Pushing up – Drive House plans

New planing freedoms are encouraging property owners to add extra storeys to their buildings. We have seen a number of proposals along London Road, including Deseret House next to Glebe Court, and the latest is for Drive House.

The plan is to add two storeys to the existing three storey building that runs from Pawelek to Justin Plaza. It includes an important local shopping parade and two storeys of flats.

Where well designed and located we are supportive of efforts to make more effective use of brownfield sites and existing buildings to provide homes.

Our representations on Merton’s new Local Plan supported the allocation of 11 sites for the development of hundreds of new homes. Unfortunately the Drive House plans are for poor quality accommodation in a poorly designed vertical extension.

Drive House is designed as a three storey building and it sits well in London Road. With all the new build going on around it, including on the former KwikFit site and soon to be on the car wash site, it is important to retain existing building heights that protect the character of the townscape and avoid a canyon of new building along London Road.

The detailed design of the proposed vertical extension is also harmful to the external appearance of Drive House. It lacks appropriate architectural detailing and relates uneasily to the existing building which was not designed to be of this scale.

We also question whether Drive House qualifies for the fast track planning freedoms under which the application has been made. These exclude proposals within 3km of an aerodrome. The helipad at St George’s Hospital falls within this definition and it is just under 3km away.

Whatever happens to the plans it is important that the owners maintain the building better. It has been allowed to develop a serious maintenance backlog and action is needed to address the decaying awning which has lost render, causes leaks in the shops below and is now surmounted by numerous buddleia plants. Merton Council has powers to require this to be remedied without giving permission for new development.

You can read our full response here.

Mitcham Heritage Day Saturday 10 September 2022

10:00am to 4:30pm Saturday 10 September 2022

Mitcham Heritage Day is our annual celebration of local heritage.

Thank you to all the volunteers who have worked hard to help make Mitcham Heritage Day 2022 happen, to those who have given financial support, and to Merton Council’s Heritage and Local Studies service for providing exhibitions. 

Download our map for use on the day.

If you enjoy Mitcham Heritage Day do please consider becoming a member. Your membership fee will help us run Mitcham Heritage Day in the future, as well as supporting all the other work we do.

Here is the programme – do check back before coming along for any last minute additions and alterations.

Mitcham Cricket Green Community & Heritage
10.30am guided walk around the gems of Mitcham Cricket Green. Allow 1 hour.
Assemble on cricket ground opposite pavilion.
We will stop at the Canons Café where Walk and Talk walkers can join us.

Mitcham Cricket Green Community & Heritage
10.00am to 4.30pm Heritage Shorts self-guided tour.
Learn more about Mitcham Cricket Green at a range of information points. Visit as a self-guided walk or check each location out as you are passing. All the information points can be found on the downloadable map on this page – they are marked with an orange H.

Mitcham Parish Church – the current church building is celebrating 200 years since opening
10.00am to 4.00pm church open.
10.30am to 12.00pm bell tower ringing room open with bell ringing demonstrations. NB the tower is accessed via a spiral staircase.
1.00pm and 3.00pm Introduction to the Graveyard talk and tour. Participants should wait in the church.
Exhibitions relating to the church building and its history back to Medieval times.
Exhibition provided by Merton Council’s Heritage and Local Studies service What’s in a name? : The history behind Mitcham streets and properties.
Refreshments.

Cricket Green School
10.00am to 4.30pm access via main gate of school on Church Road.
See the remains of the Grade II listed arch of 14th Century Hall Place in school grounds.

Wandle Industrial Museum
10.00am to 4.30pm museum open as normal. The museum has exhibitions on the history and heritage of the people and industries of the Wandle Valley. Mitcham has a rich heritage of industry which included a number of mills on the River Wandle. ​Volunteers will be on hand to answer your questions.
10.30am unveiling of the final part of the museum’s Changing the View project. This project aims to improve the external view of the museum building.

Conservation Station at Wandle Industrial Museum
12.00pm to 3.00pm. Drop in to meet professional book conservator Katarina Kelsey, who will provide Mitcham Heritage Day’s very own Repair Shop. Katarina will show you historic book structures, the creepy crawlies and materials that eat books up, and will demonstrate how book conservators repair historic books and manuscripts. Materials provided for children to make their own origami book structures. 

