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Dulwich area vision
The new draft Southwark Plan has a vison for all areas in the Borough, this is the one for Dulwich. ‘The unique historic character of Dulwich will be protected and enhanced. Dulwich will continue to be a popular and pleasant place to live with many attractive homes alongside playing fields, parks, tree lined roads and large gardens. Much of Dulwich is covered by conservation areas and accessible, well used open spaces and these will continue to be improved’.
We already have an adopted Dulwich SPD (2013) which says that the Council ‘is working with the local community and organisations such as Dulwich Estate and the Dulwich Society to continue to protect Dulwich Village/West Dulwich. Dulwich Village/West Dulwich is a suburban area with many playing fields, parks and tree lined roads and large gardens. There are shops and services for the local community within an historic shopping street. We will continue to protect Dulwich Village/West Dulwich as a historic area with a good range of local shops and services, open spaces and homes. Evening and night-time uses will be controlled to keep a good balance of uses and protect the amenity of residential areas: Dulwich Village and Dulwich Woods. Dulwich Village conservation area is mainly housing with the village itself at its heart. Dulwich Wood is mostly open space (including parkland, playing fields, allotments and a golf course) surrounded by housing. We will continue to protect the character of these areas and the historic buildings within them. This includes attractive and well used landmark buildings such as Dulwich College and Dulwich Picture Gallery and large open spaces such as Dulwich Park. The Mayor does not set us targets for Dulwich Village/West Dulwich. We are conserving Dulwich Village/West Dulwich and there is no capacity for large scale growth’.
The current adopted Core Strategy (2011) says that the Council is ‘working with the local community and organisations such as the Dulwich Estate and the Dulwich Society to continue to protect Dulwich Village/West Dulwich. Dulwich Village/ West Dulwich is a suburban area with many playing fields, parks, tree lined roads and large gardens. There are shops and services for the local community within an historic shopping street.
We will continue to protect Dulwich Village/West Dulwich as a historic area with a good range of local shops and services, open spaces and homes. Evening and night-time uses will be controlled to keep a good balance of uses and protect the amenity of residential areas. There are two conservation areas: Dulwich Village and Dulwich Woods. Dulwich Village conservation area is mainly housing with the village itself at its heart. Dulwich Wood is mostly open space (including parkland, playing fields, allotments and a golf course) surrounded by housing. We will continue to protect the character of these areas and the historic buildings within them.
This includes attractive and well used landmark buildings such as Dulwich College and Dulwich Picture Gallery and large open spaces such as Dulwich Park.
The Mayor does not set us targets for Dulwich Village/West Dulwich. We are conserving Dulwich Village/West Dulwich and there is no capacity for large scale growth. We are producing a supplementary planning document to provide further guidance on how we will protect Dulwich Village/West Dulwich.’
From 29 July 2016 all borough residents will be able to use the swim and gym facilities for free in six of the borough’s leisure centres, operated by Southwark Council in partnership with Everyone Active. You can register for this scheme online or, alternatively, ask in your local leisure centre or library for an application form.
The offer is available anytime on Friday (subject to programmes and timetables), Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 2pm to close.
The Over 60s can take part in any Silver sessions free and disabled residents will be able to use all leisure centres for free seven days a week
Both the planning applications for The Charter School East Dulwich and the new NHS health centre have been submitted to Southwark Council. The School ref is 16/AP/2740 and the health centre is 16/AP/2747 – the Council’s planning website is now open for comments.
The prize winners have been announced for the Dulwich Society’s 2016 front garden competition. Some 50 entries were received, with the overall high standard making judging a difficult task. The competition was open to all Dulwich households.
First Prize, of £100 in garden vouchers, goes to 101 Woodwarde Road. Whilst a relatively small front garden, it had strong kerb side appeal. This was helped by a good structure and the use of varied planting including hydrangeas providing both showmanship and interest through different leaf shapes, heights and colours. A vertical dimension was achieved through a climbing hydrangea, there were buddleias for bees and butterflies, and window boxes added a final flourish. The garden also showed a high standard of husbandry and maintenance.
