Gin and beer..

..not in the same glass I presume, but you never know. Might start a new trend.

That's the moniker of a new bar planning to set up in Resolution Way, which looks like it could soon  become the golden (quarter) mile of Deptford pub crawling if this trend continues. 

Gin & Beer (https://twitter.com/GinandBeerltd) is setting up shop in number 2 arch, right next door to Buster Mantis, and will apparently specialise in Belgian beers ('all styles including Trappist, new wave craft, lambic and sours') and a huge variety of gins too - about a hundred different ones. That's quite a night out.

There's still a way to go yet as they have only just applied for planning permission to convert the arch, but they have said in a News Shopper interview that they are planning to open in the next couple of months.

I wonder if they are paying attention to the recent issues next door?

The licensees of Buster Mantis were summoned to a hearing recently by the licensing committee, after ongoing problems with residents whose properties overlook Resolution Way. The bar is licensed until 2am at the weekends and residents complained about noise from music playing inside the bar, and the noise of customers leaving the bar in the early hours of the morning.

Although the licensing committee did not decide to reduce the opening hours of the bar, Buster Mantis was ordered to install double glazing to the two units, as well as fitting a 'noise limiter' inside to try and reduce the nuisance caused to neighbours by the music.

This is not going to help with the noise caused by customers leaving the bar in the early hours, which I imagine is amplified by the narrow street and tall buildings that run along both sides, and the impact of more boozers opening along here is only going to add to this. On the other hand, maybe the presence of more bars will enable multiple business owners to work together to minimise the impact by encouraging people to disperse quickly and quietly when they leave.

New Deptford pubs/eateries; the Royal Standard

In its former days this pub at the bottom of Tanners Hill had the claim to fame that even my ex had turned his nose up at drinking here, and he was notorious for his pub tolerance.

So with the refit and relaunch back in July I was optimistic that the result could only be an improvement - it was just a question of whether it would be sufficiently improved to tempt me to go that little bit further for a drink.

Initially I was disappointed that the refit did not include the introduction of any real ale - keg beer was on offer but it was either chilled and tasteless Meantime fizz or headache-inducingly-pricey 'craft' beers from south London. Some of their craft beers were so expensive I momentarily considered going teetotal.

Hence I let out a great cheer when I heard that they subsequently installed a hand-pump and were serving Sambrooks Wandle ale for just £3 a pint!

Even on my previous visits, while the beer range was disappointing, the food was good and the prices keen.

The menu is generally standard pub dishes - bangers and mash, burgers, fish & chips and so on - but done well and reasonably priced. Specials are often available and these are advertised on Twitter or Facebook. 

On my first visit, chicken livers on sourdough were pretty tasty and the mains (a veggie burger which no longer seems to be on the menu, being replaced by the mushroom/halloumi stack, and toulouse sausage & mash) were filling and hot. I wasn't too keen on the slate/mini fryer basket presentation of the burger but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the grub.

On my most recent visit (apologies no photos this time), the food was again delivered to a high standard. The calamari was as far as it could be from the regular tasteless rings - chunks of squid in crunchy batter which was properly seasoned and incredibly moreish - really wished we'd ordered a portion each. The only reason we did not fight over the last piece was that my companion is more gracious than me. 

Fish and chips was plentiful and fresh - great value at just over a tenner even if the 'mushy peas' were of the crushed variety, rather than being proper northern. Always something of a disappointment for me but all too common in this unenlightened city...

I was also heartened to see they are still offering cask ale at £3 a pint, which in itself is a good reason to drop by and check the place out. 

One thing I have a major beef with in the Royal Standard is the enormous screen that dominates the far end of the room and leers down over the vast majority of the dining tables. I had initially assumed that the screen was installed so that they could show sports, but it's been on every time I've visited and I find it very off-putting. 

Last time I dropped in the screen was showing 80s pop videos with the sound turned down and the radio playing instead, making it almost impossible to dine in comfort. People dining alone might like the screen it as a distraction, and no doubt it will earn its keep when there's sport to watch, but at any other time it's surely going to put off anyone who wants to eat in company? 

Only a handful of customers were in the bar at the time and this mish-mash of entertainment seemed to emphasise the emptiness of the place. If the food and drink are going to get the attention they deserve, I think this aspect really needs addressing. 

