Core Strategy, the future of Southwark

[pros]

Hello everyone, I don't know how many of you had a chance/time/mental energy to read the Core Strategy document which will affect all our lives for the next 20 years, but if you have, any feedback/input is more than welcome.

Deadline for comments has been extended to 5th March although a number of local groups, let alone residents, were not aware of it in the first place.

I've written a short introductory article about some of the problems (Cor!Strategy, the Sequel - http://www.peoplesrepublicofsouthwark.co.uk/news/cor-strategy-the-sequel) as well as two articles within the Cor! Strategy section of the site which you are more than welcome to comment on.

Have you been in any way involved in preparing the document?

Have you been aware of it at all?

Have you made any comments/suggestions to the document that you'd be happy to share?

Any other thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

[computedshorty]

Dont like the name of this. People's Republic of Southwark

[pros]

:)

[Magpie]

Never heard of it, perhaps you could provide a link to the document itself rather than to a rather confusing page on your website.

[pros]

yes, here it is http://www.southwark.gov.uk/Uploads/FILE_45011.pdf

[The Chair]

This is only barely Drawing Room material. Please do not use this thread for personal promotion and keep all discussion relevent to the document at hand.

Otherwise I'll move it out....

[pros]

chair, thanks for the advice - i thought that the major document defining the future of whole southwark would be an appropriate theme - people's republic of southwark is a not-for-profit community initiative and one of the key ideas is to share information - hopefully this will clarify any confusion?

[PeckhamRose]

I attend meetings and make suggestions and submit ideas and try to answer to Southwark's never ending requests for our contributions and thoughts on their plans.

It never makes a bit of difference. I don't mean - by saying that - that I'm sulking because they ignore all my suggestions, I really am not. What I am saying is that I have never heard or seen any evidence where any suggestion or complaint or contribution to any scheme Southwark Council suggests, is ever acted upon.

They have an idea, they implement it (unless the money runs out beforehand).

Laws say they have to ask us what we think. Laws do not say the Council has to take any notice at all.

The PROS website is great by the way pros!

And this is a Drawing Room issue. It's serious and affects us all.

[The Chair]

Peckham Rose - what I meant was that this could easily belong in the "General ED Issues/Gossip" section. However since it covers all of Southwark it shouldn't really be in there.

As it is a serious topic I'm sure you don't want it in the Lounge either.

So....I'm allowing it to exist in here as long as it follows the rules of all the other threads in here.

Is that clearer?

[louisiana]

I've been embroiled with the Croydon Core Strategy in recent months; was aware of the Southwark one but didn't know the dates. Crystal Palace, by the way, if facing five different Core Strategies (Croydon, Bromley, Southwark, Lambeth, Lewisham).

I would say that consultation process does seem to be a one way (PR/broadcast) process. I think it's difficult to get views acknowledged as weighty/serious unless you wear a hat of some kind: representative preferably.

This is an important document.

We've found the Croydon one quite useful for pointing to planning points we can make use of in current case; and have also provided feedback to its first round consultation.

I'm not sure I can face diving into another one just yet... but will give it a go.

[pros]

louisiana, are any of your/other croydon comments available to see online anywhere? would be really helpful

thanks

lili

[Huguenot]

I really don't get what this obsession with consultation is.

The council members were elected to talk on our behalf. Why have a dog and bark yourself?

pros kind of supports all my convictions that the noisiest people have absolutely no majority support and no belief in the democratic process.

"louisiana, are any of your/other croydon comments available to see online anywhere?". Do you know what? It doesn't blinking matter if she does. Get yourself elected, or get lost.

The honest truth is, that despite your blurb, you and your gang are tyrants. The worst.

[PeckhamRose]

That's unnecessary Huguenot and also unfair. They care and they don't want to be elected; just to have a fair say, which the councils are obliged to give them but which they never listen to or act upon.

[Huguenot]

They had a fair say, at the ballot box. Like every other group of ten people that read Karl Marx in their back garden.

Having failed to gain popular support, they're now having a crack through innuendo and baseless accusation.

Post election the council is not a political body. It has an obligation uphold manifesto pledges, and it makes sense to acquire relevant knowledge from interested parties, but it has absolutely no obligation to 'consult' on anything.

And let's be honest about 'consult' here, because from PROS perspective it's nothing to do with knowledge acquisition, and everything to do with a lunatic fringe dictating activity.

Councils aren't some kind of therapy outfit. They are, and should be, a business. They should deliver best value services to taxpayers according to taxpayer demand.

Taxpayer demand is identified at the ballot box, crazy PROS posturing isn't even remotely close to it.

What PROS want to do is to politicise council activity to fund their own convictions about self-worth, and that's outrageous.

[pros]

that was very very funny, thanks :)

[louisiana]

Huguenot

I'd say you're going out on a bit of a limb here.

My experience with local planning is that a council is subject to fairly relentless lobbying behind the scenes from moneyed interested parties: developers, architects with pet projects and all the rest. There is huge lobbying industry and deal-doing that many of us are never aware of. Teams of people who are paid to do nothing but put pressure on local councils. This is how we get things like a local MP pressing in the House of Commons for a developer's ?250m pet project to be built on Metropolitan Open Land (two weeks ago).

All of this does ultimately affect the environment we all live in. I think the consultative process is perhaps an attempt to redress the balance a little.

In the case of Crystal Palace, there are 5 authorities pulling in different directions and seemingly often not speaking to each other. Fairly crap for local residents, who seem to be the only ones insisting that the 5 sit around the same table and plan in a co-ordinated way across the 5.

[louisiana]

Huguenot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I really don't get what this obsession with

> consultation is.

>

> The council members were elected to talk on our

> behalf. Why have a dog and bark yourself?

Council members rarely have much planning knowledge. They rely on officers for that. I have heard a council member admit in a planning committee meeting to decide a major planning case that he didn't know the different classes in the Use Class Order: exactly the issue that was the key to the committee's decision! In larger boroughs, many members will never have been to the area subject to a decision. Most depressing was seeing that several members deciding on a case had not even read their own officer's report for the case before the meeting that was hearing the case. Of course most people never get to hear about this stuff: the public gallery will only take a few dozen, meetings rarely get covered in the press, and there's generally no webcast or audio. You just get a sanitised version of the discussion written up a few weeks later.

Edited to remove a rogue 'p'

[pros]

ive just updated some of the representations http://www.peoplesrepublicofsouthwark.co.uk/core-strategy/blog i/few others will be making, there's three at the moment, but will be more as there's still a few hours to go till 5pm tomorrow - please feel free to comment/suggest stuff if you get a chance? thank you x