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We receive (should receive) 20-30 items of post a week, some subscription magazines, catalogues and (about a third) normal business mail (personal mail is far less frequent, save over Christmas and birthdays). This tends to arrive in only two (more frequently one) delivery. Magazines are invariably late, often up to a week late. Not good for political weeklies. This has been my 'steady state' position following much worse frequency on the closure of the real ED Delivery Office, and of course Covid. There seems little point in complaining any longer - to anyone. There will be a sudden flurry of mail delivered, of course, in the few days after an MP intervention, and then it falls back into rubbish deliveries. It is a combination of senior management focus on high(er) value parcel and special delivery items (which I do get more regularly) which is a management decision, under-employment (vacancies) of posties and, I believe, extremely poor local management of what resources Royal Mail actually has in Peckham. I don't now believe it is curable. I do believe that no one in Royal Mail management gives a sh*t! -
By James Barber · Posted
The US has been one of the most dynamic high growth economies for several years. They have planning zones. The two are not mutually exclusive. Two recent mobile phone mast applications in the area. Both of such terribly poor quality they were refused. They both broke the code of conduct all mobile operators singed up to. The agents were just trying it on. So huge cost of repetition and low productivity. Planning is blamed but it's just shoddy work. Recent case of the new Kent Thame tunnel talking about £200m of planning costs - which turned out to be design, project planning and planning. I would suggest mostly the former. It is lazy to blame planning process and generally by those who wont a no holes bar approach for their schemes without any consideration of the opportunity cost imposed on others. -
By the_hermit · Posted
There are excuses like this everywhere people want to build anything, which is why the UK economy is in such a state. Each individual project holdup like this (and the mast on Dog Kennel Hill) seems small in isolation but the compound effect of it UK-wide is why we are so unproductive and why there is no money for anything else like the NHS, fixing roads, collecting bins and so on. I'd be interested to know how the zoning rules (which of course can be changed!) compare to other much more liveable cities in northern and central Europe. I doubt cities like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Zurich etc have inner areas like Darrell Road (to pick an extreme example) with bungalows! The "confidence to move into" argument is just pulling up the ladder. Before East Dulwich was built it was presumably green fields? Should East Dulwich residents have right to preserve everything in aspic to disadvantage over the generations that follow? -
By James Barber · Posted
Hi Hillbilly, Your obviously correct that the committee members must consider the scheme in the context of planning laws, Southwark Policy documents. Those policy documents are clear the site should be considered suburban. As a Councillor when this was decided I can assure we considered this site and all others in the then East dulwich Ward and the Dulwich Community Council area. Ignoring that as the officer report does unconvincingly in my view would be a poor decision. The officer report states I believe highly inflated economic benefit of students to help justify the scheme. I have a student currently and they really don't have the sums being talked about and nor do their network for friends. The council officers report states students will move in at the academic yea start over two weekends/4 days. 360 students will suggest worst case 360 cars. Unlikely to be perfectly balanced hence 50-100 vehicles per day. The proposed building top 2-3 floors look like metal cladding and not the local vernacular of bricks and tiled roofs. The top two stories and roof enclosures will be invisible for some distance. I don't think it unreasonable to call that out of character for the area. I think it would be hard to argue it would be in keeping. Yes, we have a housing crisis. But we have falling student numbers. The site could be used for more regular homes that the proposed 53. Southwark has the highest number of unoccupied homes for a borough. Southwark Council fixing that and they have plenty of powers to really dent those figures. The development will have a huge negative impact on the neighbouring streets in dominance of the proposed structures parking pressures, etc. Your username suggests you wont be one of those affected. Nor will I directly. But I hate to see injustice from a poorly thought through scheme. If you feel strongly you could attend the Planning Committee Tonight as supporter. Hi malibu, Far from. The homes completed on Bassano and Hindmans were sites I proposed to the council for them consider for new council homes. I have campaigned for the council to approve schemes with 35% social housing for many years. I dare not comment on people football team :-0 Hi the-permit, Southwark has zoning for density to protect the character of areas and to protect peoples confidence to move into, purchase and live and put down roots in areas. East Dulwich is under Southwark planning rules suburban. In the north of the borough the density rules are much higher. Yes they could. developers quite often get approval for a size of scheme. Sit on it and then come back for the same site but more. It might be a new feasibility study to say they can no longer afford that much social housing, etc. Classic developer gaming of the system. We don't yet know the pricing of the student accommodation but the Champion Hill student accommodation when open was priced around the £200 pw mark. Some is proposed to be discounted, but likely that will inflate the mainstream pricing. You have to be a rich student for such prices. It resulted in mostly foreign students affording that. Any developer is likely to set their pricing close to this. For transparency I live on Champion Hill.
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