New Deptford eateries: The Full Nelson

The Full Nelson is the eagerly-awaited eatery from the team behind my favourite Deptford coffee shop, The Waiting Room; it opened a couple of months ago and is a bar that serves veggie and vegan 'junk food'.

(Photo by The Full Nelson)

It's not quite as minuscule as the tiny shop front on Deptford Broadway suggests, but it's still quite snug. However if you are familiar with the Waiting Room you'll realise that these guys are already adept at working miracles in confined spaces. 

From the front door the premises stretch back quite a way, opening out to make room for a long thin bar and a number of tables. The first couple of times I tried to visit were aborted due to the place being packed to the rafters, but having been back twice, the general impression is that they certainly seem to have achieved what they are aiming for, and it's definitely filling a gap in the market.

The drinks focus is on cocktails and shakes, with a selection of craft beers on offer at the bar, both draft and bottled. On Wednesdays you can get two cocktails for a tenner, rather than £7 each. No cask ale sadly, but I presume they just wouldn't get the turnover to make it viable. (Perhaps they could be persuaded to stock one or two traditional bottled ales for those who like something a bit less hoppy?)

(Photo by The Full Nelson)

The junk food range consists of veggie burgers, 'seitanic' wings or a faux-beef reuben stacker, with optional sides of fries (cheesy or otherwise) and battered jalapeños/pickles. Everything can be made vegan on request.

I tried out the Sith Burger as I am a big fan of the hot sauce that the Waiting Room puts into its falafel wraps - it didn't disappoint. Despite being a meat-eater I never turn up my nose at veggie fare, and the burger made a very acceptable substitute when compared to those bland potato-based things that are often served up elsewhere. We ordered the fries and the deep-fried sides too, all of which were good and fresh and crispy.

Food is priced very competitively with a burger and fries adding up to just £8 - and unlike most places you can save yourself a couple of quid if you are not so hungry by just ordering the burger. Drink prices are similar to elsewhere with the draft craft beer prices still able to make me wince a little.

In keeping with the 'junk food' theme the food is served very informally on greaseproof paper and plastic trays - not something I'm a fan of but I guess I'm just showing my age...! I always find burgers quite challenging to eat without dropping half the contents down my front. They should probably just give me one of those baby bib things and have done with it.

Opening hours are currently Wed - Sat from 4pm weekdays and from midday on the weekend. A great addition as far as veggie and vegan locals are concerned - I recommend even sceptical meat-lovers should give it a go, you may surprise yourselves.

The Full Nelson
http://thefullnelsondeptford.co.uk/home/

New hotel for Deptford High St

I wrote about the 'public consultation' on plans to build a new hotel next to Deptford Station last year. At the time it was simply a flyer and a couple of renderings, but now that a planning application has been submitted, I have been spending some time looking at the proposals in detail. If approved, the new hotel will frame the newly-created Deptford Project/Market Yard and the entrance to Deptford Station, so it seems salient to consider it a time when the public realm is finally about to come into use.

The application is for the demolition of the existing building which contains a number of flats and two shop units, along with a church hall at the rear, and replace it with a six storey hotel block of 70 bedrooms, including a new church hall (the freehold of the land belongs to the church next door). 

In the picture above, you can see the block of flats to be demolished on the left, the church roof in the background right in the middle of the picture, and the church hall in the foreground. New flower beds have been built along the existing wall and trees planted in the public space - from a distance (peeking through the hoardings) it's looking like the work done as part of the Deptford Project development will create the high quality finish they promised, at least as far as the paving is concerned. 

When occupants move in to the arches under the former carriage ramp, not to mention the restaurants that are promised for the main building and the back of St Paul's House and the 'artisan' market that is planned, the new public realm could be quite attractive.

It's a shame then that the proposed hotel will contribute nothing to this new streetscape.

The front of the hotel will dominate the existing parade of buildings and will overshadow the church - this rendering which is used on the front of the design & access statement is somewhat misleading. The viewpoint seems to be approximately floor level in front of the bar at the Job Centre, no doubt specifically chosen as being the only angle from which the top floors are not visible.

