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Welcome to the
Downtown Defence Campaign (DDC)
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The Downtown
Defence Campaign - a capsule history
The DDC was formed in November
2002, and 150 local residents attended its inaugural meeting. The
main question for it to consider soon became apparent -- should Steve
Cornish be encouraged to continue with his participation in the
Council's own DAAP for the time being, or should the DDC try to go it
alone from that point on? We all agreed that it would be better for
us to have an outsider on the inside, as it were, so Steve was asked
to continue to go to the DAAP meetings, thus making it clear to all
concerned that, from then on, the Council and its two contending
developers would be being watched like hawks! Just so that there
could be no misunderstanding about the residents' wishes, the DDC was
authorized to make the following statement on their behalf:
"The public
meeting attended by 150 people on 18 November 2002 utterly rejects
both the Ampurius and Barratt proposals for the Downtown site
described in their brochures; respectively, "Lavender Moorings" and
"Downtown Place". The buildings proposed would be far too high for
the location. Furthermore, the proposed destruction of the
surrounding trees is totally unacceptable."
At its second meeting, on 9 December 2002, the DDC adopted a constitution which included the following paragraph:
"The purpose of
the Downtown Defence Corps is to help secure the continued peaceful
existence of its members and their families and neighbours and help
free them all from the worry of threats of encroachment in the form of
unsuitable development, particularly on the 'Downtown site' but also
elsewhere on the Rotherhithe peninsula, as needs dictate."
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The DDC and
Southwark Council
Southwark Council's reaction to the emergence of the DDC was pretty much as you'd expect. We were told we were unrepresentative, extreme and wholly dismissive of the processes local authorities now allegedly have to go through when planning developments like the one proposed for Downtown. In particular, the Council was at pains to point out that it's not up to just the people of the peninsula to decide what should be allowed to be built here. Downtown is not an independent island republic, we were reminded, and the wishes of lots of people who've probably never even set foot here at any time in their entire lives have to be given due weight, however unpalatable that may be for us who do actually live here. Yes, it's perfectly true, Downtown IS indeed part of Southwark, part of London, part of the United Kingdom and, of course, part of the European Union. So what? Does this mean that because some twerp of a bureaucrat in Brussels wakes up one morning with a dream in his head of a wonderful Europe-wide 'spatial-visual strategy' or some such drivel (take our word for it, such things really do go on!) we should deign to even give him the time of day? Of course not. Similarly, should we take the almost equally hazy visions of the likes of John Prescott any more seriously? We don't think so. For as long as most of us in Downtown have lived here, it's been a tradition when we're being visited by friends and relatives who've never been to the area before to walk them to the top of Stave Hill to survey the surroundings. A comment that's made almost every time this is done is that we must be among the most fortunate people in London to have somewhere to live where there's something as splendid to look at across the water as Canary Wharf while at the same time there's nothing more intrusive on our immediate doorstep than our beautiful local trees! Despite the antagonism shown towards the DDC by the Council, Steve Cornish continued to attend the DAAP meetings, hoping that he'd eventually be able to persuade the other panel members that he'd been right in the first place to sound the alarm bells. He also hoped that that in turn would cause the Council, Ampurius and Barratt to sit down again and come up with some fresh suggestions for the Downtown site that were much more in keeping with local residents' 'low and green' ideal. What actually happened, though, was that most of the other panel members were left no alternative but to at last come around to the view that, save a little tinkering here and there, there wasn't the slightest intention on the part of the Council and the two developers to scale down their original plans for the site. The DDC's fears had thus been proved entirely justified! The endlessly repeated line from the Council was that their hands were tied by the fact that, whether Downtowners like it or not, the development MUST conform to national and regional planning objectives, over and above ALL other considerations. You might wonder where the Liberal Democrats and their much-vaunted 'community politics' come into the picture. Well, according to one of the senior staff at Southwark Council, who for obvious reasons prefers to remain anonymous, they don't! Our local councillors, we're told, could huff and puff to their hearts' content but it would make not the slightest difference to the eventual outcome. The real decisions about 'matters like this', it seems, are always made well in advance of any public 'consultation', 'local democracy' being something that exists only in the public imagination! Oh really? Well, believe it or not, some of us actually happen to think that the people we've elected onto Southwark Council have a perfect right to make a difference -- a big difference! -- and we utterly reject the proposition that we should all accept that they're nothing more than puppets whose job is to do little more than echo whatever the Council's officers feel like telling them is the current Prescott line! As we said in an earlier version of this page, Rotherhithe was indeed in need of an overhaul twenty-odd years ago, a quite drastic one, and we got it! And, yes, through our near-namesake, the LDDC (London Docklands Development Corporation), national government did play a key part, Southwark Council being relegated to the role of a powerless bystander, which they didn't like one little bit! Be that as it may, those of us who chose to come and live here in the 1980s did so because they liked the look and feel of what the LDDC had created, a delightful combination of low-level housing developments, water and green space -- an oasis mere minutes from the City and Canary Wharf. |
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What happens
next?
