onionbagblog

Here we go again…

Streatham Hub - it’s the Lambeth planning hot potato that no one wants to take hold of. Especially so Tesco, the corporate paymaster.

The latest twist in the decade long running farce to build a new ice rink and leisure centre in SW16 took another spin this week. With @lambeth_council cabinet planning to place the permanent temporary ice pad down the A23 at Pope’s Road, resistance has already started to organise.

The fine Friends of Brixton Market [disclosure: I am a member, along with a rather decent @LambethLabour councillor] voted on Tuesday to formally oppose the planning application for Pope’s Road.

With the council owned car park having been closed since December 2009 because of “structural difficulties,” traders have reported a loss of up to 30% in earnings. As one representative stated at the recent cabinet meeting, customers buy in bulk in Brixton. With nowhere to park, the trade moves out of the area.

There is a feeling of a double whammy by @lambeth-council, straight in the face of the Friends of Brixton Market. Not allowing customers to use cars to shop in the area is bad enough, but trade is then shifted out elsewhere - probably to Streatham, and probably towards the corporate paymaster that is Tesco, once the new store is built.

Meanwhile, back in SW16 and the hockey players and skaters of Streatham don’t want to make the reverse journey down to Brixton. Never the twain shall meet, or so it seems.

The decision by the Friends of Brixton Market to directly take on @lambeth_council is a repeat all over again of the highly successful campaign put in place by the Hands Off Our Common group.

Alarmed that a public space was going to be the permanent temporary place for the ice pad, the group mobilised and campaigned, forcing cabinet to make an embarrassing U-turn. A similar show of resistance from local people will cause considerable embarrassment to a cabinet that has pretty much run out of ideas when it comes to the Streatham Question.

It is unlikely that any of the other twelve sites will now be considered. Brixton was the best of a bad bunch. Brockwell Park and Clap’ham Common will meet the same show of resistance from the respective Friends groups.

The tragedy of the situation is that local communities are being pitted against one another by a cabinet that has the answer sitting right on it’s SW16 doorstep. The possible site along Streatham High Road remains vacant. All that it requires is for the corporate paymaster to put its fingers in the pie and cough up a bit more.

With a demand for 40% more retail space from the original planning application, it seems that the you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours arrangement that has come to characterise Streatham Hub, isn’t quite as equal as both bed fellows like to portray.