The proposal is to replace the building with a 70-bed hotel and a new church hall; six of these hotel rooms will be in the basement with no natural light at all, to enable the church hall to occupy the rear half of the ground floor, sandwiched between the hotel reception and the bin store. 

The only relationship that the building would have to the public realm around it would be a floor to ceiling glass facade at the ground floor on Deptford High Street. It would have no active frontage to the new forecourt leading into Deptford station, and its only relationship to the market yard at the rear would be when the lorry turned up to empty the bins. 

If approved, this would be a massive missed opportunity to continue the work that has been put into creating a pleasant environment alongside the refurbished carriage ramp. 

I commented previously on my utter disbelief that there was any need or business case for a 'boutique' hotel on Deptford High Street - especially given the large number of hotel rooms available within half a mile of Deptford Station.

Perhaps it would be wise to consider a similar case just a stone's throw away - the former Walpole pub on New Cross Road. A planning application to tear down this pub, which had some rather lovely interior tiling and other historical features, and replace it with a 60-bed hotel with a swimming pool was approved in 2010.

Nothing happened for several years until January 2013 when the pub suddenly closed and the owners announced that it was 'unsafe' and had to be demolished immediately. 

Shortly afterwards a change to the original application was granted permission; this would have seen the proposed swimming pool ditched and six more hotel rooms added.

By September 2013 the site owner had changed tack again, and began discussions with the council over a new planning application for an 81-bed student hall. But the proposed density was considered too high, and there were concerns over space standards in the design, so when the planning application was eventually submitted in 2014, and the application approved, it was for a 58-bed student accommodation block.

That wasn't the end of the story, however - it was third time lucky when the developer decided to go for another planning application, this time for an 87-bed 'specialist' student accommodation block. 

In this case 'specialist' means a mix of studio apartments and 'clusters'. Some of them the type of units that could quite easily be converted for private ownership perhaps? You would have to overlook the fact that there are no set standards for student accommodation, so some of the rooms might be a little pokey. But hey, there's a housing crisis on...

The application for this development, which represented a significantly increased density and higher buildings, was approved last summer. 

Almost a year from the latest approval, and three years since the pub was knocked down, the unsightly gap in the New Cross Road facade persists.

Deptford food and drink - new kids on the block

Lots of new bars, cafes and pubs are opening up in and around Deptford - so many that I'm having trouble keeping track of them all, never mind checking out their wares and finding time to review them. The vast majority are independent, giving a great boost to the range of places on offer.

Here's a list of those I've noticed, with brief comments about the ones I've tried. None of them have been thoroughly reviewed; please feel free to add any feedback (or any I've missed) in the comments section.

London Velo 
Hardly a new kid on the block, but I've been too distracted with other things to blog about it since heralding its imminent arrival more than six months ago. It seems to have settled in nicely, although the evening opening that was a fixture when it first launched seems to have fizzled out - maybe not enough demand, or perhaps just for special events? According to Twitter, hours are now a regular 8-6 (9-6 on Sundays).

I've eaten here a couple of times; the food and coffee is good although it's generally a bit more expensive than similar Deptford High Street cafes. They also sell bike stuff such as clothing and accessories - the website suggests quite a range, although I haven't been into that part of the shop since the first time, when my eyes watered at the sight of panniers for £175.

It's also notable for regular fixture Maurice, the French bulldog who seems to like sitting just inside the door waiting to trip up hapless customers like me. 

Wunderlust

Barely hours after I posted about the murky goings on in Creekside, street food trader Fleisch Mob announced that they were launching a pop-up restaurant in the former pizza bus. By all accounts they had to shell out a whole lot of cash to fix rotting floors and dodgy electrics to get the venue into a shape that was suitable for opening, and apparently only for a few months. The intention at the time of the launch was that it would only be there till the new year - now, according to the website it will be open again on 8 Jan so perhaps a longer 'pop-up' is in prospect? (Updated: apparently they now 'have the green light' to stay on at the bus for another year).

Wunderlust serves 'seasonal food with an Austrian influence' - the menu certainly features local ingredients from Kent, Essex and beyond, although the Austrian influence is harder to identify. Prices are higher than Deptford is used to, especially considering the surrounds - while generally cleaner and in better nick than before, with posh soap and hand cream in the ladies, you're still effectively eating in a covered yard.

