Sydenham News: Lewisham Council Community Forum Report

Councillors' Meeting Forum Report
Forest Hill, Perry Vale & Sydenham Wards, Thursday 2nd June, 7 - 9.30pm

Over 300 residents of SE23 & SE26 turned up to grill their councillors at the new St George's Church in Vancouver Road, Perry Vale. This was a wonderful venue which opened last Christmas Eve and proved to be a major new community asset.

The Forest Hill & Sydenham CPZ consultation and the Bell Green development proposals had drawn around twice the expected audience to meet eight of our nine councillors. The first half hour was supposed to be an informal meetings with individual councillors but with so many people we had to sit around until the meeting proper kicked off at 7.30pm.

The first section was a presentation of council initiatives on crime reduction. Lewisham has slipped from pole position as the safest inner London Borough - that crown has been passed to Wandsworth. This was due to rises in some violent crime which may be due to greater encouragement to report 'domestics' and in cheque & credit card fraud but overall there had been an improvement. The challenge ahead was the government target of reducing it further by 20% in three years. The council officers detailed a complex portfolio of measures they were pursuing supported by an increased police force (up from 617 to 630 officers for Lewisham) supported by community officers.

There was some vigorous questioning - particulary about the lack of data. This was promised soon but some headlines figures are shown here:

We then moved to an open discussion on the CPZ proposals. The audience was overwhelmingly against the idea. Councillor Whiting re-interated that there was no secret agenda to introduce and that the council would follow the decision of the people. He did say no CPZ area had ever expressed a wish to remove the CPZ. Thankfully before matters could get too heated Darien, Lewisham's chief Transport Oficer confided that the returns so far received from Sydenham indicated that no CPZ was wanted and Forest Hill was probably in a similar situation. Thus when the CPZ consultation was taken to Cabinet in September we should have nothing to fear.

Several speakers, both traders and residents, emphasised the importance of parking provision to the economic survival of the shopping centres. There was an underlying theme of undelivered promises to sort things both major and minor - from signage in Sydenham Road to the Forest Hill Pools.

Bell Green was the final issue. Many speakers shared their concern about the damage Bell Green would do to the existing centres - easy parking at Bell Green and £40 fines in Sydenham & Forest Hill. Increased traffic was a crucial concern and the desirability of more residential and better non-retail employment. British Gas, the developer, was roundly castigated for having no interest in the effect of their plans on local communities. The rumoured £100,000 S106 compensation by BG to be shared between Forest Hill & Sydenham was thought derisory compared to £3,000,000 per year sucked out by the new retail complex. There was one dissenting voice from the floor who thought we should value the 300 jobs promised by the current proposal.

The councillors were almost silent in this section. Let's hope they were listening... Were you there - or do you want to know more? Join in the discussion here:

Just a few of the three hundred

Meet Your Councillors

Councillor Colin Hastie has written to say that due to holiday commitments he was unable to be at the 'Meet Your Councillor' and earlier sessions he did arrive in time hear the Bell Green debate.

sdg 03/06/05

SydenCam