The switch means Greenwich Dance will now be based over the border in Bexley, but it says it will continue to work in all areas of the borough, including at Charlton House, as well across south London.
Melanie Precious, the chief executive of Greenwich Dance, said: “I am so proud of what we have achieved over the last few years. Under some of the most challenging of circumstances we have continued to be here to provide opportunities for our local residents and support for our dance artists and I’d like to thank Charlton House for supporting us through that period.
“The move to Thamesmead will see us upsize the potential reach of our work, continuing to animate community centres in Greenwich and beyond with dance while also creating even more opportunities for people to make, watch and take part in dance.”
The development would make use of a jetty on the Thames. The Tarmac plant at Riverside Wharf is on the left
A plan to approve more than 1,200 homes by the Thames Barrier was approved by Greenwich Council last night on the casting vote of its controversial chair of planning, Stephen Brain.
The Labour councillor, who is standing down after the elections in May, goaded objectors by inviting them to send abusive emails as he broke a 4-4 tie by approving the project from the housing association Hyde.
“Start tapping now and I’ll read them in the morning,” he said.
Some of the future residents in the Herringham Quarter development in Charlton will face living in homes where they will not be able to open their windows because of concerns over air quality from an asphalt plant next door at Riverside Wharf.
The development site as it is now, as seen on Google Streetview
A representative of Tarmac, which operates the plant, said that the business would be under threat because the new blocks would tower over the plant’s chimney, and residents would be subjected to nauseating smells.
A string of residents’ lobby groups also complained that the development was too dense. But their complaints were dismissed by Brain, meaning the first major development on the Charlton Riverside – earmarked for up to 8,000 homes in a City Hall blueprint – has been given the go-ahead.
Hyde plans to build 718 homes along with commercial units at Herringham Road and New Lydenburg Street, close to the Thames Barrier, in blocks of up to 10 storeys. The first residents could move in by 2026. Hyde was also given outline permission for a further 494 homes, and will return with more detailed plans in the future.
The land concerned – Plots A and C could be finished by 2026. Plot B is the Tarmac plant. Detailed plans for plots D and E will follow
Of the first phase, 263 homes for London Affordable Rent, about half market rent and available to people on housing waiting lists, comprising 37 per cent of the total number of homes. Another 133 homes (18 per cent) will be for shared ownership, with the remainder going on private sale.
There will be more private homes in the later stage, taking the proportion down to 40 per cent “affordable” housing across the site.
Some of the blocks will be built on the site of Maybanks Wharf, currently a recycling yard for Westminster Waste, but the Tarmac yard will remain.
Tito Arowobusoye, a planning consultant representing Tarmac and other local wharf operators, said a third of London’s construction aggregates were processed in the local area – a local industry that could be put at risk if new neighbours were not protected from air quality and pollution.
An air quality expert, Gordon Allison, said the Tarmac plant would be eventually be hemmed in on two sides, with Hyde’s block just 60 metres from the chimney. “In my 25 years in the industry I’ve never seen a proposal where the building will be hit by a plume from an industrial chimney stack,” he said.
Herringham Road, close to the development site, in 2020: Planning chair Stephen Brain said the area was “not pleasant”
“It’s not a sensible proposal – when the wind blows, it will hit the nearest building. Chimneys should be taller than the buildings nearby.”
Allison warned that odours from the plant could also be an issue. “I find it nauseating, even though I’ve worked in the industry my whole career,” he said.
The solution – to fit affected flats with sealed windows and mechanical ventilation – was “unproven”, he added. “There is a genuine risk of nuisance complaints that hasn’t been recognised.”
Asked by Brain if he thought development by the Tarmac plant was impossible, he said that it was not – but that the buildings should be set further back, or the developer should pay to make the chimney taller.
A view from the Thames, with the Tarmac plant on the left
Trevor Curson of Buro Happold, an environmental consultant to Hyde, said that the developer had planned for a worst-case scenario of the plant operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – something it does not do.
After hearing of complaints from residents of Greenwich Millennium Village whose homes back onto the Murphy’s Wharf aggregate depot, said that future residents would be better protected from noise than in other nearby developments. One 10-storey block was to shield residents from the noise of the Tarmac plant, the committee heard.
Representatives of several overlapping lobby groups in the Charlton area criticised the scale of the development. Jodie Coughlan, speaking for the Derrick and Atlas Gardens residents’ association – the only group actually based on the riverside – saying it was an “unreasonable and untenable level of deviation” from the local masterplan, which sets maximum heights of three to five storeys for much of the area.
While Hyde said that their blocks, which would step down to six storeys at street level, were at a human scale, the groups disagreed, with the Charlton Central Residents Association’s David Gayther calling it “monolithic in nature”.
