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Portsmouth Road
Campaign group calls on residents to submit ideas for Surbiton filter beds
A campaign group is calling for new ideas for the Surbiton filter beds, ahead of a planning appeal by the company wanting to build floating homes there.
The Friends of Seething Wells will host a public meeting to discuss the future of the site, in the wake of Hyrdo Properties’ failed bid to build a 64 home, 92 berth marina in January. .
The council unanimously rejected Hydro Properties’ application to build floating homes on the site, at a development control meeting earlier this year. The company announced it would appeal the decision last month.
Kingston and Surbiton MP Edward Davey will be speaking at the meeting arranged by the Friends of Seething Wells. They are hoping to exchange ideas for a project that will fit in with the heritage and ecological aspects of the site.
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Comments
The problem is that housing is the only thing lucrative enough to make Thames Water agree to sell the site.
Sure, the ideal situation would be to make this area into a nature reserve with perhaps one or two cafes and a swing bridge to allow Surbiton residents easy access to Home Park. But it won't happen for the same reason that this site has been left for so many years to turn into an eyesore - money!
Yeah, but the site is effectively worthless to Thames Water if it remains (rightly) zoned as Metropolitan Open Land.
Nobody will never be allowed to build housing so long as it is MOL zoned, well not unless they can demonstrate exceptional benefit to the wider community.
By no stretch of a developer’s imagination can the creation of more flats in Surbiton be regarded as an exceptional benefit, given the proliferation of flats in Surbiton over the last 10 years. A new, closed loop footpath that doesn’t lnik to the rest of the riversdie walk similarly fails the exceptional benefit test. The developers' forthcoming appeal should be rejected on exceptionl benefit grounds alone, never mind the environmental damage to bats, birds, etc.
A footbridge to Home Park might be a game changer though.
Surbiton is deficient in large greenspace, as evidenced in the Kingston Open Space Assessment Volume 1: Greenspace Needs Assessment May 2006 ( http://www.kingston.gov.uk/final_report_updated_19_07_06_.pdf ).
Yet, a mere river’s width away, we have Home Park, the most underutilised of public spaces. A footbridge linking the two, to be provided by any developer in conjunction with apartments, would provide exceptional benefit. That's the only circumstance that would make me change my mind.
I totally agree with you about the MOL designation, but what is stopping Thames Water just mothballing the site until they or someone else strong-arms a change through?
A few years ago, there was a massive furore about plans to build a massive 'Student Village' on MOL between Berrylands and New Malden. The developers tried to get the designation changed, and I think it took Ken Livingstone to get it thrown out. Fast forward to 2013 and it looks as though they now have the go ahead to build the development and I haven't even seen an article in the Surrey Comet, the same paper that had a separate section on the debate at the time!
OK, this is a more important and emotive site, but Thames Water must see things like that and just wait for similar to happen.
You are right about the green space argument. Home Park and Bushy Park are 1,500 acres EACH, so must rank as one of the largest open spaces in London when taken together. That is a huge amenity for Surbiton-ites who at the moment are limited to Claremont Gardens and Victoria Park for their fresh air. This is especially important given that central Surbiton is largely made up of flats with no gardens of their own.
In a way I like Home Park how it is. It is amazing that you can walk all the way through it and hardly see another person, compared to neighbouring Bushy Park where there are queues to get into the car park and you take your life in your hands avoiding cyclists and baby buggies the whole time. I'd still like to be able to walk there from home in 5 minutes rather than the 20+ minutes it currently takes to get there!
An enterprize zone for hi tech start ups housed in neutral and naturally sourced materials with grass/meadow roofs and discreet solar panels and water wheels for energy would be smashing.
Rope in Kingston University and insist that the RBK does not charge any business rates or other charges for at least 5 years.
The natural grandeur of the river can be preserved and entrepreneurs would be able to start up and develop businesses which would then be encouraged to stay in the RBK on the new business park which could be built along with housing on the "Tesco" site in Tolworth
How can you possibly regard industrial start-ups as exceptional benefit when you admit in the same post that there are other sites in the locality that are already well suited. Any site can have the "green wash" treatment - that doesn't result in an exceptional benefit.
I'd like to see the Tolworth site developed as a massive office park, a mini canary wharf if you like, linked into a modified CR2 that would travel form Wimbledon, Nth Kingston, Kingston, Surbiton, Tolworth, Epsom, Leatherhead. The King George playing fields would get sacrificed, and the site would also include the Cox Lane Industrial park.
Easily,the river site can be in play very quickly.
Tolworth and CR2 ideas are quite right but given the planning delays over CR1,T5 and the endless shambles of LHR,are unlikely to be built in the next 30 years.
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