Student tower approved directly beside Lewisham station
Lewisham is to see another tower on the former site of Carpetright after plans were approved this week.
Earlier plans for a residential tower were approved earlier this year but the scheme has since been revised with student housing including 758 rooms. The base has also been altered.
The new scheme has an increase in flats to 319 from 242 including student rooms.
Just 29 per cent of which will be affordable which is still higher than previous plans at 20%. Of those, 60 per cent will be “target social rent” and 40 per cent shared ownership.
The scheme comprises an entrance to a future Bakerloo Line station and Southeastern’s existing platforms. Unfortunately the Bakerloo Line extension is at least 10 years away as things stand and there’s no funding to complete the Southeastern entrance.
An additional entrance to the national rail platforms could alleviate crowding and one-way system problems at the station. But again, delaying the future of rail services through continual short term extensions from the Department for Transport results in minimal planning and strategic thinking.
The scheme predicts just 89 new rail journeys across the entire peak period despite being directly adjacent to the station. Is that realistic? While many occupants will be students it’s a myth to think there’s no early lectures, and with very few students driving public transport will be well used.
Berkeley Homes are planning an uplift of 300 homes at Kidbrooke Village just down the line taking total homes to 5,300. Their predictions for rail usage also seem extremely conservative.
Street level
These plans are much better than that which was approved a few months ago in terms of design, with a more successful ground floor integration onto Loampit Vale.
The old plan:
If everything goes to plan this tower should shoot up as developers are planning to build using modular construction and set an ambitious completion date of just over a year in August 2020. They’ve built similar in Wembley though they appear to already be behind schedule as demolition has not yet completed:
By 2020 not only will there be no funds for a new station entrance but there will be no additional Southeastern trains as the franchise is continually extended and new DLR trains are only entering service from 2023.
The new plans look better and will provide most homes and student rooms which should attract a lot of students to the Lewisham area from local colleges and Greenwich University.
The amount of extra passenger journeys using pulic transport is played down as the truth is they do want want to invest in public transport in the area.
The massive amount of new homes built or currently under construction in Lewisham Kidbrooke and in South East London in general will see a huge increase in public transport usage. Whether people travel by bus train or DLR.
The Bakerloo Line extension is to far in the future 10 or more years away and Crossrail delayed until possibly 2021. Which incidently is a bus ride away from both Lewisham and Kidbrooke.