I tried the food on the opening night and found it tasty and well-cooked; service was as you might expect on the first night (which was rammed) and I assume they have ironed out the glitches by now. 

Rough & ready

As the name suggests, this new cafe in the Evelyn triangle is not particularly fancy, but it's very fairly priced and the food is tasty and filling. According to their Twitter profile, they work in partnership with Deptford Action Group for the Elderly (DAGE) and offer free tea and coffee to pensioners.  

Don't worry if you aren't old enough to benefit from the free beverages - prices are very reasonable and there's a range of sandwiches, quiches, soups and filled jacket potatoes on offer. Don't expect 'fancy' fillings like avocado or fried halloumi, but a (good quality) coffee and sandwich was less than a fiver when I visited, which is sufficient pay-off for me.

My only gripe would be the seating, which seems to be mostly sofas - not ideal for sitting in while you are eating, especially if they are the squishy 'pre-loved' kind. The Twitter profile says they are open seven days a week, but it was shut when I popped down on a Sunday in early December, so probably best not to rely on that.

Buster Mantis

Sneaking in on Resolution Way, just off the high street is Buster Mantis, a new bar and restaurant promising Jamaican-influenced food and drinks in two converted railway arches. 

It marks a new departure for Network Rail in the Deptford area; while arches are being converted all across south east London into micro breweries, eateries and delis, the trend is only just arriving here. It would be great to have one or two food and drink venues along Resolution Way, but I wouldn't like to see the wholesale loss of what still represent good-value rentals for offices, storage and space for small local businesses, bringing employment and a range of services to Deptford. 

I'm itching to check Buster Mantis out, but have been unable to do so as yet, there was a soft opening in late December, which I missed, and a (free-entry) New Years Eve do. But I intend to be there as soon as regular opening hours kick in - in particular I look forward to being able to enjoy West Indian food in a restaurant rather than just as a take-out.

Greenhouse Deptford 

This new corner cafe just opposite the Royal Albert on New Cross Road has been open just a month, serving similar fare (at similar prices) to London Velo. Handy if you are on the Brockley/New Cross side of Deptford, and it's friendly and comfortable.

I like the seats at the window for people-watching, and it's also a good spot for observing the traditional driving fuckwittery that seems to pervade this corner of London. Watching the shenanigans of motorists trying to execute the popular turns from Florence Road and Watson's St, using varied levels of diplomacy, will keep you entertained for hours.

Little Thames Walk cafe

Finally, one of the retail units in Creekside Village has found a useful purpose! This cafe is as yet so new that it doesn't seem to have either a website or Facebook page, but let's hope its presence will prompt other businesses to take up residence in those empty units.

The new cafe is on Little Thames Walk, one of the alleys through the Creekside development - look behind you as you go up Copperas St towards Greenwich. It's closed for the holidays at the moment, but promised hours include a 7am start and a 4pm finish, Monday to Sunday.

The Sail Loft

A wee bit out of the manor but a welcome new addition to the pub offerings in and around Deptford. Yes it's a chain pub, and it's close to the tourist fleshpots of Greenwich so it's likely to have a corporate approach rather than the homely appeal of local favourites such as the Dog & Bell, but I'm anticipating decently-kept ales and a reliable food offering. Its main attraction, especially for entertaining visitors, will be the riverfront views. Over two floors, there should be ample opportunity for exploiting its location.

The pub - on the riverfront of New Millennium Quay - is due to open in January (and is advertising for staff right now if you are looking for work.)

Finally let's not forget the Deptford Project, or Deptford Market Yard, or Rise or whatever it's called these days - the development next to Deptford station that's edging towards completion at an infinitesimally-slow rate. 

As well as a couple of large restaurant units in the new block and the refurbished St Paul's House, it's likely some of the small arch units will be taken on by coffee shops or food vendors. Whenever it completes (originally scheduled for May 2015, now presumably '2016') we are sure to see more competition/choice arriving. 

Let's see if Deptford has the appetite and the means to keep them all in business. 

'Derelict' Deptford

There's something chillingly cynical about the 'for sale' sign on the former Lord Palmerston pub on Childers Street which advertises the £1.3 million building as a 'freehold derelict pub for sale'.

