At our AGM and public meeting last Saturday we were pleased to hear from our local Knight's Hill Ward councillors that there is to be further public engagement on the Council's plans for large scale development with tall blocks at both sites 18 and 19:
Site 18: the area between Lansdowne Hill and York Hill and is proposed to include an approx. 11 storey tower block
Site 19: the triangle of industrial land off Knollys Road between the railway lines where three tower blocks are proposed - the highest approx. 22 storeys
The pressure from our stakeholder group of local groups (Norwood Forum/Norwood Action Group/Station to Station and Norwood Planning Assembly) and our local ward councillors has led to this change of heart. There is a new Cabinet Member responsible for strategic planning: Councillor Danial Adilypour: Deputy Leader of the Council (Sustainable Growth and New Homes) and he has indicated the new approach in the answer to a Council question from Councillor Ibtisam Adem to the meeting of full Council on Wednesday 13 July 2022 (see question 17 here).
Councillor Danial Adilypour has also agreed to meet with the stakeholder group to listen to our views on the lack of public consultation and engagement from the Council, and unsuitability of the current proposals.
What next?
It was agreed at the meeting that we needed to form an active campaign core group of people who can find the time to drive the community campaign forward. This approach worked well for #ScrapTheYard. Would you like to join this small group? Please email us on info@norwoodforum.org if you want to join.
If you want to keep uptodate on the latest in the campaign including ways you can help more broadly, please see the campaign webpage here and also sign up for the Forum's newsletter here.
As soon as we have more news, this will be added to the campaign webpage: www.norwoodforum.org/site-18-and-site-19