Agenda and minutes

The bids are in and the assessment is done, hear from the local groups who have applied for funding from the Catford South Local Assembly. They are coming along to tell you more about their projects and give you a chance to ask questions – This one’s against the clock, so should be lively!

Hear from the following organisations about their projects.

3rd & 8th Catford Brownie Units
St Laurence Church – Sunbeam Tots Nursery  
Lewisham Tigers FC
Lewisham Youth Theatre
Diamond Club
Lewisham MindCare (part of Bromley & Lewisham Mind)
Age Exchange
Corbett Resident Association
The Archibald Corbett Community Library, Arts and Heritage Centre

Organisations applying for funding – each organisation delivered a 3 minute presentation against the clock

                                                                                                                        £15,000

The following are a synopses of their projects

1 - 3rd & 8th Catford Brownie Units, Brownie Sleepover on HMS Belfast£790
We will be: Developing opportunities for local children - Allowing them to socialise together, make lasting friendships, develop independence and learn new skills.We are planning a sleepover exclusively for our two Brownie units on HMS Belfast, including educational and fun activities, working as a group, learning to mix with girls from different backgrounds and cultures and making lasting friendships, at a price that makes it inclusive to all our members.
Members of the 3^rd & 8^th Catford Brownie units and their adult leaders would meet in Catford and travel together to London in order to spend a night on HMS Belfast, organised by the Imperial War Museum.
On arrival in the evening there will be activities tailored to our group which will be informative and fun. We will stay together on-board, learning what life was like for sailors, as well as understanding cultural diversity, working as a team and sharing experiences.
The girls should gain confidence and independence by staying away from home in a safe and controlled environment. We hope to build lasting friendships and a greater sense of community than we can in our brief weekly meetings.
We hope to make time on the second day to explore further, both on-board and in the local area. There will also be introductory and follow up activities during our regular meetings.
The children should benefit from learning social skills, the need for tolerance and understanding when interacting with others and gain further independence, which should benefit the local community as a whole.

2 - St Laurence Church, Sunbeam Tots Nursery, £2000
Sunbeam Tots is a mother and toddler group based at St Laurence Community Centre.
We give children the chance to interact with their peers as they learn to communicate, play, make friends, share and care for each other. This experience will help them to grow, develop and develop lasting local friendships as they move onto local Nurseries. We provide a stimulating and inclusive environment.
Our activities include indoor play, story time with an activity related to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

The preliminary design for the Shopping Parade is almost finished and consultation will start in a couple of weeks-time.  Full update will be given at the Assembly meeting with an opportunity to say what you think about the design

Sandhurst parade shopping improvements – Paul Tagliarini Principal Urban Designer

My name is Paul Tagliarini and I work with a consultancy called Project Centre, working on behalf of Lewisham Council on Sandhurst/Sangly road improvements. Asked to give a short presentation today previous consultation the current scheme at the moment one of the key issues is parking there is not adequate parking for people to stop and shop, also drivers struggle to drive through the area, people park on both sides of the roads makes it too narrow to pass. a mixture pf pavement materials uneven and tired, street furniture clutter obstructing the pedestrians

June last year we did a consultation on initial proposal. sent out 150 consultation leaflets to residents and shopkeepers. Consulted with key stakeholders.

got comments back including keeping the current location of the crossing is the same after objections to move it on the previous proposal, more style of parking previous proposal most respondents were in favour of the scheme and wanted to see change

The latest consultation, hopefully would have received it and there are leaflets here today. Encourage a 20 mile speed limit, controlled parking, improve the overall appearance of the street and so on. Slow traffic down and help people crossing formalise the parking legally, deter people from parking on the opposite side of the roads, tree planting for nicer street scape, remove phone, new pacing for both sides like to unify the forecourts and the footway, but subject to permission of the freeholders of the forecourt

Q. In the proposed plans are you increasing or reducing parking.

A. We have increased parking. All the other bays are new parking.

Q. When is the construction anticipated, hopefully in march, how long will it take.

A. Not too sure maybe in the region of 4 months.

Q. What will happen at the top of Inchmary road, it is already chaos, it is the only way out of our area, there is a massive problem of people coming out of that road and St Fillian’s – originally you did look at changing that but that has not changed. People park across driveways, double parking.
Inchmary road, how are you going to make it bearable to get in and out.

A. We are restricted around this. Doing anything about the route people are driving is beyond our remit of the improvements.

Q. Repositioning of bus stops did you consider the locations of bus stops.

A. Originally we were going to stack the junctions but there were some safety concerns over that. There would be visibility issues on the moving of the bus stops, we have bought it out more into the carriageway, the bus will have more room. We are restricted as to where we can move it, due to the junctions.

Q. Are we having raised curbs to stop people driving onto the pavement and driving on the pavement.

A. We will have a 25 curb. The curbs are raised, by about an inch, we  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

Cllr Amrani - We have some lovely cakes provided for us by Truly Splendid, made especially for our assembly meeting. They are just moving into their new home at the Abbotshall Road, Healthy Lifestyle Centre. We are so grateful for them for providing them tonight and wish them every success in our ward.
Good Luck to Jenni and her team, please support a fantastic new local business!

We will be hearing from the Senior Programme Manager,
Regeneration and Place Team about the updated plans for Catford Town Centre:

·        What are the plans?

·        Is there anything to look at?

·        How can we feed in?

·        When will things begin to change?

·        Will these changes be for the better?

Just a few of the questions we hear from you, on thisimportant local issue. Now is your chance to ask the council for an update!