'Derelict: (adjective) in a very poor condition as a result of disuse and neglect'

This building is so 'derelict' that it's currently being used as a site office by the contractor working on the conversion of the old SR House next door.

Yes, it's so 'derelict' that until very recently the upper storeys were occupied by property guardians who have been living there since the pub closed a couple of years ago. While I'm sure it's no des res, the building looks far from derelict to me and there's absolutely nothing in the sales information to back up this claim.

The subtext of this wording, of course, is 'ripe for redevelopment' and helpfully the agent selling it, Acorn Commercial, has included a rendering in the sales brochure as to what this redevelopment could look like. Look away now if you are of a sensitive disposition. 

The only positive note is that the rendering above does not represent an actual scheme with planning permission, it's just the tawdry imaginings of some back-room wage slave who dreamed of being the next Norman Foster but is more likely to become the next Norman Bates. 

It's not even a fair match for the grey horror on the right, which is intended to represent the redevelopment of SR House, currently under construction behind its retained facade. 

The Wharves planning application

A planning application for redevelopment of 'The Wharves' - the land bounded by Grove Street, Dragoon Road, Evelyn St and Oxestalls Rd - was submitted last month and documents are now available online (search here for reference 92295 but beware there are 454 documents, some extremely large and the system seems to fall over now and again).

The applicant Lend Lease has provided smaller versions of some of the documents on its website with a carefully-chosen range of visualisations, but for the full story and detail, you will of course have to suffer the grim trawl through the documents yourself.

As you may recall, outline planning permission for the site was granted back in 2011 - I'd written about the original plans with some enthusiasm (by my standards at least!) considering the plans to reinstate the route of the Surrey Canal as a water feature, the retention of the Victoria pub and the mix of uses on the site, with a new facility being built for tenant Ascot Cabs to retain a relatively large-scale business and employment centre.

Scroll forward a few years - Ascot Cabs presumably got bored of waiting for the developer to get moving on the project, and decided to decamp elsewhere - and new owner Land Lease began consultation on a new application.

Despite the touchy-feely marketing schmooze I was not impressed by their revised plans. Increased housing density, higher blocks, potentially triple the parking spaces and the loss of the water feature and the Victoria pub.

There was another period of 'consultation' and presumably additional negotiation and meetings with Lewisham's planners, and I have to admit to being - while I won't go as far as pleasantly surprised - unexpectedly relieved at the final outcome.

Final proposals - shown with Convoys in the background

Of course I know damn well that the only reason they ramped the towers up to 30 storeys in the interim period was so that when they brought them back down to 24 storeys, in our relief we'd forget all about the fact that they were originally a maximum of 18 storeys.

Nevertheless they've still managed to shoehorn another couple of hundred dwellings (now 1,132) onto the site, by a combination of the two tallest towers having six extra stories dumped on top, and by playing around with the heights of the blocks on the rest of the site. It's not all up though, the lowest buildings have been reduced to three storeys rather than four.

I always have to allow myself a wry smile when I read the blurb that justifies the increase in height of residential blocks (aside from the obvious reason, being to make more money).

For example:
"The significance of the Surrey Canal Way is marked by raising the massing of some of the buildings along its length. The location of these buildings has been chosen to allow the greatest amount of light into the public space of the Surrey Canal Way, and so these are predominantly on the east side of the space. The diversity of building height adds character and interest to the long elevation of the canal, whilst marking it as an important space and route." 

Like any casual observer at ground level would either (1) notice that these blocks were several floors higher or (2) equate that to a situation in which they consider the route to be more significantly marked with buildings of 12 storeys than of 7 storeys.

The application that has been submitted is a 'hybrid' application - as well as covering the outline planning permission for the whole site, it includes detailed design for the first two phases. This is reassuring as it suggests that the work will actually get going when/if permission is granted rather than continuing to lie derelict.

The first phases will be the side facing Grove Street (purple on the plan) and the corner of Evelyn St/Dragoon Way (hatched green). The light green area is the second phase and the red area will not be developed until they have actually managed to buy the land off the current owners!

