The planned development would be built here, behind Atlas and Derrick Gardens
Housing campaigners are to hold a public meeting on Monday 8 October about developer Rockwell’s plans to build 771 homes off Anchor and Hope Lane.
London mayor Sadiq Khan overturned Greenwich Council’s refusal of the scheme during the summer, meaning City Hall will now decide on the application.
The Charlton Champion understands a new proposal has been submitted to the mayor’s office, however it has not yet been made public.
Khan’s decision to “call in” the decision came with criticism of Greenwich Council for not allowing enough “affordable” housing in recent years – Rockwell’s scheme would have 32.4% “affordable” housing.
Residents in Atlas and Derrick Gardens say the new development would loom over their homes
Local businesses have also voiced fears that they will have to move or close, saying the new development’s residents will not want them as neighbours.
Rockwell’s plans for 32.4% of the units to be “affordable” housing were inserted into the scheme at the last minute. Of those, 162 would be for London Affordable Rent – roughly £150/week for a one-bedroom flat – and aimed at those on low incomes, with the remaining available for shared ownership.
Greenwich Housing Forum recently held a meeting to discuss Greenwich Council’s plans to sell land at The Heights as well as on estates off Lewisham Road and Kidbrooke Park Road to developer Pocket Living. Video of that meeting can be seen here.
The meeting on the Rockwell scheme will be held at 7.30pm on Monday 8 October at Charlton House.
Route 53 at Whitehall: It won’t go here again if TfL has its way
Transport for London has confirmed its plans to cut the 53 bus back to County Hall – and will make it less frequent too under new plans out for consultation today.
Plans to withdraw the 53, a lifeline for thousands of local workers, between County Hall and Whitehall were leaked last month. Now TfL is asking passengers what they think of the plans.
One aspect not previously highlighted in the leaked plans is that TfL plans to cut the 53 back to every eight minutes. TfL says it currently runs every seven-and-a-half minutes, but the full timetable shows it runs as frequently as every five minutes around 6am, when the service is heavily used.
The cut to the 53 – which runs from Plumstead via Woolwich, Charlton, Blackheath, Deptford, New Cross and the Old Kent Road to Whitehall – is part of 33 changes to routes in central London.
TfL, which is chaired by mayor Sadiq Khan, says: “The last time there was such a comprehensive review of the central London bus network was before the Congestion Charge was introduced. As a result there are some extremely complicated and inefficient sections of the road network. Some roads in central London, such as Kingsway in Holborn, are now served by more than 100 buses an hour, many of which are significantly underused. This oversupply of buses can cause congestion, slowing down journey times and worsening reliability, air quality and road safety.
“If no action is taken, GLA figures show that by 2041, three days would be lost per person every year due to congestion on London’s roads, and 50,000 hours would be lost to slower bus speeds in the morning peak every day.
“Passengers can now use the Mayor’s Hopper Fare to change buses unlimited times within an hour for just £1.50.”
A 7am journey on the 53 from Charlton Park School is timetabled to take one hour to reach Elephant & Castle, at 8am the journey takes 66 minutes.
Geoff Hobbs, Director of Public Transport Service Planning at TfL, said: “Buses have a crucial role to play in boosting the number of people using public transport, but they can’t do this without reflecting how London has changed. It is only right that we reassess the network after the significant changes in both London’s infrastructure and how Londoners choose to travel. Londoners expect their buses to be where they are needed and run in an efficient and cost-effective manner and that’s what this review is about.
“Our proposals to reorganise the bus network would modernise bus travel in London by matching capacity with demand, reducing bus-on-bus congestion while enabling year-on-year increases in bus services in outer London. In adapting underused and inefficient services in central London, our plans will help reduce pollution that has such a damaging effect on the health on Londoners.
“Ultimately these changes, which are predominately minor route restructures or timetable adjustments, would create an efficient modern network with buses in the right places at the right times.”
He said: “As things stand in rush hour most 53 buses are frequently overcrowded by the time they get up the hill to Charlton.
“We need more frequent services on this route, not cuts to services.
“But my main concern is the impact on the large numbers of my constituents who get up at the crack of dawn to make the long journey into central London on the 53 to work low-paid jobs (if you think I’m exaggerating just catch one before 6.30am one morning and see for yourself).
“For them, the long journey on the 53 all the way to Whitehall is the only means of transport that is affordable into central London and it is therefore indispensable.
“As such, difficult to escape the conclusion that cuts to this service will punish my working-class constituents and at the very moment that a new Crossrail station is opened in Woolwich that will inevitably pile pressure onto our already over-stretched local transport network.
