Minutes:
4. Mayor’s Question Time
4.1 Mayor Damien Egan gave a short presentation setting out Lewisham’s achievements over the past four years and priorities going forward.
4.2 The Chair thanked the Mayor for the presentation and opened the floor to questions.
Q. In regards of an innovative approach to quality social housing, what is the plan going forward?
A. We try to find difficult and unused sites, for example community land trust on an old car parking or Place Ladywell site using modular construction. We would like to bring back the radical tradition of Council Housing as high quality housing. Council planning is trying to resist the development of modular accommodation for individual living units and co-living such as students accommodation.
Q. The resident expressed the concern for the Borough to become a dormitory borough where people don’t get involved in the borough; part of this is because there aren’t too many businesses in the borough and there isn’t much in the local plan to attract business. What can be done to increase business and people living and working in the borough, that would also reduce traffic when people work where they live?
A. Through COVID there was a drop everywhere in terms of people spending time in the high streets, not in Lewisham, where the 70% are small independent businesses. This and the night time economy strategy are very important, Lewisham is still not a Saturday night destination.
Lewisham has the highest number of micro-businesses, there is a shortage of office space and this should be reflected in the local plan. Prior COVID we hosted a “Meet they buyers” event, a local marketplace where people could meet buyers also from providers across the borough and surrounding boroughs. However any idea on how to attract businesses can be fed back in the local plan.
Hatcham House is a good example in the ward of increasing community work space activities.
Q. It seems that work space is declining rather than increasing.
A. It is seen as a concern, Government planning rules make very easy to convert office to residential. Some office spaces have been converted into tiny units priced at housing benefits level.
Q. Southwark has a lot of notices for article 4 direction, preventing people turning shops into residential. What is happening in Lewisham?
A. Article 4 direction has been introduced in 3 wards Whitefoot, Bellingham and Downham where 3 bedroom houses were converted to house 6 people, sharing facilities. We are looking to extend this to the whole borough.
Q. I know that we want to support the independent businesses but what are we doing to attract chains as they are the bigger employers? People can live local, work local and juggle parenting commitments.
A. 30% of businesses are chains, we have seen growth around the gym chains that provide jobs and training, less around retail and restaurants.
Local businesses are more likely to employ local people and buy from local businesses, helping to keep the economy in the locality. We want a mix and a balance but we don’t want high streets that look all the same with the same shops. It is also concern to see big retailers closing down on the high street.
When discussing New Cross Sainsbury’s development ideas, the Cllrs confirmed that they would not approve anything involving the closure, being very valuable also as an employer.
Q. In our ward there are 6 pubs, there were the places to build social capital. Is there a way to be more proactive and have a strategy to repurpose local pubs as community assets and to keep them. This is thinking about heritage in a broader way aside the listed buildings.
A. We are looking into “The Ravensbourne” at the moment. The owner of the Catford Tavern wanted to sell it to Tesco’s, the Council listed it as an “asset of community value” and made impossible to do anything else than functioning as a pub. The Council has been adding more pubs to “assets of community value”.