Maybank Wharf has been used for waste paper processing since the 1960s – but will soon see new housing
Hyde’s Jaime Buckley said that the housing association had “a limited window” in which to build the scheme because it depended on a £22.5 million grant from City Hall – £60,000 for each affordable-rent home.
Promising the scheme would be a “catalyst” for redeveloping the rest of the riverside, she urged councillors to balance “not just what is desirable, but what is achievable”.
While Hyde will be paying towards new bus services and new roads, Charlton councillor Gary Dillon voiced concerns about the effect of the development on local infrastructure.
Pointing out that the Charlton Riverside masterplan was created with up to 5,000 new residents in mind, but now City Hall was expecting up to 8,000, he said: “Those people who live between Greenwich and Woolwich Dockyard know how fragile the infrastructure is. We’re sometimes waiting for two hours to move five minutes up the road.
”My concern is that developers are looking at this [City Hall] aspiration taking at gospel, but it has no support – there’s no infrastructure development plans or TfL budget to develop new links, and there’s the possibility of extra traffic from the Silvertown Tunnel.”
Hyde’s vision of Herringham Road in the future
Conservative councillor Nigel Fletcher also said he would turn down the scheme, saying that the whole point of the Charlton masterplan was to create somewhere distinct from the towers of Greenwich Peninsula and Woolwich: “It’s really frustrating that when we want to see regeneration here, we’re presented with things we can’t accept because they’re inconsistent with the masterplan.”
Of the three women on the committee on International Women’s Day, none gave their views, while four of the five men did.
Brain said: “I know this area very, very well, how many objectors live near this site? Not many. I see one hand out of all the speakers. It is not residential, it is not pleasant, I’ve had my car serviced there for 30 years.
“The area is horrible, this provides an opportunity to improve the area. If we turn this down, how do any of the applications for the riverside go forward?
“I wouldn’t like to be on the doorsteps saying I’d turned down a great big chunk of social housing. We’d be turning down the futures of many of our residents.”
Brain was joined by fellow Labour councillors Sandra Bauer, Clare Burke-McDonald and Averil Lekau in supporting the scheme, but Labour’s Dillon and Fahy voted to turn it down, along with Fletcher and Geoff Brighty for the Conservatives.
Last year’s highlights included Dunkirk at St George’s Garrison Church in Woolwich
It’s that time of year again – the organisers of the Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival are planning this year’s event. And as always, they need your help to put it on.
This year’s festival runs from September 9 to 17 and will be held at venues across the SE7 and SE18 areas. Past venues have included Charlton House, St Luke’s Church, St George’s Garrison Church in Woolwich and Shrewsbury House in Shooters Hill. Two years ago, we teamed up with the festival to hold a special screening of All the President’s Men at Charlton House.
The team are now thrashing out what will be in this year’s programme – and looking for volunteers to get on board and make it happen.
The area is now split at Charlton station, with the eastbound platform excluded from the area
Two Labour councillors have criticised their own town hall’s decision to exclude part of Charlton from a new neighbourhood forum for the area – with one branding it “a real nonsense”.
Neighbourhood forums are led by residents and, once approved by councils, can set up neighbourhood plans which have to be taken into consideration when deciding the future of the area.
Areas with neighbourhood plans can also have more cash from developers spent in the area – 25 per cent of the community infrastructure levy, rather than the 15 per cent seen in other parts of the borough.
But the Charlton forum has lost a northwestern chunk of the area after objections from the three councillors for the soon-to-be abolished Peninsula ward, including Stephen Brain, the controversial chair of planning who has clashed with the residents’ groups who are likely to dominate the new forum.
The new forum’s area (click to expand)
Brain, together with fellow councillors Chris Lloyd and Denise Scott-McDonald, said it would be “highly inappropriate” for residents from elsewhere in Charlton to have influence over decisions made in their ward – or to receive the extra cash from developers.
Landowners and businesses by the river had also objected to the forum including their area, which includes safeguarded wharves. The decision leaves an area north of the Greenwich railway line and west of Anchor & Hope Lane – including new housing at Bowen Drive and residential streets around Troughton Road and Gurdon Road – outside the forum area. The Bugsbys Way retail strip and Cory’s boatyard are also excluded.
Other councillors are unable to challenge the move after it was made an “urgent” decision, meaning they cannot call it in for scrutiny.
In July, Brain clashed with representatives of residents’ groups during a planning hearing on a development in the Charlton Riverside, arguing with them over the heights allowed in the area. “I don’t want to be argumentative, but I’m going to be because I’m the chair,” he told one resident.