The other bits of the application that I was happy to see had been reinstated were the intention to retain the Victoria pub on Grove Street - reportedly in a parlous state but still worth saving in my opinion - and the reinstatement of a water feature along the route of the old Surrey Canal.

The pub - which in the scheme that gained planning permission was set to be retained and restored - was potentially going to be demolished by Lend Lease. But it's now being retained and is intended to be brought back into use as a pub.

The water feature had been included in the original scheme but Lend Lease had wanted to ditch it in favour of a 'linear park' (grass, some bushes and seats) claiming all sorts of silly things about unsuitability, danger to children etc etc. One of my favourite bike rides is through Surrey Quays and along the route of the old canal, which has been restored as a shallow water feature with bridges, nesting platforms for water birds, and reeds. I had hoped that Deptford might get something along similar lines.

I'm happy that a water feature has been restored, although it's more footbath than canal, but will still offer some kind of memory of the original purpose of the alignment.

Water feature restored as footbath

Another change that makes sense is that the building adjacent to the old canal bridge on Evelyn Street has been repositioned and its footprint changed from a linear block to a 'y' shape. I continue to hold out hope that some day, the route under the canal bridge on Evelyn Street could be restored as a cycle and pedestrian link, which would make utter sense and provide a safe and easy link across this busy road. With the pedestrian link set to be restored under the Oxestalls Road bridge, this route could make the site properly permeable and would also provide excellent walking and cycling connections towards Canada Water and in the opposite direction to Deptford, New Cross and Surrey Canal Road.

Plan of the site showing y-shaped block in bottom left corner

Rendering of the y-shaped block which is intended to house retail, offices and cafes

Evelyn St is over the wall on the right; the Y-building on the left

Public realm (The Yard) around the Y-building

The renderings of the main blocks are pretty muted and quite calming (although I do think the balconies shown on the renders below seem awfully over-done and very ugly from below, which is after all where most people see them from)

Rearing blocks over Dragoon Road

View from Pepys Park across Grove St

As is the norm with developers renderings, they don't tend to show neighbouring properties in any great detail, if at all, since they want to eliminate any real idea of scale. On the picture above you can just about see the two/three-storey houses along the east edge of Pepys Park on Leeway on the bottom left if you click to enlarge the picture. 

As usual the plans also make the development look very green - but although there's a lot of green space shown, the vast majority of this is provided as 'semi-private' space. That means podium parks built at second or third floor level on top of the private residents parking, and only accessible to residents. At street level you'll be looking at buildings. 

The purple bits are all the 'semi-private' (residents-only) parks

If you want to know how it's going to impact on the surrounding views, I've picked out a few of the images that the developer is obliged to create, but that tend to get buried among the planning documents. They have to represent not only their own development, but also any others nearby that are being taken forward (in this case, the most obvious is Convoys Wharf, which is shown on the some of the river views).

View from Grove Street with Riverside Youth Club in the centre

View from Deptford Park

View along Evelyn Street

View from Grove Street near Sayes Court Park

View across Pepys Park now

View across Pepys Park after phase one

View across Pepys Park with whole development shown

View from the north side of the river showing Convoys Wharf towers - the proposed Wharves development is behind it outlined in colour

View from Greenwich foreshore showing Convoys Wharf towers

Overall I will be happy to see this plot of land being developed - for years it has been the site of some quite heavy industrial stuff, not necessarily a bad thing per se, but many of the breaker yards were appalling neighbours and caused ongoing problems with parking, traffic and danger to pedestrians on Grove Street, not to mention the noise, dust and pollution.

It's a shame the other more responsible employers no longer remain although presumably the developer expects them to be replaced by retail jobs, offices etc.

As with so many developments now, the biggest scandal is the very poor ratio of anything approaching 'affordable' housing, not to mention the 'viability' conditions that underwrite everything that's proposed by the developer. In this case the developer is proposing up to 237 units, which is about 21% - while this might be better than other developments nearby, such as Convoys Wharf, there's still time for it to be revised downwards over the period of the work, as it's all conditional on the 'subject to viability' clause.

Here's how it works:

• Each council has a set target for 'affordable' homes which is worked out depending on its own particular circumstances (in Lewisham's case this is 50% 'affordable' with 70% social/affordable rent and 30% 'intermediate')
• Developer submits a confidential viability report which almost inevitably claims that it 'can't afford' to provide the target number on this site.
• Developer proposes a lower number of units.
• Council generally has to agree.