“So let me be as clear as I can possibly be: I will do absolutely everything in my power to fight cuts to the 53 bus service.”
Campaigners say Sherington will suffer if it becomes an academy
Updated story: A row has broken out about the future of Sherington Primary School after a teaching union revealed it was in talks about possibly becoming an academy.
The school is currently under Greenwich Council control, but the National Education Union – the successor to the old National Union of Teachers – says it is due to start talks with the Leigh and Compass academy trusts.
In a letter issued to parents on Tuesday, the school has confirmed it is considering its future arrangements because “we can’t sit back and let the future take care of itself”.
One angry parent, Vicky Makepeace, has organised a meeting for fellow parents at Charlton House this Thursday (27th) at 10am.
She says: “My older two boys did really well at Sherington and enjoyed their time there. I want my youngest two children to have that experience.
“Turning the school into an academy will take away parents’ rights, kids’ rights and teachers’ rights. The school is not underachieving, academies don’t care about children with special needs, these kids will get pushed out by the academy or they will not support them. Sherington has caring teachers, support team and parents.”
‘No turning back’
Greenwich Council’s deputy leader David Gardner – who is also cabinet member for education – urged Sherington to stay with the council. He said the borough’s primary schools have “an excellent record” and Sherington had “thrived as an outstanding school rooted in the local community”.
He warned: “Academisation is not only a trip into the unknown, it is a one-way street with no turning back. If the academy chain fails, it just gets eaten up by another unaccountable chain. If the local council falls short in its support, we can be held to account; and as a community school it is run by its head and governors, not a remote chief executive.”
Leigh runs a number of schools and colleges in south-east London and north-west Kent, including Crown Woods Academy in Eltham, Halley Academy in Kidbrooke (the old Corelli College/Kidbrooke School) and the Leigh Academy Blackheath, which is due to take over the old Blackheath Bluecoat site. Compass runs schools in Greenwich borough including Halstow in east Greenwich, South Rise and Willow Dene in Plumstead and Wingfield in Kidbrooke.
The union says there are no plans to consult staff, and a decision could be made as soon as November.
It reads: “Sherington is an outstanding primary school. Our children make excellent academic progress, as shown by our results, and our broad curriculum fosters creativity and confidence.
“We’re determined to maintain our high standards, so we can’t sit back and let the future take care of itself. The Governing Body and Senior Leadership Team are obliged to keep their eyes on the horizon and set a strategic direction in the best interests of the school.
“With this in mind, the Governing Body and Senior Leadership team have been reviewing some alternative models for the way the school could in future be structured and funded.”
It adds that it hopes to make a decision by Christmas.
Academisation – where schools receive their funding directly from central government rather than a local council – has shot up the local political agenda in recent months after John Roan School in Blackheath was ordered to become an academy after being judged to be “inadequate” by inspectors from Ofsted. Campaigners are currently fighting the order, which would see it link up with the Mile End-based University Schools Trust chain, which runs the Greenwich Trust School on Woolwich Road.
(Story updated at 4pm on Tuesday to include Sherington’s confirmation and its letter to parents.)
The Community Garden in Maryon Park is throwing open its doors this Saturday as part of Capital Growth’s Urban Harvest event. Its chair TIM ANDERSON explains more…
Get a taste of London's edible gardens by dropping in to Maryon Park Community Garden in Charlton, one of Capital Growth’s flagship gardens, from 10am to 4pm.
Capital Growth is London’s largest food growing network, with over 2,000 gardens throughout the city.
At the Maryon Park Community Organic Food Growing Garden, activities include:
• Tours of the Garden and Forest School.
• Display of photos from the 1966 cult film Blow Up that was shot in Maryon Park.
• Activities for children: Making bird feeders.
• Pizza oven fired up from 12noon, bring your own dough and toppings
• Refreshments: Organic teas & coffee, cake and herb teas
• Jams and Chutney Sale
• Wood Craft Sale with Bird Boxes
• Plant and Cacti Sale
In the Community Garden Forest School area there will be a free Family Outdoor Art Workshop from 2pm to 3pm, lad by Simon Woodward from the Community Outdoor Art Therapy Service.
How to find the Community Garden: Enter Maryon Park from the main entrance in Maryon Road, follow the path to the left past the park lodge and find the Community Garden at the end of the park perimeter fence. Look out for the signs and bunting.
37 Bowater Road is set for demolition under the developer’s plans (photo: Neil Clasper)
Developer U+I has revealed it wants to demolish one of the remaining Siemens cable factory buildings on the Charlton riverside as part of a plan to build shops, offices and up to 520 homes.
