministry of Truth to get my opinions corrected and I’m sure I’ll feel a whole lot better about the situation.

Greenfield and brownfield are legal terms, Chris. They relate to whether the site has previously been developed.

With respect, yes, I know that’s the case. But there are a number of exclusions to the official brownfield classification, including “land in built-up areas such as parks and recreation grounds.”

The question, for those of us who want to preserve London’s remaining open spaces, is how do we make sure parks and recreation grounds cannot be mis-classified as brownfield and lost forever.

So do you have evidence that this doesn’t meet the official brownfield classification and has been mis-classified beyond your view that this is a park? If so, I wholeheartedly agree that this is worth pursuing.

It’s somewhat moot unfortunately as Southwark have given unanimous planning consent.

But worth us looking into other green areas in SE23 under Southwark Council control to make sure all parks and rec grounds are classified as greenfield.

You are conflating ‘green areas’ with parks and recs. They are not necessarily one and the same. I know the tweeter in your OP uses the word ‘park’ but he was quickly challenged on that in replies to his tweet. My feeling is that if it is being commonly used as a park or rec, locals would have a case for asking for it to be classified as such. Does anyone know what immediate local reaction has been?

From what I can make out, Peckham doesn’t have an active local forum - just a sub-section of southeastcentral.co.uk (an uber-forum with very little activity).

I wonder if Peckham residents might have complained about losing this green space if they’d had a forum like SE23.life and had been made aware of the plans?

Mentioned in the Guardian:

Conversely, plenty of people replying felt that this green space was worth protecting:

Interesting responses, but none of them locals saying what they actually use the space for. I’m not saying it’s NOT a local amenity, I’d just like to see some evidence that it is.

As I see it, Southwark obviously need holding to account on the way they carry out development. The question is whether that means challenging and demonising every proposal or ensuring the voices of dissent retain their credibility by making sure they are not crying foul under misleading circumstances (and again, I’m not saying this development is not be problematic, I just can’t come to that conclusion based on the information I’ve seen so far).

Hope there is a planner who can give better explanation than me, but I will give it a go.

Planning is not local democracy in action. The Council / Councillors and officers under the delegated duties will make decisions on planning applications according to set of rules. The first point of planning is that presumption of granting the application rather than its refusal. If the application does not contravene any National and Local rules (and Local rules cannot be in contradiction of National rules) the application will be successful. There are some members who may ponder to pressure but then the applicant can take his application to the Secretary of State who will then apply the rules again. The authority which has its decision overturned by the Secretary of State may face penalties, so it is not in their interest to make the wrong decisions.

Legal terms in this process are important so if a park is looking like one, but not registered, is it treated as its legal designation.

As I said a planner would be able to explain this a bit better, but then the answer would be possibly a bit longer.