D-Day for Crystal Palace Park
  Tuesday 9th December – 7.30pm


Your chance to tell Bromley you don’t want 180 private luxury apartments built on your public Park

On Tuesday 9th December 2008 at 7.30pm, Bromley Development Control Committee will consider the London Development Agency ‘Masterplan’ application. It is as important to be there as it was with the multiplex fiasco.

The London Development Agency has included the sale of parkland to developers in its proposals to improve Crystal Palace Park.

The LDA previously pledged: “it is not the intention to put housing on the Park” but has now reneged and included five-storey blocks of 180 private luxury apartments in its planning application.

If Bromley grants permission for this application, it will set a precedent, threatening all other UK public parks and green open spaces.

Parks must not be treated like our playing fields – sold off piecemeal for development. Parks must be valued for what they are – vital green spaces in our urban environment.

This is Bromley’s only historic Grade II* registered park. It’s Metropolitan Open Land with much of it within a Conservation Area. Surely it deserves better than this. Are other Bromley parks treated this way?

Opposition is clear: a petition signed by 7,000; local opinion polls; the four adjacent boroughs and the LDA’s own consultation showing overwhelming objection to selling public parkland for private housing.

If you oppose the sale of public parkland, please be there.

9th December at 7.30pm
Bromley Civic Centre
Stockwell Close
Kentish Way (behind the Glades)

Conveniently, Stockwell Close has a large and reasonably priced multi-storey car park

The CPCA supports LDA proposals to improve the Park, but the LDA claim that precious parkland needs to be sold off to make those improvements possible is misleading and unsustainable.

The LDA application includes the removal of the camping and caravan site at Rockhills, and its replacement with five-storey high blocks of 140 private luxury apartments. This would be private housing on Metropolitan Open Land and would set a precedent for public open space throughout the UK.

Additionally, the LDA has included six blocks of up to 40 apartments on Crystal Palace Park near the cricket pitch. These would replace the One O'clock club and the Ranger’s Heritage Lottery funded maintenance yard. The LDA will not confirm the cost of removing and relocating the existing facilities, which must be recovered from any money raised from the sale of our Parkland.

The construction of a huge educational establishment, partly on MOL and the Conservation Area off Ledrington Road, has been recently modified by scrapping the accommodation block. This means the existing Lodge hostel will remain, thus adding to the built footprint on the Park.

If the Masterplan proposals were less elaborate and recognised the Grade II* registered Park (the same designation as Buckingham Palace Gardens) as a green lung in a dense urban environment, the projected £67.5 million (excluding consultants fees, VAT, etc.) could be reduced. Illustrating this, the marvellous improvements to the area around Crystal Palace Station, were achieved at the modest cost of £250,000.

Even though the LDA planning application is of 11,000 pages, it does not have a viable business plan.

The blurring of the line between improvements to the National Sports Centre and the Park is divisive, as the 38 acres of Major Developed Site NSC is already under LDA control and separately funded.

Please be there.

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