We are pleased to announce that Mitcham Heritage Day 2020 will take place on 12 September.
We are planning the day, and will release more information about what you can expect to see soon.
Please visit our dedicated Mitcham Heritage Day page, check back often, or sign up to our email list.
Merton Council set up its own property development arm, Merantun, in 2017.
Its first four schemes include controversial developments on both Raleigh Gardens car park and the former Canons nursery. You can see what we thought of the schemes in earlier blogs for Raleigh Gardens car park here and the Canons nursery site here. They don’t make for pleasant reading.
Despite the controversy Merantun is pressing ahead.
Its first planning applications are to be decided by councillors on the Planning Applications Committee next Thursday 16th July.
Given Merton Council is both developer and local planning authority it is a major test of the probity of planning decisions in Merton.
The challenge is made even greater by the fact that two of Merton Council’s most senior officers – the head of Future Merton (responsible for planning policies) and the Assistant Director for Sustainable Communities (responsible for the Planning Division and for Future Merton) – are Merantun’s Director of Design and Managing Director respectively. Merton’s Chinese Walls must be particularly robust.
Merantun has made only small changes to its original plans for Raleigh Gardens car park. This is despite evidence that they are in flagrant breach of Merton’s own planning policies, will dominate the skyline, and will result in only 45% of Glebe Court’s windows facing the new development meeting official guidelines for daylight and a shocking 29% being “subject to noticeable losses”.
None of these issues are addressed by changing a pitched roof into a flat one. Any faith which we might have had in the architects is further undermined when the original planning documents hailing the importance of a “distinctive pitched roof” for “referencing the common roof form seen on Mitcham’s high streets and adjacent residential buildings” and for “creating variation” and a “suitable façade proportion” are so easily set aside.
The changes to the scheme for The Canons are even more limited. This is despite the immense sensitivity of a development site located in historic ground and between listed mansion houses (The Canons and Park Place).
The development will create significant conflicts with the ambitions of the £5m Lottery-funded programme currently underway.
Even Merton Council’s own Design Review Panel described it as “too harsh and clunky” and “too busy, intense and slightly military in feel”. We still can’t quite believe the blank elevation shown in the image is still being put forward.
Adding insult to injury is recent confirmation that the original arboricultural report was flawed and that the magnificent Pagoda tree – Merton’s current Tree of the Year – will have to lose one third of its canopy and not be allowed to grow any larger to accommodate the development.
It is also of great concern that Merton Council is gerrymandering its own policies on providing affordable homes.
These require at least 40% of the homes being provided on each site to be affordable and state that affordable homes should only be provided on other sites in “exceptional circumstances”.
Instead Merantun is proposing just 22.5% of the 93 homes will be affordable and they will all be put on one site (Elm Nursery car park). This is the behaviour we sometimes see from profit-motivated private developers. It is unconscionable that Merton Council is even putting this forward let alone that it might give the green light to such a distortion of its own planning policies.
The papers before the Planning Applications Committee even admit that no legal mechanism has been found to bind one part of Merton Council (Merantun) to deliver affordable homes to another part of Merton Council (local planning authority) and that this “presents challenges”.
Councillors are encouraged simply to overlook this fundamental problem when deciding on the planning applications and told it “should not be an impediment”. We trust they will see through this approach.
We know it will be hard for Merton Council to refuse planning permission for a Merton Council development. Given the massive shortcomings in what has been put forward we cannot see that it has any other option. Merantun needs to be setting the standard and it simply must do better.
Read our latest views:
Merton Council has published a draft Heritage Strategy to 2025. It should provide a basis to protect, manage and celebrate our diverse heritage and for Merton Council to demonstrate a strong commitment to its future.
We’ve welcomed the intent of a Strategy while asking for more evidence that the lessons have been learned from the weak delivery of the current Strategy agreed in 2015.
Regrettably in our experience the existing Heritage Strategy is all but invisible in discussions with Merton’s planners and those responsible for the local authority’s land and buildings.
Merton Council has delivered on only two of the ten commitments in the current action plan where responsibility lies outside the heritage team. The former Mitcham fire station has been sold off, the Borough Character Study remains unfinished and delivery of The Canons project is already a year behind schedule. There is little value in a Heritage Strategy which is all but ignored by its authors.
The Heritage Strategy places a welcome emphasis on the opportunities for collaboration with voluntary organisations and community groups with an interest in heritage. This sits awkwardly with Merton Council disbanding Merton Heritage Forum in January leaving no other means to collaborate available. The Merton Heritage Forum shambles is perpetuated by officers now claiming it has “not been disbanded” and confirming that doing so results in “no direct costs savings”. The truth is the Council meeting in January decided to “dissolve” the Forum and deleted it from Merton’s constitution.
Delivery of the Heritage Strategy at a time of tight public spending requires ever more attention to the ability of Merton Council to partner with other organisations. With the shining exception of the Heritage and Local Studies Centre, our general experience is one of a top down, uncommunicative organisation which offers little respect for local knowledge and is often absent from the heritage scene.