The property giant, which recently completed the Deptford Market Yard development, has asked Greenwich Council if it needs to carry out an environmental assessment into the plans to develop land, which covers two streets in the Westminster Industrial Estate on the Charlton/Woolwich border: Bowater Road and Faraday Way.
Until 1968, this was home to the giant Siemens cable works, and many of the buildings remain in place. Several of them have recently been given local listing status by Greenwich Council, which has created a conservation area. U+I wants to demolish one of them, 37 Bowater Road, and keep the others.
The masterplan backs riverside towers near the Thames Barrier
Just as with the recent Flint Glass Wharf proposal, this is in an area where 10-storey blocks have been permitted (see map above).
37 Bowater Road is the building on the right of the new “missing link” cycle route
‘One of London’s largest factories’
A heritage assessment of the area commissioned by Greenwich Council says: “The south side of Bowater Road represents a step change in the scale of the works development from about 1911.
“The first building to be constructed is a much larger L-shaped building of 5 storeys plus basement was built for making rubber coated copper wire cable. It adopts new structural technologies, made possible by new regulations granted in the London Building Act of 1909, and employs a reinforced concrete frame beneath a Fletton brick shell.
“The adoption of new technologies made it possible to include much larger steel framed windows externally and wider spans between support columns internally, creating a lighter and clearer working environment overall.
37 Bowater Road. Photo: Neil Clasper
“The building was designed by Herbert and Helland, Siemens’ in-house architects. This was one of London’s largest factories when built and an early adopter of the new construction methods.
“The building has a matching extension of 1942, built at the height of the wartime production effort, after extensive bomb damage on the adjacent site must have placed extreme pressure on the works’ resources.” (You can read the rest in Chapters 3 and 4 here.)
The striking white building which runs along the north of the site, 18 Bowater Road, is proposed to be kept, although it is currently in poor condition. (See page 14 here for a map of the site.)
This is still a relatively early stage of the planning process, so no designs or details on “affordable” homes have yet been submitted.
How Komoto says the development will look at night
Hot on the heels of the Rockwell saga, the second major development proposal for the Charlton Riverside has come forward, with plans for up to 500 homes at Flint Glass Wharf, next to the Thames Barrier.
Developer Komoto Group had originally suggested a 25-storey tower for the site at Herringham Road, which is currently home to the Raceway go-kart track, Bunker 51 laser-tag centre, a church, and other firms.
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The land was formerly home to the Johnsen & Jorgensen glass works, which closed in 1981.
Now the scheme – the first on the riverfront itself – has been reduced in size to blocks of between seven and 10 storeys. It has been designed by Farrells, the architecture practice working on Deptford’s Convoys Wharf development.
The two blocks closest to the Thames Barrier are Phase One, the rest is Phase Two
Phase one – two blocks close to the Barrier
Firstly, Komoto is applying for detailed planning permission for two blocks of seven and nine storeys containing eight studio flats (all private), 82 one-bedroom flats (ten at social rent, six at “intermediate”), 34 two-bedroom flats (two at social rent) and 22 three-bedroom homes nine at social rent, nine “intermediate”), as well as 482 square metres of flexible commercial and employment floorspace and 35 car parking spaces.
This is just 24.6% “affordable” housing – although if you count by rooms, which Komoto does, this rises to 31% “affordable” accommodation. Either way, this falls short of the 35% target for “affordable” housing – expect moves from Greenwich Council and City Hall to increase this.
A view from Herringham Road
Phase two – further away from the Barrier
It is also applying for outline permission for up to another 354 homes – with a similar mix of private and “affordable” – and up to 1,300 square metres of flexible commercial and employment floorspace, along with up to 153 parking spaces. The blocks here will be between seven and 10 storeys high.
If this phase gets approval, Komoto will return to Greenwich Council at a later date to complete the details.
Transport connections emphasise the short cycle ride to North Greenwich
The low-ish number of car parking spaces is pretty standard for new London developments – but is striking for an area that is currently isolated, separated from the rest of Charlton by dirty industries on streets battered by heavy lorries. And while residents may be able to wake up and see the Docklands Light Railway purring through the Royal Docks across the Thames, they will have no way of reaching it.
Komoto says a new bus service will be provided along Herringham Road – and also emphasises the relatively short cycle distance to North Greenwich tube, a more palatable option on two wheels – or even two feet – than trying to get to Charlton station.
A barrier in front of the Barrier
From the Thames – the two blocks on the left are Phase One, with the Thames Barrier screened off from building AThe view from the Thames Barrier site, showing the gabion wall
Another notable feature is that the development will be walled off on one side from the Thames Barrier compound because of security concerns – residents won’t be able to peer into the operations centre at the end of Westmoor Street.
