Plans dusted off for 258 homes at Huntsman site at Blackheath and Kidbrooke
An early sign of things to come has been spotted on the Greenwich Council website as an Environmental Impact Assessment Screening Opinion for 258 homes has appeared.
It’s for the Huntsman site on the edge of Kidbrooke and Blackheath which could well straddle both towns. The site was formerly a sports ground. The application says Blackheath while Kidbrooke Village sits immediately to the east.
Please do state in the comments exactly where it is as I’m a bit flaky on this part of the world.
Anyway, the site has seen plans come and go for a very long time. A history can be seen here. Derreb Ltd are again behind this latest plan.
The screening opinion sees 258 homes across 11 buildings ranging from 3-6 floors in height and a row of detached houses along each of the northern and western boundary.
Greenwich Council’s draft Local Plan covers the site stating it’s suitable for 260 homes.
Transport
That PTAL rating (access to public transport) being 0-2 is a sticking point. That’s very low.
Then again PTAL is often less than good at measuring access. Kidbrooke station is less than ten minute’s walk away and bus routes less than that. Two stop right outside.
As an example of PTAL flaws a site directly beside Abbey Wood station was recently put around the middle of the scale (0-6b with category 6 split in 6, 6a and 6b) despite the Elizabeth line, Southeastern and Thameslink trains calling metres away. Around 40 trains per hour, along with dozens of buses seconds away.
From the site the station could be accessed in about 20 seconds. So yep, don’t always trust the PTAL scale. I’ve seen many baffling figures.
Because of that though car parking can sometimes be boosted and a total of 94 residential car parking spaces are proposed.
Vehicle access has always been a point of contention for the site, with access via Cator estate on big issue in the past.
Kidbrooke
If it does go ahead that brings more homes to the area with Kidbrooke having seen incredible growth. Berkeley Homes now plan yet another increase at their ‘Kidbrooke Village’ development with phase 6 set to see a big increase of almost 700 homes if plans approved.
That ensures the total across all phases rises to around 6,000.
TfL are half way through their site to the north of Kidbrooke station which will total 619 homes when complete.
Greenwich Council recently built almost 500 homes a short distance away with more to come on Rochester Way.
In total that’s around 7,200 homes and then add in the Huntsman site and the town is nearing 7,500 homes.
That may not be it either as the retail park is allocated as potential mixed-use in the draft Local Plan totally 270 homes.
And despite all that the station is still staffed much like it was in the old Ferrier estate days!
The local plan seems to be ‘let’s get rid of every bit of green space we can, and tell everyone Greenwich Park is on their doorstep’, so property selling prices increase for developers but reduce for current residents and owners. When does this stop? When we’re all surrounded by concrete? Maybe they plan to encase us all in people-sized concrete slabs too?
Absolutely local.councils and planners wanted everyone living in high density housing..witb no real open spaces to speak of. So everyone will be living in concrete jungles. Planners never learn from their mistakes. Hence why many housing estates have since been demolished and rebuilt.