Mitcham Cricket Club
10.30am to 4.00pm cricket pavilion open.
12.00pm walk the boundary for a talk on the history of cricket on the Green. Starts and ends at the cricket pavilion.
Exhibition A Mitcham Man’s 1876 tour of Australia & New Zealand with Lillywhite’s XI including viewing the “lost” painting of the Incident at the Otira Gorge.
Refreshments.

The Canons
12.00pm to 4.00pm house open for visitors.
Activities.
Exhibition.

Mitcham Methodist Church
10.00am to 4.30pm church open.
Volunteers available throughout the day to tell visitors about the church and show them around.

Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church
11.00am to 2.00pm church open.
11:00am, 12:00pm, 1:00pm guided tours of church and garden.
Exhibition Photographs of the Consecration in the parish room.
Exhibition provided by Merton Council’s Heritage and Local Studies service A Time of New Beginnings : Images of Mitcham during its 1930s heyday.
Refreshments.

The Small Quarter
The Ravensbury, 260 Croydon Road, CR4 4JA. About 5 minutes walk from No10 on the Mitcham Heritage Day flyer map.
12.00pm to 3.30pm open to visitors.
The Small Quarter is a rapidly developing garden that aims to become a sustainable community asset for Mitcham and heritage for the future.
Informal tours, including information about the Blue House Cottages that used to sit on the site (dating back to the 18th Century) and also the new rainwater harvesting system.

Mitcham Community Choir
Look out for impromptu pop-up singing at different locations from Mitcham Community Choir throughout the day.

Melanie’s Walk
1.30pm start at Mitcham Junction Railway Station Carshalton Road, CR4 4HN. Allow 1.5 to 2 hours.
A walk around Mitcham and Mitcham Common, visiting various heritage sites.
Finishes at the Wandle Industrial Museum.

Mary Tate’s Almshouses
Event cancelled
1.15pm talk on the history of Mary Tate, her almhouses and her almswomen.
2.00pm talk about Croydon Almshouses Charities (owner of the cottages) and future plans.
Crafts area with competition for the best Mitcham Heritage Day poster, winner announced 1.15pm
Exhibition on the history of the cottages.
Refreshments and sweet cart.

 

Celebration evening concert at Mitcham Parish Church
7.00pm Mitcham Heritage Day Opera Gala.
The Merry Opera Company presents popular operatic classics from Nessun Dorma to Gilbert & Sullivan.
Tickets £16 (£10 under 18s) from 020 8646 0666.

 

 

Mitcham Heritage Day is part of Wandle Fortnight 2022 and Heritage Open Days.

Thanks go to Wandle Fortnight and The Canons (via the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the National Lottery Community Fund) for their financial support.

 

   

Local Plan scrutiny begins

Merton Council’s new planning blueprint is about to be subject to independent examination by Government appointed inspectors.

This will review a range of topics in a series of hearing at the Civic Centre. The hearings begin on 14 June and are expected to run well into the autumn. They will be open to the public to attend as observers.

We’ve written before about how important the Local Plan is for Mitcham.

The Inspectors have already highlighted serious issues noting “A number of the representations made also highlight drafting errors such as incorrect policy numbers, incomplete sentences, and missing text along with potential factual errors. These matters are exacerbated by a lack of integration in the Plan’s presentation and a lack of clarity as to how the chapters relate to one another. Overall, the Plan therefore reads in a somewhat fragmented and disjointed manner and the strategy is therefore challenging to understand and follow.” We are pleased that these issues are finally getting the attention they deserve.

Topics to be covered at the hearings include the overall vision, tall buildings, green space and the development of sites including Benedict Wharf, Mitcham Gasworks, Wilson Hospital, and Merton Council’s own plans for The Canons nursery and Raleigh Gardens car park. It is also an opportunity to restate the case for Mitcham to be recognised as a village.

We’ve asked to speak on five key issues and you can read our latest submissions below.

Local elections 2022 – our Cricket Green questions for candidates

We will have three new ward councillors for Cricket Green following the Local Elections on 5th May. All three incumbents are stepping down, two after a single four year term.

As the local civic society we have asked 10 questions about key local issues of all 11 candidates from the five political parties standing in Cricket Green ward. The questions cover issues including the future of the Wilson, the impact of high rise tower blocks and how Cricket Green can best respond to the climate and ecological emergencies. Candidates have also been asked about how they will secure the future of cricket on the green and protect the Conservation Area. We have also asked how they will support the character of Mitcham Village and ensure swift action on fly tips. Candidates have also shared their favourite places in Cricket Green.