The developer says: “The barrier is considered to be at a high risk of attack from terrorism, therefore it is of particular importance that the proposed scheme does not overlook its operations in any way.
“To respond to this we are proposing a full height gabion art wall which provides a visual narrative of the geological development of this part of the river Thames. The art wall also doubles up as a visual screen that prevents overlooking of the compound and control centre from the development.”
A view from the Thames Path
Unlike the Rockwell scheme for 771 homes off Anchor & Hope Lane, the Flint Glass Wharf development has no immediate residential neighbours to annoy. And while Greenwich Council’s Charlton Riverside Masterplan envisages buildings of between three and six storeys, this particular site is deemed suitable for 10-storey blocks.
A view across the Thames (the Royal Wharf development in Silvertown now sits on the north bank)
Khan’s decision may well weaken Greenwich councillors’ appetite for a fight over Flint Glass Wharf – particularly if Komoto includes more “affordable” housing. Whatever their decision, what happens here will be just as important for the future of the riverside.
For full details, go to planning.royalgreenwich.gov.uk and look for application 18/0732/F (the design and access statements are most useful). Thanks to Toby for the invaluable tip-off.
(Updated 13 September to clarify the number of storeys in the Charlton Riverside masterplan.)
Waterloo tube station – could there be a Bakerloo Line link to Charlton? (Photo: Daniel Wright via CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Transport for London’s proposed Bakerloo Line extension should run via Canary Wharf to Charlton, the owners of the giant Isle of Dogs development have said.
Current plans see the Tube line extended from Elephant & Castle via the Old Kent Road and New Cross Gate to Lewisham, with as long-term aim to take it onto Catford and Hayes.
But Canary Wharf Group (CWG) has called for the route to be diverted to Surrey Quays to serve a giant new development there, before running to Canary Wharf and Charlton.
It says the current Jubilee Line will not be able to cope with demand from the new Canada Water scheme, which if approved see 3,000 new homes, two million square feet of workspace and one million square feet of retail, leisure, entertainment and community space built on the Rotherhithe Peninsula, on land including the Surrey Quays shopping centre and the former Daily Mail printworks.
CWG compares the Canada Water scheme with the huge development at Battersea Power Station, which is getting its own Northern Line extension.
“In considering the Canada Water Masterplan proposals we would like to remind you of our previous proposal to extend the Bakerloo line from Elephant & Castle to Charlton via Surrey Quays and Canary Wharf,” CWG’s Jason Larkin says in a letter to Southwark Council planners.
“This scheme would provide significantly improved public transport capacity to the area around Canada Water and on the Isle of Dogs, and would help the development aspirations of both Southwark and Tower Hamlets.”
CWG also says it has outlined a proposal for a new railway from Euston to Canary Wharf via the City.
Canary Wharf’s eyes on Charlton
While this is the first time this particular proposal has been seen in public, it is not the first time Canary Wharf’s developers have proposed a railway to the Charlton area.
In the 1980s, CWG’s predecessor Olympia & York proposed a £400 million Waterloo & Greenwich Railway, which would have run to Canary Wharf and terminated at Westcombe Park. While London Transport eventually plumped for a Jubilee Line extension which took a route north to Stratford, O&Y still invested £400 million into the project.
In 2002, it was suggested that Crossrail could run from Canary Wharf to Charlton, Woolwich and Abbey Wood – but a route via the Royal Docks was chosen instead.
Of course, Canary Wharf Group doesn’t want a Tube to Charlton out of pure love for the area – this part of town contains a lot of underused land that could make a useful place to dig a big hole and build a place for trains to turn around (including the old rail depot between Westcombe Park and Charlton stations).
Charlton residents keen on a quick link to Canary Wharf probably shouldn’t hold their breath. The Lewisham extension ticks off City Hall goals of linking “opportunity areas” for redevelopment at Old Kent Road, New Cross, Lewisham, and – perhaps – Catford. Lewisham and Southwark councils have recently launched a campaign to get the scheme funded.
And much of Charlton will be within an easy bus ride of a Lewisham Bakerloo line terminal (although so will half of south east London), so SE7 will benefit in some way from a link to SE13.
Yet – Canary Wharf Group is a big player and can get what it wants (and has the money to pay towards it). And Canada Water and Charlton Riverside are also “opportunity areas”. Remember it has also called for a new link between Euston and Canary Wharf – where are those trains going to turn around? This story may be around for a while yet.
The Charlton Champion 