Five Gold Prizes of £50 each go to entries for 82 Henslowe Road, 17, 142 and 148 Burbage Road, and 186 Peckham Rye. Five Silver prizes of £25 each go to entries for 60 and 76 Burbage Road, 134 Court Lane, 50 Park Hall Road and 88 Woodwarde Road.
Two Special Prizes of £25 have been given – to 171 Rosendale Road for their tree pit planting in the nearby traffic island, and to Glyn Davies of 130 Court Lane for maintaining the neatest front garden in Dulwich over many years.
Jeremy Prescott, Chair of the Dulwich Society’s Garden Group, commented: “We would like to congratulate all the entrants, as well as the prize winners. Their attractive front gardens will have given and will continue to give pleasure to local residents, and I hope will inspire others to copy them.”
Southern Railway have this week announced that they will be implementing an emergency timetable from Monday 11th July, which will result in the cancellation of 341 services across their network. Dulwich & West Norwood MP, Helen Hayes, has written the following letter to the Rail Minister, Claire Perry MP, about the entirely unacceptable impacts that the emergency timetable will have on my constituents. Please see the full text below:
"Thank you for meeting with me on 22nd June 2016. I was pleased to have the opportunity to raise Southern Railway’s poor performance with you and Southern’s most senior managers, and to discuss the urgent improvements needed to resolve the unacceptably poor service experienced by my constituents on a daily basis.
I had understood from that meeting that steps were being taken to address Southern’s performance, and that while this may take several weeks to complete, my constituents would begin to see an improvement in the reliability of rail services across Dulwich and West Norwood shortly.
At our meeting, neither you nor Charles Horton, the Chief Executive of Southern, or Dyan Crowther, Southern’s Chief Operating Officer, raised the possibility of the introduction of an emergency timetable which is due to be implemented next week with minimal prior warning and communication.
The emergency timetable sees the withdrawal of 341 services from the GTR network. The services to be cancelled are heavily concentrated in South London, including the vast majority of the peak hour commuter services running from stations in and very close to my constituency – North Dulwich, East Dulwich, Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill, Gipsy Hill and Crystal Palace as well as the withdrawal of all services to London Bridge from West Norwood and Tulse Hill.
This is effectively the collapse of commuter rail services in my constituency, and coming on top of more than 18 months of appalling service levels, cancelled trains, short trains and overcrowding as a consequence of the earlier phases of the London Bridge works, it is completely unacceptable.
To add insult to injury I understand from a telephone conversation with Southern this afternoon that although Southern is advertising a replacement bus service, this is not actually the case – the thousands of my constituents who normally travel by train are expected to use already overcrowded existing bus services, or equally crowded train services from other stations, without Southern taking any steps whatsoever to provide their own replacement bus service.
The rationale for the emergency timetable appears to be to enable Southern Railway to run a more reliable service. This will come as cold comfort to the thousands of my constituents who will be severely impacted by these changes, because the services they rely on will not now be running at all. It is a shifting of the goalposts which seems entirely aimed at improving Southern Railway's performance statistics rather than improving services for passengers.
It is also entirely unacceptable that such a dramatic change was introduced apparently without any warning, any published assessment of the likely impact, or any consultation with passenger groups, and that no timetable has been set for the restoration of a normal level of service.
As you know, confidence in Southern Railway amongst passengers is already at rock bottom. The fact that such a dramatic curtailing of the timetable is considered to be an appropriate response to the current crisis and an acceptable level of inconvenience for passengers to bear, demonstrates further that the leadership of Southern Railway does not have the capacity to regain public confidence.
I am therefore calling on you, as a matter of urgency, to remove the franchise from Southern and for the Department of Transport to take over the running of the service directly, while arrangements are put in place to subsequently transfer the services to Transport for London (TfL) once TfL has built up capacity to take on the franchise.
Given the unacceptably disproportionate focus of the cuts to services in South London I must also ask that the emergency timetable is further revised immediately to distribute its impacts more fairly across the network. It is also critical that Southern provides a real replacement bus service, or contributes to additional capacity on existing bus routes, so that the already overcrowded public transport system in South London is not completely overwhelmed as a consequence of the emergency timetable.
