Surrey Canal station/Surrey Canal redevelopment

Last week Lewisham Council's strategic planning committee agreed to grant planning permission for the massive redevelopment of the land surrounding Millwall Stadium, known simply as Surrey Canal (subheading: London's Sporting Village).

Developer Renewal is planning a large-scale redevelopment of the site, which intends to deliver some 2,400 new homes, as well as new sporting facilities, retail units, cafes and restaurants and 'business incubation and creative space' whatever that means. It's difficult to work out from a brief trawl through the site, what will happen to the businesses that are located in the Surrey Canal triangle. Perhaps they will simply disappear as if they were in the Bermuda triangle...?!

Among all the doom and gloom of Deptford's ongoing redevelopment battles, it's good to see something positive emerge from a planning application. The area will finally get a much-needed link into London's overground system, with Renewal committing to top up the funding needed to build a new station at the site.

The planning documents state:
Renewal has confirmed that in the new Surrey Canal Road Rail Station they will bridge the funding gap to ensure its delivery at the outset of the development, improving accessibility to the local area in the early stages of development.

I can only assume that they must have read my comment back in May ("Surrey Canal Station, which would be right next to the site and has been proposed as part of the second phase of the East London Line extension, needs extra funding before it can be built. With this in mind I would expect the site developer to top up the pot so that its construction can be assured.") and have clearly acted upon my instructions ;-)

Joking aside, for once it makes perfect sense. I only found out very recently that TFL had actually agreed to include a 'station box' in its designs for the new line at this location. Construction work is well advanced already, and now when I pass it on my daily cycle commute, I'll no longer experience huge feelings of futility and anger against the world at the stupidity of such a missed opportunity!

Renewal's Surrey Canal website provides a couple of images for us to muse on, although how accurate they are it's hard to know - this is only outline planning permission after all. I'm sure there will be a lot of local people getting excited at the sight of the corner of that logo peeking out from behind the sculpture, although the rendering of the station - and in particular the colour scheme - does seem to have been put together by someone having a bad acid trip.