Lewisham Local Plan is open for consultation from today (15th Jan) until the 11th April 2021

Overview of the plan is https://lewishamlocalplan.commonplace.is/about

What is the Local Plan?

The Local Plan sets out a shared vision for the future of Lewisham along with the planning and delivery framework to achieve this vision.

The Local Plan helps to ensure that planning decisions are made in the best interests of our neighbourhoods and communities. It provides:

• A strategy for the Council and its partners to direct investment across Lewisham, recognising it is an integral part of London.

• Policies and guidelines used to determine planning applications.

Why are we preparing a new Local Plan?

Our existing plan is made up of a package of documents. The Core Strategy is the main document and was adopted in 2011. It is supported by the Site Allocations, Development Management and Lewisham Town Centre plans.

We are now reviewing and updating these plans, bringing them together into a single document.

The site to actually provide feedback, comments and view documents / proposals is https://lewishamlocalplan.commonplace.is/overview (though you can also email or post suggestions in)

Thanks @oakr

Just to add to this - the Local Plan is an important document in determining the future of what our ward, and borough, look like. Please do take a look, have your say and encourage others to do so. If you have any questions, do get in touch.

Sophie

Hard to comment when the ‘plan’ lacks concrete proposals, or did I miss the section about the proposed Town Centre, new pedestrian crossing by Forest Hill Station, pedestrian bridge from Perry Vale car park over the railway to access Forest Hill Pools …

This was all I could find relating to that particular area.

Promoting and protecting the Horniman Museum and Gardens as a significant cultural asset, including by improving wayfinding and safe access to it.

Development proposals must contribute to enhancing the public realm in order to promote walking and cycling, as well as to make the town centre a significantly more accessible, safer and attractive environment. Particular consideration will need to be given to movements along and across the main junction and station approaches, the South Circular (A205), Dartmouth Road (A2216), Clyde Vale, Perry Vale and Waldram Park Road.

Enable the delivery of new workspace and housing along with enhancements to the Forest Hill station approach through the renewal of industrial land at Perry Vale and Clyde Vale, as well as the redevelopment of sites around the station.

It looks like some yellow notices have gone up at various locations, though I can’t find corresponding specific details on the Lewisham website / commonplace. This maybe my poor search skills or bad luck, but James D Evans has helpfully captured this one on Twitter which seems to suggest the Sydenham Green Group Practice be ‘reconfigured’ into flats:

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While that surgery does seem like a disorganised low-rise sprawl, surely a GP’s surgery and blood service is a valuable resource that should be retained or expanded in its own right.

Where on https://lewishamlocalplan.commonplace.is/ should I comment I wonder?

We’re hardly overrun with GP surgeries in this area so I don’t know where their patients would be dispersed to. It’s also one of the 5 main GP group practice hubs in Lewisham doing the Covid vaccinations which it seems might be a longer term requirement than initially thought!

Perhaps the redevelopment plan would still include the practice on the ground floor but that still leaves the issue of where their patients would go in the interim.

Yes. That’s the sort of information I was looking for on the commonplace as the yellow notices seems to allude to a bit of a plan for flats and ‘main town centre floorspace’, and let’s face it, that patch could do with a bit of redevelopment of some kind.

It’s pretty run down there with the current boarded up parade of shops and overflowing waste bins around the corner, and it’s also a highly polluted area so it would be interesting to see if anything were being considered to offset that for future residents and businesses.

Lewisham are running a series of ‘online sessions’ covering the Local Plan, described at https://consultation.lewisham.gov.uk/planning/lpo

The registration link is here: https://consultation.lewisham.gov.uk/planning/lpo/consultation/intro/

Via SE26.life, ‘TeaAndCake’ has dug up quite a good document laying out the potential development areas around the area, along with what could be built and the accommodation provided. The following map gives an overview of the identified development sites, where central Forest Hill (around the station) is termed a ‘growth node’:

The full report gives info on each one, and is worth looking at:

West Jan 2021 LEWISHAM LOCAL PLAN_accessible.pdf (3.7 MB)

Forest Hill Society have taken a detailed look at the Lewisham Local Plan and written the following response which critiques a number of specific areas for the plan, as well as including their previous work with Discourse Architecture to come up with vision for a Forest Hill Station and Town Centre Master Plan:

Duncombe Hill Green gets a mention as an area worth recognising as a local green space, and the redevelopment of the Jenner site is supported. There is also a section on Aircraft Noise Pollution and Redesign of Flight Paths over Lewisham.

For anyone interested in the Local Plan, this document is worth a read.

There’s not a lot of detail how LLP will improve the south circular for cyclist and pedestrians. Would be nice to see some speed restrictions along the east side going towards catford and I assume they’ll just mark an area for cycling but not actual think about how it will work. Are there an areas on the south/north circular that restrict the speed to 20mph in town centres?

I don’t think there are any parts of the circular roads that have 20mph limit. On the South Circular it is mainly 30mph and on the North Circular it is 40 or 50mph.

Not sure if uploading the map will work:
london-digital-speed-limit-map.pdf (5.7 MB)

I suspect Lewisham’s control over the south circular is limited as it is a TfL managed road.

Good point it’s managed by Tfl forgot about that

I’m not always convinced the aspiration to make change happen is there. Other councils are actively pushing for 20mph speed limits on TFL managed roads, including sections of the South Circ.
The North Circular is further out and probably does not run through as many residential areas and town centres, hence the high speed limits.
Lewisham is one of the worst boroughs for cycle lanes and so is this all due to budget cuts, given that the vast majority of inner London councils are labour? Was Lewisham’s budget cut by more than other labour councils like Hackney, Lambeth, Southwark, Camden, Islington…

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Yeah I don’t disagree that lewisham council is lacking inspiration at best…