One example is that it is harder to secure participation of Merton Council owned buildings in Mitcham Heritage Day every year than working with any of our volunteer-run partners. The experience of trying to partner on The Canons project funded by the National Lottery has been head-bangingly frustrating over nearly 10 years, to the point of turning volunteers away.
As a result we have asked Merton Council to progress with the Strategy only when it can provide a clear corporate commitment to heritage, practical mechanisms for collaboration, and an ability to be a good partner. Without these in place the renewed Strategy will be a paper exercise.
We’ve also suggested a more robust approach with a much briefer document supported by principles, a delivery plan and success measures which can be used to judge progress. This should be supported by clear mechanisms for delivery and review and a visibly enhanced corporate commitment from all parts of Merton Council to our heritage.
You can read our full response to Merton’s draft Heritage Strategy here.
Mitcham Bridge on Bishopsford Road is the historic gateway to Mitcham across the River Wandle.
You can still see the remains of the old ford on the upstream side. It is located in an important green corridor linking Ravensbury Park and the National Trust’s Watermeads and supports the Wandle Trail.
It is a year since the bridge was closed by flooding while repair works were underway.
Eight months later Merton Council decided that the only way forward was to demolish and build a new bridge. Demolition is underway and Merton Council invited comments on two options for the design of the new parapets last month. We have teamed up with Wandle Valley Forum and Mitcham Society to respond.
The future of Mitcham Bridge is much more important than the design of its parapets.
It is an historic location and it is important that this heritage is recognised and protected. The current bridge carries parish markers as the river is the parish boundary. We have asked that these are incorporated into the new bridge.
There are opportunities for interpretation to tell the story of the area and we’ve offered to work with Merton Council on a project to deliver this.
The works also provide an opportunity to better connect Ravensbury Park and the new bridge should support a wider pavement and make space for those on bikes.
Crossing the new Mitcham Bridge should be an event. We’re asking Merton Council to be more creative and recognise the Wandle through some public art, such as images of a heron or trout rendered in decorative wrought iron railings.
We’ve asked Merton Council to demonstrate how the new bridge will meet the legal requirement to preserve and enhance Wandle Valley Conservation Area. It also needs to support the Catchment Management Plan for the Wandle by enhancing the river’s natural flow, naturalising its banks. reducing shadowing, benefiting wildlife and protecting the water from pollution and silt.
Building a new bridge is a rare and special event. We deserve the best for Mitcham.
Take a look at our joint submission – Bishopsford Road bridge.
The former Sparrowhawk Yard overlooking Three Kings Piece is a classic brownfield site which can benefit from development.
It is also an unfortunate example of how developers bring forward schemes that are too large for their site and don’t fit into the local area.
A four storey scheme for 29 flats was recommended for approval last year by Merton Council officers. Fortunately, the Planning Applications Committee held firm against its impact and were vindicated on appeal when the Planning Inspector concluded it would harm the “character and appearance” of the area and was in conflict with Merton’s Local Plan.
We might have expected Merton’s officers to have reached this conclusion earlier.
Undeterred the developers have returned with a scheme for 25 flats that is only marginally smaller and which suffers from many of the same design flaws that led to the previous refusal.
The new proposal is welcome for having some more design detail and improving the quality of the flats as living accommodation but it still falls well short of what’s required for a sensitive site adjacent to the Conservation Area.
The impact on Three Kings Piece could be significant but no images have been provided despite its importance to the planning decision.
The scheme is also based on parking assumptions that include the illegal fly parking on registered Town Green along Commonside East.
We have interrogated the assumptions that result in no affordable homes being provided and found them wanting. They fail to include any estimate of the cost of affordable homes and simultaneously claim to have been prepared “with regard to” and “not in accordance with ” the professional surveyor standards known as the “Red Book”.
We are asking Merton Council to reject the scheme.
Merton Council’s Design Review Panel provides important, independent and expert insight on key development proposals put forward in Merton.
It is made up of architects, urban designers and others who review developments, usually before they become planning applications, and offer an overall judgement of their merit as being Red, Amber or Green.
The Panel’s views have a major influence on the Planning Applications Committee when decisions are made.
The essence of design review is that the Panel discusses the proposals together and collaborates in arriving at an overall view. This is clearly challenging during lockdown but we have been surprised and disappointed to find “meetings” on two key developments in Cricket Green – the design code for the 850 home mega scheme on Benedict Wharf and the latest flats plans for the KwikFit site (pictured) – have been undertaken by email.
We have teamed up with the architects behind the latest KwikFit plans to write to Cabinet Member Martin Whelton and Planning Committee Chair Linda Kirby to share our concerns and ask for changes to be made. Conducting design review by email works against the:
We believe these issues could be addressed during lockdown by adopting the same approach to online meetings as Merton Council has taken for Cabinet and Planning Applications Committee.
It also points to the opportunity for further strengthening the process post Covid-19, including the benefit of having an independent secretariat for managing the Design Review Panel so the views of officers and councillors who are also responsible for making decisions on planning applications are kept separate.
Mitcham Cricket Green Community & Heritage 