It's been suggested that a good way
forward for us now would be to take advantage of the fact that the
Southwark Plan, which lays down the principles under which all planning
decisions must be made, is not yet finalized and might not be (if there
are appeals) for as much as another year. The particular aspect of the
Southwark Plan we're concerned with here is that the part of Rotherhithe
where the Downtown site is located has been tentatively designated as
'urban' -- a category which permits much higher housing densities and
building heights than we think appropriate -- whereas there's still a
possibility that it could eventually end up being redesignated as 'suburban'.
On the evening (29 July 2003) when
the process of selling the site to Barratt Homes and their partners was
set in motion, the DDC fielded a deputation and presented the following
statement to Southwark Council's Executive:
"Most of us are people
who moved to the Downtown area of Rotherhithe from the early 1980s
onwards, attracted there by the vision of an almost rural oasis close to
the centre of London, an environment and 'image' painstakingly nurtured
by both Southwark Council and the London Docklands Development
Corporation. For many years now we've lived happily there, thinking
that, while a gradual growth in the population of the Rotherhithe
peninsula was to be expected and welcomed, given the construction of
Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, Surrey Quays Leisure Park and the Jubilee
Line Underground Extension, our array of various 2- and 3-storey homes
would remain undisturbed and unthreatened more or less indefinitely.
"As far as most of us
are concerned, the exercise of the planning function of our local
authorities has been primarily to do with making sure that any changes
in a residential neighbourhood, be it someone's loft extension or
whatever, occur in such a way that they're barely noticeable and that
the area's overall look and feel are basically unaffected. All of us
can point to many instances when friends and neighbours have had
long-drawn-out negotiations with council staff over what have seemed to
us to be very minor changes. So, then, to square those experiences with
what we're being asked to consider now is clearly very difficult.
Indeed, it's tempting to speculate whether there isn't a totally
separate book of rules governing individual householders' proposed
modifications from the one governing applications by commercial
concerns! We could all probably do with some proper clarification about
why such a difference of approach appears to exist.
"The Downtown
Assessment Advisory Panel has already made many of the points we might
have done had the Downtown Defence Corps been the sole representative of
the local residents, and we certainly want to endorse the view that it's
the current classification of the Rotherhithe peninsula as a whole as an
'urban' area for planning purposes that's given rise to so much of what
we see as totally unnecessary ill-feeling here. We know from various
discussions with staff from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and
the Greater London Authority that it's generally regarded as one of a
local authority's main duties to make sure that only developments which
are agreed by all concerned to be in keeping with what's in an occupied
area already are encouraged and approved. Accordingly, we urge that,
within the peninsula, a major distinction now needs to be made between
the area around Canada Water and Surrey Quays Shopping Centre on the one
hand and the Downtown area on the other, and we believe that it's
entirely within the Council's abilities and powers to make and support
such a distinction. We know, for example, that the Southwark Plan is
nowhere near in its final form at present and that there's a definite
possibility that the Downtown area could indeed end up being treated
entirely differently from Canada Water.
"So, then, we urge the
Executive to recommend to the Council that, if the Downtown site is to
be sold to one of the two consortia whose proposals have already been
made public (Ampurius and Barratt), the sale should be on the
understanding that all future development proposals must be presented on
the basis that there's a distinct possibility that, by the time the
Southwark Plan is finalized, the Downtown area will have been
redesignated as 'suburban'. Such a recommendation would go a long way
towards reassuring local residents that their major concerns were at
last being addressed, from the entirely natural desire not to be
overlooked and overshadowed by tall buildings to the equally natural
wish to preserve as much as possible of the local 'green' environment,
notably the more than 400 mature trees currently on the development
site. The DDC gratefully acknowledges the support and encouragement of
the London Green Party with the preservation aspects here.
"Finally, it has to be
acknowledged that some of the residents who've supported the Downtown
Defence Corps since its foundation have already lost heart over the way
the Council has presented itself over these two consortia's proposals,
giving on many occasions the appearance at least of somehow being
duty-bound to favour the interests of commercial concerns over those of
ordinary householders, and those people have now departed the area,
sometimes literally in tears. The Executive has a splendid opportunity
this evening to reassure those of us who are left that we were right not
to also lose faith in the process too soon."
Now that the decision's been made
for Barratt to be invited to buy the site, quite where we go from here
is basically for you, our friends and supporters, to help us decide. We
clearly still hold out some hope that much of the eastern half of the
Rotherhithe peninsula, including the Downtown site, could eventually be
reclassified for planning purposes as 'suburban', but you should be
aware that there are many voices opposing this idea. Our plea that we
are very much a special case -- an oasis of peace, calm and tranquillity
midway between the City and Canary Wharf -- has fallen mostly on deaf
ears so far.
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Thank you to all the residents of
Downtown who've helped us over the past nine months by being 'road
reps', delivering leaflets and otherwise keeping their friends and
neighbours up to date.
Steve Cornish, John Wills, Toby
Prescott and Sue Agnew
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Contact Us
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