Every political party has responded. We thank them for engaging. Their answers are revealing. As a local charity it is not for us to take sides in the election. The responses speak for themselves and we hope you find them useful. We look forward to working with the successful candidates when they become our ward councillors after the election.

Read the responses to our Cricket Green questions – Local election 2022 – party responses

Car wash redevelopment should be fronted by shops not bin sheds

New plans for nine homes on the car wash site at 370 – 374 London Road are now with Merton Council to decide.

We earmarked the site to be allocated for building in the Local Plan and support its use for a combination of new homes and an extension of the local shopping parade.

Merton Council agreed with our approach.

The developers have other ideas and propose a line of bin sheds and cycle stores along London Road instead of shops and local services.

We’ve objected to this, and also objected to the loss of adjacent trees without planned replacements and the proposal for a shallow green roof which falls well short of official standards.

There are no affordable homes in this proposal, and the flats will generate an extra 5 or 6 cars with no parking to be provided.

It is planned to collect bins and make deliveries from London Road which is sure to create congestion and conflict with buses, cyclists and pedestrians.

The building design is better that earlier plans for 19 flats but lacks detail and key documents which are required to be provided are still missing.

We have asked Merton Council to reject the plans and invited the developers to come back with new proposals once they have involved local people.

Read our submission on the latest plans for the car wash site 370-374 London Road – Jan 22

Future of Mitcham Gasworks could determine character of Mitcham

Developers are considering building 13 storey tower blocks on Mitcham Gasworks that would be fully 15meters (more than 60%) taller than the bell tower on Mitcham Parish Church.

The current plan is for no public consultation on the development until after the design has been firmed up.

This is a proposal with huge ramifications for Mitcham and here we set out the issues and our views on how Mitcham Gasworks can be developed to provide hundreds of homes more in keeping with the local area.

The locally listed gasholder on Mitcham Gasworks was demolished just before Christmas clearing the way for a major development on the edge of Mitcham’s village centre.

The decision over what gets built is already shaping up to be pivotal in deciding on the future of Mitcham.

Will Mitcham be more like Carshalton Village or take a different direction and follow Colliers Wood and Hackbridge?

Will Mitcham retain its character of low and medium rise homes built at gentle density around an historic pattern of streets and green spaces? Or are we now looking at an alternative future where high rise tower blocks create something very different?

We’re keen to see the Mitcham Gasworks site used to provide hundreds of new homes. We’ve supported it being allocated for major development in Merton Council’s new Local Plan and have now met with the prospective developers, St William who are part of the Berkeley Group.

St William have so far refused to share details of what they are considering for the site despite them being put to Merton’s Design Review Panel last month. We’re told they are being amended following the Panel’s meeting.

It seems the local community is unable to be trusted with seeing how the designs develop, and will not be given the opportunity to inform the thinking at this crucial stage. Instead a basic “consultation” event for a preferred plan is being arranged for early in 2022 – after all the main creative work in deciding what will be built has been finished.

We’re told the current plans are for 650 flats rising to a towering 13 storeys.

Only around one third of the new homes may meet the official definition of “affordable” (and even this remains out of the range of most local people) and there will be a large number of “single aspect” flats with windows on just one side.

The decision over the future of Mitcham Gasworks is too important to just wait and see what the developers come up with.

We’ve prepared a 12 point summary of our expectations for the site and how it should be developed. Key points include:

  • New buildings should be no greater than six storeys high and the scale of development should respect Merton Council’s planning expectations for no more than 400 homes on the site.
  • The design should feel like a natural extension of Mitcham, creating a new neighbourhood based on streets and avoiding alien tower blocks with no local precedent.
  • People should be able to walk and cycle but not drive through the site and it should open up new and improved routes to Church Road
  • Field Gate Lane should be widened to become a new green route for walking and cycling while respecting its historic significance.
  • At least half of all new homes should be affordable and all should be at least dual aspect
  • The history of the site should be thoroughly investigated, including the potential for Roman remains, and this should inform its design and interpretation.
  • The development should result in major investment in local community facilities, including Miles Road Playing Fields, Mitcham Community Orchard, Abbeyfield Close Recreation Area and Mitcham Parish Centre.
  • The development should be co-designed with the local community

13 storey tower blocks have no place in Mitcham and we stand ready to work with the developers and Merton Council to support an alternative development at Mitcham Gasworks which provides hundreds of new homes while respecting Mitcham’s character and meeting local community needs.

Read Mitcham gasworks – site expectations