This excellent article by Oliver Wainwright in the Guardian last week takes a look at the arguments that developers use to back up their case - in figures that are rarely seen by anyone except council officers and those councillors who sit on planning committees (and not always the latter). 

It's in the developers' interest to make a generous estimation of their costs, while being cautious on  the sale value of the properties (or omitting to account for rising sale values over the period of the build, which could be up to 10 years or more). The figures often build in a healthy profit margin for the developer of up to 25%. As Wainwright points out, these are all perfectly legal. 

  

In some cases the viability figures are challenged - not always by the councils, sometimes it's left to pressure groups or individuals to do so - and after a number of high-profile cases it seems that councils are now starting to investigate ways in which they can force developers to increase the percentage of 'affordable' units they include. 

You don't have to read far into the article to see a familiar name - Lend Lease, the developer of the Wharves, is also behind the Heygate estate's transformation into 'Elephant Park'. While much of the sorry story relating to Heygate seems to be down to the council's ineptitude/lack of due diligence, the article examines whether the figures in the developer's viability statement stack up to anything of substance. It makes an interesting read, not least in the context of the potential for the Wharves. 

The Lord Clyde

The past months I've been watching the refurb of the Lord Clyde, a rather grand old Victorian pub which remains as the only sign of its era in a sea of 70s maisonettes and tower blocks and boxy 80s cul-de-sac housing. It's been a bad couple of weeks for Lewisham pubs so it's nice to have something good to report.

The building was saved in 2012 when the council refused an application to demolish it and the planning inspectorate subsequently upheld this decision after the developer appealed. The appeal was dismissed and the council's decision upheld, largely on the grounds of the heritage value of the building.

In its former state

The first application was to demolish the old pub and build a three-storey block of seven two-bed flats, on the grounds that the pub contributed little to the community. A campaign by the pub landlord, and support from the clubs that used the gym on the first floor to train local youngsters in boxing skills, proved otherwise. Although it was saved from demolition, the boxing gym closed its doors in 2013 and the pub eventually closed too when it was put up for sale.

A revised application approved last year gave permission for construction of an extension on the rear of the building for use as a gym, and conversion of the upper floors into one two-bed and two one-bed flats. The conditions of approval not only required the ground floor to be retained as a pub, but also put conditions on the type of replacement windows to be used and the external refurb.

Having seen the building going through the refurb process I was initially quite disturbed when the signs disappeared - not only the ones at ground floor level, but also the pub name on top of the building. Happily they have now been replaced/replicated in identical form - even the painted 'Home of the world-famous Malony's Fight Factory' has reappeared over the side doors.

The brown ceramic tiles on the pub facade have been cleaned/repaired/replaced and now shine in the sunshine like warm chocolate, and the replacement/refurbed windows give the place a really smart appeal that was sadly lacking before. Having seen the damage that has been caused to the tiles on the facade of the former Deptford Arms by Paddy Power, it's good to know that there is another way.

I spend a lot of time scrutinising reports by Lewisham Council's planning department and/or decisions by the planning committee and more often than not, the process does not end in applause, but credit where credit is due. On this occasion - and judged purely on appearance at this stage - the outcome seems to be a win and is a welcome reminder that objections can occasionally have an impact. The council's planning officers seem to have kept on the ball in ensuring that conditions were met, and that the quality of materials was up to scratch.

I used to feel depressed when I passed this pub - its peeling paint and dirty exterior made it look like a slow death was the only possible end. Now I have a renewed optimism that it could have a future.

Whether or not my optimism will be rewarded remains to be seen - although the planning application was originally submitted in the name of Safeland PLC, presumably the owner in April 2014, the building went up for auction in July 2014, and I don't know what the outcome was (if anyone does, please add in the comments).

The guide price was just £350k, hence the addition of three flats is likely to pay back the buyer's investment in no time, but it will take a determined and imaginative landlord to make a success of a pub on this site, especially considering that the rent/lease will be a lot higher than before. But not impossible in my opinion - let's hope there's someone out there who's up for it.