Neither Brain nor Lloyd will be councillors in the area after May’s election – Brain is standing down while Lloyd has switched to the new West Thamesmead seat. But Scott-McDonald, the council’s deputy leader, remains and will be contesting the new Greenwich Peninsula seat for Labour.
David Gardner, a Woolwich Common councillor who is also a member of the Charlton Society, told a council scrutiny meeting on Monday: “It’s a bizarre decision – it splits conservation areas, it splits Charlton station, it splits communities and it splits the Charlton Riverside. It’s a real nonsense and it doesn’t really allow for a proper neighbourhood plan.
“The report was left so late, there was no ability for councillors to go through the call-in procedure. I’m very very concerned as to why that should have happened.
“It’s a bizarre decision that makes no sense, there was no dialogue about it, and call-in was miraculously avoided, which I think is very, very worrying.”
The Cory boatyard is left out of the forum area
Helen Brown, a member of the forum, said the changes seemed “quite arbitrary”, and that it would prove a “weakness” in planning for the future of the Charlton Riverside area.
“Our boundaries had been through a proper consultation with the community to find the best way to represent the whole of the SE7 postcode,” she said.
We have this wonderful decision to take us forward, we have an amended area that doesn’t really follow the intentions of our original proposal. It’s a lost opportunity that we’ve not had the opportunity to talk to anyone about.”
She said she felt it would be a “mistake” for the new forum to simply accept its shrunken area.
Gary Parker, a Charlton ward councillor who was chairing the meeting, said there had been “a complete lack of transparency” over the decision.
Victoria Geoghegan, the council’s assistant director of planning, confirmed that the decision could not be challenged but said she would look at what options were open to the new forum. She also said there had been objections from within the Peninsula ward area.
“Once the decision is made we can’t go back and review that decision,” she said. The rationale for the decision was in a report to councillors, she said. ”If it’s not clear, I will go back and see what I can extract to explain it better.”
Visitors will be able to climb the tower on Sunday
If you’ve never seen the view from the top of St Luke’s Church in Charlton, you’ll get a rare chance on Sunday when the church opens its doors to the community.
Tours of the tower will take place every 20 minutes from 1.30pm to 3.30pm so visitors can look at the panoramic view across London from the top of the tower, which was once a vital aid for shipping on the Thames.
Visitors will also be able view documents from the St Luke’s archive as well as the Greenwich Heritage Trust’s collection. The event runs from 1pm to 4.30pm. Admission is free.
The open day follows a community concert on Saturday evening down the road at St Thomas’ Church in Woodland Terrace, with young people performing songs by Billie Eilish, the Beatles, Radiohead and the Red Hot Child Peppers.
Tickets for that cost £5 for adults and £1 for children, with money going to the Charlton Benefice School Curriculum Support project. The concert starts at 5pm.
It will be a busy weekend for community performances in Charlton, with the Charlton Village Theatre’s production of Mamma Mia! taking place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Assembly Rooms. Tickets are still available.
The development would make use of a jetty on the Thames. The Tarmac plant at Riverside Wharf is on the left
Plans to turn the Charlton riverside into a residential district could take a giant step forward next week if councillors approve over 1,200 new homes on what is currently industrial land.
But some residents face living in homes where they will not be able to open their windows because of concerns over air quality from an asphalt plant next door.
The Port of London Authority and the operators of nearby wharves have submitted objections to the Herringham Quarter project, saying that residents’ complaints about air quality, noise and smell could threaten their businesses.
The land concerned (not the blocks) – Plots A and C could be finished by 2026. Plot B is the Tarmac plant. Detailed plans for plots D and E will follow
Hyde housing association is asking for detailed permission to build 718 homes along with commercial units at Herringham Road and New Lydenburg Street, close to the Thames Barrier, in blocks of up to 10 storeys. It also wants outline permission for a further 494 homes, which could follow in the future.
Councillors are due to make a decision on the scheme next Tuesday, at a meeting of Greenwich’s planning board, the committee that deals with the biggest developments in the borough.
The blocks would be up to 10 storeys high, with some to be built on the site of Maybanks Wharf, currently a recycling yard for Westminster Waste.
The Tarmac asphalt depot next door would remain in place. The first homes could be ready by 2026.
Hyde’s application is the biggest Charlton Riverside scheme to reach councillors since the notorious Rockwell scheme for land off Anchor and Hope Lane, which has now been abandoned after Greenwich Council, City Hall and the government all rejected proposals for 771 homes there. The site is now to be used as a “last mile” logistics depot.
So far just one home – a flat at the derelict Victoria pub, which is to be turned into a pizza takeaway – has been given approval out of a potential 8,000 new homes in the area.
The proposals have changed since the scheme was first unveiled in 2019, with “affordable” housing now making up 55 per cent of the total in the first phase of the scheme.
