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Portsmouth Road
Most Surbiton residents back filter beds housing, claim developers
Residents opposing floating homes on Surbiton’s filter beds are outnumbered in every ward, the developers have claimed.
Hydro Properties leafleted houses in the run-up to Tuesday’s decision asking people to sign a letter of support for its plans. The plans would see 64 homes on a floating pontoon, with a marina, restaurant, nature reserve and riverside walk. Phillip Wallis, managing director of Hydro, claimed “a significant number” of opponents to the floating homes live outside Surbiton.
The company said some objections had come from as far away as France, and a table showed there was almost double the amount of supporters in the Kingston area compared with the number of oppositions. Mr Wallis also said some residents had volunteered to help deliver the newsletter Seething Wells Life alongside company representatives.
Eight councillors on the planning development control committee will make a decision on Tuesday night with their own planning officer recommending that building on the filter beds is permitted. Sport England, which was against the development, withdrew its objection days before the meeting, saying it would have no knock-on effect on river activity.
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Comments
I completely disagree that local residents want this shoddy scheme, the reverse is true. The people that I speak to say they are strongly opposed to the development and would much prefer to see the site developed as a successful wide life reserve. The development is about profit for the developer, the interests of Surbiton residents be dammed. The homes to be build will be super high cost i.e. £400k flats and £800k homes. Even the cars in the plans are Porsches etc. I am not anti people with money but let’s not kid ourselves that this development will do anything for housing issues.
A small number people are making a lot of noise about the develoment and giving false impressions. Every person I know in Surbiton wants it and I've lived by the river for 10 years.
And everyone I know doesn't.
Well we are not all fortunate to be mates with swampy and co.
Anyway I have to agree that everyone i had spoken to were in favor of the development for numerous reasons. I have no idea why there was such a campaign to stop this going ahead?
It's a real shame as what would of been an exciting development for Surbiton will now sit and decay further .....oh but wait a minute those 915 nature lovers will 'continue' to bird watch and nurture those endangered worms. Pretty pathetic really.
What is pathetic is that you would rather see another faceless development of overpriced housing, in a town that is bulging with architecturally crap, half finished developments that only benefit the developers, and not the residents.
There are one or two developments that have failed but what about the rest of the developments that have been successful? Too many to list or really care about and it's funny how certain people only focus on the negatives in life.
Well it's certainly not rocket science that developers want to make money, we all have to make a living somehow and as for overpriced housing....well I think the whole of Surbiton, Great London, Surrey etc fall into that bracket.
I like many others want to see a positive step forward that would bring something new to the area.
You might want to lighten up a little and stop being so angry with the world around you.
With the way things are going, and if the developers and council planners have their way, Surbiton will become a town of awful flatlets with no high street or infrastructure to support this, except a nice parade of "Local' overpriced late night supermarket shops. But hey, everyone has to make profit.
Well i don't think anyone wants Surbiton to turn into another North London type street but it does have to dabble in something new when given the opportunity.
I agree we don't need more developers building anymore shoe box flats at stupidly high prices as we have enough of those but it would of been nice to see unused land being turned into something useful. Let's be honest we are never going to see affordable housing round these parts.
Victoria road seems overrun with coffee houses and estate agents,I guess this reflects the young professionals who commute and clearly find
housing here affordable,if "affordable" is to mean "low cost" I fear the whole nature of the area will change.
I know it is terribly non PC and smacks of nimbyism but a degree of exclusivity and attractive, well maintained houses and flats attracts
the hard working and creative people that are such a benefit to these suburban streets,which can often become the spring board for new entrepreneurs to set up in the small shops which seem to be so desired these days.
Perhaps we should encourage more executive housing as it certainly improves the area,I used to live in Fulham and the change over the last 25 years there has been staggering,maybe our city fathers should push for a London SW postal area code to attract even more wealthy young people?
For me, one of the attractions of Surbiton is the mix of everything that you get here. It is not a snobby middle class 'ghetto' like Esher exclusively home to people who are all exactly the same, but neither is it a trendy urban area full of 'cool' people.
Because of this it feels like a proper, balanced town. The students and the weirdos in the post office and Wetherspoons are just as much a part of that as the majority of professional people that live here.
OK, the disadvantage of this is that the town centre feels a bit down at heel because the majority of the people with money to spend have vacated Surbiton during the week and are spending it in central London. A lot of the shops that are here (99p Store etc) cater for those left behind.
Apart from anything else, I think it is only this scruffiness and the name/Good Life association that is stopping Surbiton house prices going completely out of control. It already costs three-quarters of a million pounds to live in a boring 3 bed semi on The Mall!
If you cross the river to Teddington, you would have to pay well in excess of £1m for the same house near the river even though the train line is poor and it takes twice as long to walk to Kingston. The only difference I can see is that it's High Street is a bit more 'Chi-chi' and it hasn't got a name that has outsiders quietly sniggering.
I must say that I am not too keen on the development as outlined,on the other hand the site appears derelict and has done for many years.
Why not plant Leylandii on the outer circumference of the whole site and let it become a genuinely wild nature reserve and totally prohibit any
pedestrian access?
The filter beds need a bomb dropped on it... That will only improve this dank miserable hole in the ground. I'd rather see it turned into a travelers site than leave it as the rotten heart of 'Suburbiton'.
Careful what you wish for. I have a contact in Kingston Council and they are looking to erect a temporary travelers sight in the filter beds during the summer when the filter beds will be emptied as they need to up there quota on pitches given over to travelers. The proposal is for each filter bed tank to house upto 20 static caravans and one would be used as a 'stable' for horses etc....
A "temp" travellers site,only our loony left council tax raising council could dream that up,is this a whizzo diversity and inclusion idea from the Clegg and Davey think tank?
More likely a wind up but with politicians these days the more bizarre the idea is to its hard working residents and tax payers the more likely it is to be true,ye gods what have we come to?
Anything is better than a traveller's site. If that is not a wind-up, the people of Surbiton are going to have to get their home security sorted out pretty quickly.
One of the things I like about living in a built-up area is that there is little opportunity to accomodate travellers, so this would be a bit of a nightmare!
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