A controversial housing scheme on the southern end of Burgess Park was turned down by Southwark’s planning committee on Tuesday night (December 14) – as the flats would have taken up open land long considered as a possible addition to the park.
The development, on Southampton Way, would have provided 32 new homes in a three-seven storey building on land that is currently a scrap yard.
Six of these homes would have been council flats. Developers Burlington Homes would have also cleared some of the site and added it to the park.
The problem, as far as the planning committee and local campaigners were concerned, was the site itself, which is metropolitan open land (MOL). MOL is protected by London planning policy to the same extent as the green belt around the capital.
Tooley Street planners said in a report written ahead of the meeting that “the development would result in substantial harm to the openness of MOL”.
As we reported in April, campaigners Friends of Burgess Park have pointed out that the council has previously proposed buying up the land through a compulsory purchase order. A report in January 2014 said that “this work will dramatically improve the environment at the north end of Southampton Way and for the regenerated Elmington Estate. This proposed sizable increase in green space will also yield benefits for Camberwell as a whole.”
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Friends of Burgess Park and Burgess Park Action Group want the council to buy up the land and add it to the park to protect the area’s biodiversity, which includes a nearby wildlife site.
The St Giles ward councillors spoke out in Tuesday’s meeting against the scheme and in favour of the site being brought into the park.
Philip Patrick, managing director of developers Burlington Homes, said earlier this year that he had spent two years in consultation with local people, the council and the Greater London Authority and added that the development, which is technically all “affordable”, would help meet the borough’s “pressing housing need”.
The scheme was voted down unanimously.
Southwark Council does the right thing at last although the industrial scale social cleansing taking place alongside the park is a disgrace .