Hyde’s plans include 263 homes for London Affordable Rent, about half market rent and available to people on housing waiting lists, comprising 37 per cent of the total number of homes. Another 133 homes (18 per cent) will be for shared ownership, with the remainder going on private sale.
The second phase of the scheme will include more private housing, taking the “affordable” total down to 40 per cent across the project.
However, the quality of life for people who move into the homes has been questioned by the operators of Murphy’s, Angerstein and Riverside wharves, who say that complaining residents could put their noisy businesses at risk of closure.
Hyde’s vision of Herringham Road in the future
They also warn that the introduction of residents living so close to the trajectory of the chimney stack emissions will make it unlawful for Tarmac to operate the asphalt plant at Riverside Wharf under its current permit.
The Port of London Authority has also objected, saying that Riverside Wharf needs to be able to operate 24 hours a day because of tidal movements.
In response, the developer is proposing that people living in affected properties will have “sealed units with no openable windows which will be fitted with mechanical ventilation”.
Council planners say that this mitigation is “considered to be acceptable such that undesirable conflict with the uses at the wharves will be avoided”.
A view from the Thames, with the Tarmac plant on the left
Just 90 car parking spaces will be provided, with Hyde expected to pay for a new bus route to serve the site – expected to be an extension of the 301 service to zone 4 Woolwich station rather than a route to zone 3 Charlton or zone 2 North Greenwich.
Developers in the area will be expected to pay £3,000 per home to Greenwich Council for new roads, and £2,800 to TfL for new bus services.
The council is also looking for a site to place a new primary school, after concluding that a planned school on Anchor & Hope Lane would provide insufficient spaces as it would also be serving the Greenwich Peninsula. Hyde will have to pay £915,000 towards that.
The local NHS is to get £1.1m in extra funding for GP services as the commercial units on the site are too small to include a health centre; the council’s GLLaB job brokerage will collect almost £1.3 million from the scheme.
One factor that will weigh heavily on the developer’s side is that Greenwich only has a three-year supply of new housing on the way – it should, by law, have five. This is enough to get a refusal overturned on appeal – putting pressure on councillors to back the scheme.
Its members now have five years to draw up a neighbourhood plan for how they think the area should develop in the coming years, which could then be included in official planning policy.
But it will not cover the northwestern corner of SE7 after objections from the three councillors who cover the area. The Peninsula ward trio of Chris Lloyd, council deputy leader Denise Scott-McDonald and chair of planning Stephen Brain said it would be “highly inappropriate” for residents from elsewhere in Charlton to have influence over decisions made north of the railway line – or to receive the cash from developers that can come with neighbourhood plans.
Other councillors are unable to challenge the move after it was made an “urgent” decision, meaning they cannot call it in for scrutiny.
The new forum’s area (click to expand)
The forum will now cover all the SE7 postal area, with the exception of streets to the west of Anchor & Hope Lane and north of the Greenwich railway line – meaning streets such as Fairthorn Road, the north end of Victoria Way and Troughton Road will not be covered. Neither will the Bugsby’s Way retail park strip – which is slated for redevelopment in the longer term.
A small part of SE18 around Prospect Vale will be included, as will industrial estates west of Warspite Road, including the proposed Faraday Works development on the former Siemens factory site.
The decision to include the rest of the riverside area is a significant win for the forum, as it will then hope to influence the future shape of development there. While thousands of new homes are planned for the riverside, just one home has been approved so far after a number of planning wrangles.
One of the riverside developers, Montreaux – which owns the Stone Foundries site – objected to the area covering the riverside, saying that a neighbourhood plan was not needed because of the number of plans that already exist for the development site.
The north end of Victoria Way is among streets not included
In total, there were 32 submissions of support, with seven objections – one coming from an anonymous councillor who claimed the forum was “anti-housebuilding”, while one resident raised concerns about the influence of local residents’ groups who they said were unrepresentative of the area.
The forum will only be the third in Greenwich borough after the Moorings forum, which covers part of Thamesmead, and the Lee Forum, whose area is shared with the borough of Lewisham.
Neither has a neighbourhood plan yet. Areas that successfully complete neighbourhood plans can get 25 per cent of funds from the community infrastructure levy paid by developers, something else raised by Lloyd, Brain and Scott-McDonald in their objection. In Greenwich, the rate for neighbourhoods is usually 15 per cent.
The forum’s chair, Clare Loops, said the group were “considering our next steps” after the loss of a chunk of the area. Despite his objection to the forum having any say in his ward, Brain, an outspoken chair of planning who has clashed with residents groups in Charlton, will be standing down at May’s council election.
The Charlton Champion 