News

Benefits advice session this Friday

Darryl Chamberlain

A word from Annie, who runs The Big Red Bus Club for under-fives….

The government is changing the way welfare benefits are calculated and paid including:

– Working tax credit
– ‘Bedroom tax’ (housing benefit and council tax)
– Statutory maternity pay
– Child benefit and Child tax credit
– Crisis loans
– The Health In Pregnancy grant
– Disability benefits
– ‘Granny tax’ – freeze to age related payments

And much more. Come and find out more this Friday — with toys, teas, coffees and 1-2-1 sessions tailored to you.

The Big Red Bus Club was founded by local mums in the wake of council cutbacks in 2011. If you’re a local parent and worried about benefit changes, here’s where to find it…

map

Charlton Community Gardens open meeting – 25th Feb 2013

Neil Clasper

Charlton Community Gardens poster

The third open meeting of the Charlton Community Gardens project takes place from 7.30pm on Monday 25th February, at St. Richard’s Hall, Swallowfield Road, SE7 7NS.
 The group’s aims are ‘to promote cooperation and support for everyone interested in sustainable and organic growing and wildlife diversity’, and they are working on leasing local land for ‘shared growing and learning together’. The meeting is an opportunity to find out what the project is all about, and hear about progress in securing the group’s first plot of land.
This will be the group’s first AGM; they would welcome new members on the Steering Committee, and there will also be a plant sale and raffle (with prizes including a mini greenhouse!).
If you’d like to find out  more about getting involved, or put yourself forward for the Steeting Committee, the organisers can be contacted by email at: charltoncommunitygardens [at] gmail.com.

Charlton Church Lane’s sinking feeling finishes

Darryl Chamberlain2 Comments

Charlton Church Lane

So, what happened at the top of Charlton Church Lane last week?

(Last with the news, I know…)

Michael asks: “Church lane has been closed for a few days and gossip tells me its from some subsidence somewhere between The Heights and the Church. Have you heard anything and is it severe or will it remain closed for a long time?”

Well, I’d heard nothing, but the street’s open now, buses are running along it and things should be back to normal for Monday morning’s commute. There’s some tell-tale clumps of brand new tarmac on the road now, so something must have happened. Anyone know any more?

What happened to Woolwich Road’s £35,000?

Darryl Chamberlain17 Comments

Woolwich Road
It’s all go at the bottom of Victoria Way, where Greenwich Council is moving the zebra crossing in response to safety concerns. It’s not clear what’s going on at all; after the consultation which went to just a handful of households, actual news of what’s happening is thinner on the ground.

Simon commented a couple of weeks ago:

Please note everyone work now is underway – moving the zebra crossing 2 metres to the east. Well that really is going to help. Not even a raised crossing, no lights. I have asked the Council what is happening and have received no response as yet – will update if I know. Please contact Mary and the other Councillors locally if you are as disappointed as I am.

So far, there’s been no news…

Even more mysterious is the matter of a missing £35,000. As part of the Sainsbury’s/M&S development, developer LXB paid Greenwich Council £35,000 as part of what’s known as a Section 106 agreement. These are meant to offset the negative impact of a development by building or improving something positive in the area, and it was thought that this money would go into improving Woolwich Road.

But nobody’s sure where this money has gone. It’s not a process that’s well-known outside town halls, and it’s not certain whether this cash is actually ring-fenced in this way. With a council as notoriously opaque as Greenwich, the whole thing’s a mystery.

So is LXB’s cash going towards this zebra crossing shift, or is it going to something else? Or will it end up getting spent miles from Charlton? So far, nobody knows – unless you can enlighten us, dear reader.

Get to know Charlton’s people and parks

Darryl Chamberlain

Maryon Park

A note from Carol Kenna at the Charlton Parks Reminiscence Project:

After two years in the making The Charlton Parks Reminiscence Project is now
complete and can be visited online at www.charltonparks.co.uk. There you will
find stories and photographs looking at the history of the parks and their importance
to local people over the past hundred years.

You can listen to scores of interviews, with people talking about everything from wartime jazz at Maryon Park bandstand to looking after the deer and other animals in Maryon Wilson Park. There are memories of swimming at Hornfair lido to clambering around Gilbert’s Pit plus many more stories featuring Hornfair, Charlton, Maryon Wilson, and Maryon Parks, Gilberts Pit and Barrier Gardens parks, all featured on the website.