I look forward to hearing from you as a matter of urgency."
Former Audi Workshop site Gilkes Crescent, Dulwich Village - 8 July 2016
Press release from the Dulwich Estate:
The Dulwich Estate is pleased to report that McCulloch Homes Ltd has acquired the freehold. The site in the heart of Dulwich Village has planning consent for eight three-storey town houses (4 x 4 bed and 4 x 5 bed) with basement parking (two spaces per house) and four affordable dwellings: one three bed, wheelchair accessible, house, one two bed house and two one bed flats, all with parking at basement level.
McCulloch Homes Ltd has over the past 26 years a strong reputation for building innovative, quality, homes in the South East. Terry Phillips, Land Manager for McCulloch Homes Ltd said “we are delighted to have secured this prime location in Dulwich Village where we will build these highly desirable homes which have been carefully designed to suit their surroundings”.
For more information on the company visit www.mccullochhomes.co.uk
The Dulwich Community Council meeting (DCC) on 22 June heard representations from local residents, Southwark Cyclists, Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes to School, and local MP Helen Hayes over the implementation of the proposed new Quietway. Local councillors recommended a pause in the process while key issues were reviewed.
They suggested a trial, not only of the change of priority at the junction in Dulwich Village, but also the reduction of three lanes to two on Court Lane/Calton Avenue. They also wanted no further action on the current proposals until the results were in from a study into alternative routes for the school coaches for Alleyn’s, JAGS and Dulwich College, which all currently use the proposed Quietway.
The public consultation meetings over the Dulwich Almshouse Trust’s proposal to build new accommodation next to the Judith Kerr Primary School were held on 8th and 11th June. Over 200 people attended and there were 130 written responses.
Planning applications for the two schemes should be made in August.
Revised plans for the JAGS music school have been submitted to Southwark Council (Southwark ref: 16/AP/2403). The scheme has been reviewed following the arrival of a new head last autumn and both reduced in size and modified to integrate better with the existing school buildings.
Council officers met both the Safer Routes to School group and RAs to discuss some of the detailed proposals in more detail earlier in the month. The full consultation report should be published around 15 June for discussion at the Dulwich Community Council which meets on 22 June. At that meeting a recommendation will be agreed and submitted to the Cabinet Member for the Environment & Public Realm and lead decision maker later in June/July. Implementation of the proposals is due to start later in 2016 subject to further redesign, traffic orders and statutory consultations.
Copy of email from Village Ward Councillors Jane Lyons and Michael Mitchell dated 23 May 2016
To: 'mayor@london.gov.uk'; 'caroline.pidgeon@london.gov.uk'; Wingfield, Ian
Subject: Reconsider Quietway 7 route through Dulwich Village
Dear All
We are writing as ward councillors for Village Ward in Southwark as you are new in post and with responsibility for transport.
As you may be aware Village Ward is currently targeted as part of the Quietways 7 route from the Elephant and Castle to Crystal Palace, running along Calton Avenue, through Dulwich Village junction, and then down through Turney Road.
This section has caused an outcry amongst residents and businesses alike. The route was visited upon us with no prior consultation or option to change it; and £000s have been spent in consulting at speed with an unwilling but engaged community in an attempt, so far failed, to make the proposed route an acceptable one.
Key points of objection from within the community are the ineffectiveness of consultation, loss of parking spaces, and the unnecessary redesign of the main junction in the village, with no apparent or evidenced gains or improvements for cyclists - just a worse deal for everyone else.
As you are new to post we are writing now to ask that Village Ward section of the route of Quietways 7 be reconsidered. You will have this opportunity to reconsider because we currently await an outstanding traffic survey of the impact of coaches on a key part of the route and the potential impact of the proposed arbitrary introduction of double yellow lines on every junction in Dulwich.
Finally our understanding is that £600,000 has been allocated specifically for the Quietway route through the ward. We believe that this money could be much better spent developing an holistic overview and solution to the traffic demands in Dulwich which would be of benefit to all road users including pedestrians.
Yours sincerely