Bell Green gasholder housing plan in Lower Sydenham

Plans are in to develop new housing in Sydenham on the former gas holder site at Bell Green.

Barratt Homes are seeking to gain the green light for 261 new homes alongside 867 sqm of retail space. The site sits adjacent to Grade II listed Livesey Memorial Hall. 

SGN have been dismantling many gas holders in recent years with Bell Green going in 2019, and others including Greenwich and Belvedere where there are plans for 563 new homes.

At the Old Kent Road a holder is listed, so will be retained within a development of 700 homes covered on this site earlier this year.

Transport

The closest station to Bell Green is 900 metres away at Lower Sydenham. That station has seen a fair bit of new homes built alongside over the past five years.

The Design and Access Statement still apparently lives in 2015 and states: “Should TfL’s plans for the Bakerloo Line Extension come forward, then the Site’s PTAL will likely increase.”

The way things are going we’d be lucky to see the first stage to Lewisham by 2040 and that’s with huge levels of new homes planned along the Old Kent Road and into Lewisham, let alone extending beyond. Fifty years perhaps?

There were rumblings of building a new station or moving the existing Lower Sydenham station on Southeastern’s Metro route to Hayes though the more homes rising next door, the harder that will be given opposition would increase from new residents. They didn’t pay to live near a station for easy access to central London just to see the station moved.

The Bell Green Vision Study contained any good ideas on revamping the existing car-dominated out-of-town retail park into a sustainable mixed-use neighbourhood comprising homes above retail space.

Fortunately a previous plan yet more wasteful retail sheds and large car parking was refused on the site now set to see housing.

In terms of “affordable” housing, 35 per cent at Barratts proposal is allocated as such with the usual 70/30 split between London Affordable Rent (social rent in other words) and the rest shared ownership. In total that’s 51 new homes at social rent tenure which is a hell of a lot better than another retail shed and car park would provide.

We could wait for jam tomorrow and a higher total but that’d almost certainly require a new government and probably years more waiting. We’ve seen many asking for that for 30 years as housing demand grows. There’s no guarantee any future national government would be much different in how they generally approach planning and housing policy.

For me given economic and political constraints this is about as good as it gets in such a site. Far better than what it could have been, and a decent amount of new homes. Let’s hope it gets the ball rolling across the wider Bell Green area.

Lewisham Council’s Planning Committee should decide later this year.