Next plot of 3,500-home Convoys Wharf scheme submitted
After many years delay detailed planning applications are finally being submitted for individual plots across Convoy’s Wharf in Deptford. The entire scheme will include 3,500 flats and 1,840 car parking spaces.
The first detailed application went in last July and was covered here. That featured 456 flats on a plot nearest Deptford High Street and Greenwich.
This latest application is for an adjacent site at Plot P15 which comprises 124 “affordable” homes. Only 20% of the entire 3,500 homes will be “affordable”. Local Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft has criticised the low total.
Retails units are planned at street level – assuming high rents do not result in vacancies as seen at many other developments. It tops out around 10 floors in height. Building heights across the site will step up towards towers away from existing homes.
The whole scheme was called in by Boris Johnson five years ago and approved after developers Hutchison Whompoa argued an urgent decision was needed. They’ve owned the land for 17 years after purchasing from News International.
Since approval very little has happened. Four years ago the then-Mayor stated:
“We need to build thousands of new homes in the capital and proposals to do that at Convoys Wharf have stalled for far too long.”
But as we’ve seen time and time again, leaving vast plots in the hands of one owner is a recipe for drip feeding plots whilst the housing shortage grows.
Click here to view planning documents relating to the recent submission.
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The greatest impediment to a more balanced and creative approach to the site of the country’s first Royal Dockyard is the terms of sale from one Rupert Murdoch to Hong Kong conglomerate, Hutchison Whampoa. Under those terms Murdoch retains a profit-share on every residential “unit” built on the site, Thus the cries of low profitability every time any planner dares to suggest genuinely affordable housing. The last time they did Hutchison got their friend Boris to call it in
Morally at least, ownership of the site is a somewhat dubious affair and has been for over 100 years,
“It appears that the Deptford Dockyard is held by the Admiralty under peculiar circumstances which preclude its ever being sold for purposes of private enterprise. The greater part of the dockyard is held on a peppercorn rent, under the will of the celebrated John Evelyn. Being anxious to encourage shipbuilding he gave land to the government at an annual rent of a peppercorn on condition that there should always be a ship on the stocks; and during the twenty six years it was closed the letter if not the spirit of Evelyn’s will was carried out by the keel of a vessel being laid down and left in number 1 building slip. It is said that the greater part of the dockyard and its valuable storehouses would revert to the present descendant of Evelyn, who is a Frenchman residing abroad.”
London Journal, 49 1225 (1869 Feb 27 p.136)
(Napoleon’s antics were still in living memory when “the Frenchman” ploy was used to enable the navy to claim ownership)
I say let’s honour Evelyn’s wishes and build a ship, http://www.buildthelenox.org
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