24 volunteers including adults, as well as pupils from Years 9,10 and 11 at John Roan School were trained in audio recording and interview techniques and over 60 interviews conducted. Extracts from those interviews are included on the website while full versions are available to listen to at the Greenwich Heritage Centre in the Royal Arsenal. The website, designed and edited by Stuart Evans, Rib Davis and Carol Kenna, is now also archived with the UK web archive at the British Library.

To accompany the website, a CPRP booklet has been produced including extracts from each person contributing to the project alongside wonderful photographs of the parks.

The book will be available FREE from borough libraries, Greenwich Heritage Centre
and Charlton House from late January 2013.

New contributions – if you weren’t able to take part in the project it still isn’t too late to add to the website: There is a special ‘Contributors” button to enable people to upload new stories and photographs, and we welcome suggestions for items or issues which may have been missed. We aim to update the website with many more reminiscences and pictures over the next five years.

The project has been organised by the Charlton Parks Reminiscence Project Steering Group – Greenwich Mural Workshop, The Charlton Society, Friends of Charlton House, Friends of Charlton Park & Friends of Maryon & Maryon Wilson Parks.

The project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and The Viscount Gough, and is partnered by Greenwich Council parks department, Firepower and Greenwich Heritage Centre.

It’s an incredible piece of work – congratulations to Carol and all involved. Don’t forget, you can download the booklet here.

Also, Tim Anderson from the Friends of Maryon and Maryon Wilson Parks will be talking to the Charlton Society at Charlton House tomorrow (Sat 19 Jan, 2.30pm, all welcome.) (Cancelled due to the snow)

Finally, it’s the Charlton Pub Quiz tomorrow – come along!

Greenwich Council backs Charlton Sainsbury’s/ M&S scheme

Darryl Chamberlain12 Comments


It’s been a long while coming, but councillors finally voted last night to back plans to to move Greenwich’s Sainsbury’s to Gallions Road, Charlton, in a new site along with an M&S and other shops.

Greenwich Council’s planning board voted 8-1 in favour of the application, despite concerns about traffic congestion and air pollition on Woolwich Road.

As well as the two superstores, the scheme will provide 850 jobs as well as a “high street” frontage of other stoes in front of the Rose of Denmark pub.

One councillor, Steve Offord, was heckled by members of the public for saying it was “inevitable” that the council would have to accept drivers entering the complex from Woolwich Road. Local campaigners had argued that customers should have to use Bugsbys Way, to tak traffic off the A206.

Council leader Chris Roberts suggested a compromise solution, where a fund of money from the developer should be set aside for traffic improvements after the store had opened, to calm fears of rat-running on Victoria Way and other streets. He also backed calls for a second entrance to Charlton station on Troughton Road, although this is subject to a separate process.

The only dissenting councillor was Kidbrooke with Hornfair Labour representative Hayley Fletcher, who acknowledged the scheme had great promise but was full of “missed opportunities” to promote sustainable transport on the Woolwich Road, dubbing the air quality statistics in the area “frightening”.

(Other councillors referred to the bad air quality on Woolwich Road, despite Greenwich Council’s Labour group voting to launch a campaign to build a third Blackwall Tunnel to add more traffic to the A102 – see petition against it.)

Most speakers were in favour of the development, but many were sharply critical of the lack of measures to control traffic. Developer LXB said it had offered Transport for London money to extend bus route 202 from Blackheath Standard to the store, to compensate people who would usually take the 108 service to the Greenwich store, but TfL insisted the bus network was fine as it is.

Chris Roberts suggested the council should take a tough line with TfL on the issue, adding that existing route 129 was only created thanks to a planning application put in for the Millennium Dome.

To see short summaries of what was said during the meeting, see this Storify round-up. The new store is likely to open in 2015.

New supermarket for Charlton Church Lane

Darryl Chamberlain8 Comments


The shop unit in the new development by Charlton station is finally set to be occupied. A Greenwich Council planning meeting last week gave permission for an extension to be added to the back to expand the floorspace. It also agreed to look into the possibility of widening the narrow pavement outside.

It’s believed a Sainsbury’s Local will open here – just a few hundred yards from the supermarket giant’s planned new store on Woolwich Road, the planning process for which was held up in mysterious circumstances a couple of weeks ago.