Catford Town Centre Regeneration Gavin Plaskitt – Manager Place and Regeneration Team

Catford will change! We need to be part of it from the beginning. Senior manager from Regeneration and Place team is here to give us a brief. What’s actually going to happen

Update about Catford town centre (the following notes are best read around the slides delivered by Mr Paskitt)

Good Evening. I work and live here in Catford south. I would like to see this come about. This have moved forward recently so I am here to give you an update on what we have been doing over the last 18 months

Issues holding up progress. Bringing the situation with the south circular to a close. The Bakerloo line extension, how we can configure the development of the Catford Town Centre to ensure we maximise this and finally we have been looking trying to get the sense of how we can deliver some meaningful change to get the Catford town centre back on track.

The key sites we have been working on.

The stadium site has been redeveloped near Catford station. We have been focusing on Milford towers, the Civic centres and Laurence house. The areas that the council owns most of – but not all of. We have also been looking at Plassy Road Island and the Wicks and Halfords site. For a well-connected town centre an out of town style of shopping style is really missing a trick, those style of shops with ground floor opportunities only could be far better utilised. Turning Catford back into the kind of place we all want to go sounds improbable at times. How should the town be shaped, to deliver its potential.

The infrastructure that may come to Catford could affect other areas around Lewisham as well, i.e. the Bakerloo line extension proposal currently there is a business case to bring it to Lewisham but business case to extend this as far as Ladywell and Catford bridge is not as strong. By developing Catford Town Centre we can show potential for those areas to grow and provide new homes will make that more attractive.

Gavin gave some background around the history of Catford

The Council have carried out lots of urban analysis, working on the master-planners who developed the Kings Cross master-plan and have bought about a step change to that area and have supported us in this process. When we look at how the centres in Lewisham borough historically worked, Lewisham Centre was the biggest shopping destination, people went there to visit department stores and so on. Catford was used more traditionally for food and groceries and was primarily about entertainment. Catford was the real entertainment hub of the borough. It had a theatre, 5 cinemas, dog track, skating rinks, it was an entertainment destination. Only the Broadway remains and is not performing as well as it could be.

What important is the areas that should be kept, the Victorian ring of shops, the theatre, the brutalist  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

·        Catford Film Feedback.

We funded Catford Film’s first major venture into community cinema last year – hear all about the outcomes from funding ‘Grease on the Green’ and how Catford Film has developed and grown over the last year

·          Corbett Estate Fireworks and Christmas Market Feedback
 

Last year this local assembly funded these great local events. We hear from the Corbett Residents Association about the positive impact these event have had on the community and what else is coming up locally.

Catford Film Feedback – ‘Grease on the Green’

I am Keith Arnold an a year ago I was here at the local assembly to bid for some money to put on a local cinema event – ‘Grease on Culverley Green’

So much has happened since then!

Last year at the assembly meeting there was just me and an idea, no concept of Catford Film at all, We were lucky to get voted for, I was just lucky to get through as the last project funded on the night – it nearly didn’t happen.

The project needed £3300, we received £2500 from the assembly as seed funding. We planned to crowd fund the rest. We were able to use the Council’s crowdfunding website, and got enough money to fund the rest. As Lewisham would match fund we could expand our plans

.

We wanted to support film locally and benefit the community and give a sense of community and local cohesion, we really achieved it, all starting with Grease on the Green.

The money we got from the Assembly was mainly spent on the projector, the sound system and the marketing, we also spent it on some port-a-loos for the night.

We put something on Facebook to get some interest locally from people who might be like minded and want to get involved, to plan the event. We got some great people to develop some great branding and we all came up with the concept of Catford Film.

One of the ideas was to do a practice run at the Catford Constitutional Club in December, we screened ‘Cinema Paradiso’. We had a full house and great feedback so we started to keep doing that and now do it regularly every 6 weeks.

By the time we got to the Culverley Green event, we knew what we were doing, we had 200 people, a bar, hot food from Uptown Jerk a local business, a DJ, everyone was dancing in front of the screen – it was fantastic.

I also wanted to put a film festival together, once we had got all the equipment in, we started to develop the film festival which we were able to do after we raised enough through match funding from Lewisham.

We adopted the ‘free film festival’ model. Instead of screening independent cinema, which I wanted to do initially, we went down the road of screening more mainstream films. The Great Gastby was the film we chose to open the festival, we also had the NHS choir, over 300 people. The only festival event that wasn’t that well attended was The Life of Brian on the Broadway, it was a cold night though. We carried out some film making workshops that were really successful.

The plans for Catford film now, we have planned going forward, looking for a permanent venue, there are 2 possible locations. We are going to do more workshops, screen more independent films.

We are looking for more sponsorship, if you are a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

Lewisham Pensioners Forum are now 30 years old. look into conditions for older people so founded a small group of retired trade unionists to get together to form a forum from that day we have grown tremendously. we paid quite a big part in the council, we have representatives on all the committees, the system has changed but we still make our voices heard we campaign to make sure that older people are treated well and looked after and somewhere to come to have advice, unfortunately we were thrown out of the Saville Centre, we are currently all over the place.

By reason to be here is to talk about the event the Financial Fair, we do it twice a year its next Wednesday 10-2pm in the Council Chamber and we have professional people there to give you financial advice, anyone can come, you don’t have to be an older person - you are very welcome!

Happy birthday to Barbara the assembly sang to Barbara who is an important member of the Catford South Community

Other Items of AOB were in the booklet to take home

Thank you all so much for coming and for your contributions

Meeting Closed