Residents take fight against 350-home Thames dock development to High Court

A group of residents are to wage a High Court battle against a 3,500-home development on the last available regeneration plot beside the Thames – the site of a historic dock.

The Voice 4 Deptford campaign aims to mount a judicial review to block the project at the former Royal Naval Dockyard by Hong Kong-based Hutchinson.

Their challenge could cost more than £45,000 to take to the highest court in the land. They believe the developer’s window of opportunity to implement its permission has now closed, and the planning permission granted in 2015 has expired.

The campaigners have already raised double their initial £2,000 crowdfunding target to pay for a legal team to research and write a report on the law around the scheme.

The £1billion development of Convoys Wharf, formerly the King’s Yard and Deptford Royal Dockyard, has already been condemned by town hall leaders for including “poor doors” – separate entrances for tenants of affordable or social rents and for owners.

Community groups, town hall planners and English Heritage had previously opposed the plans because of:

• The historical and archaeological importance of the site
• A Lack of affordable and social housing
• A shortage of green space
• A lack of public transport, shops and schools
• Inadequate consultation

Then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson approved the project in 2015, on condition the developers created:

• A cultural strategy and cultural steering group,
• Two heritage projects, build the Lennox and Sayes Court garden
• Affordable housing

Voice 4 Deptford’s fundraisinig page says: “Since then, the developers have made next to no effort to engage with the local community, leaving Deptford without a say in its own future.

“What was unacceptable then is unlikely to be permitted now due to factors such as the housing crisis, the environmental crisis, changes in work practices with more working from home, inequality for the BAME community, the crisis in children and young people’s physical and mental health and opposition to segregation by tenure.

“Lewisham council, constrained by the outline permission, is being forced to agree, against its better judgement and for construction of this outdated, unfair plan to begin.

“If successful, we can then work together to rethink Convoys Wharf as a place that meets the needs of the whole community and highlights the heritage of the site.”

Campaign chairman Malcolm Cadman said: “We need a legal process to prove the scheme timed out.

“London has a housing crisis. Local councils and the Greater London Assembly have each produced structural plans that promote the building of genuinely affordable and social housing that is environmentally sustainable.

“This timed out planning consent fails on all levels to offer anything towards the housing crisis.

“We want the developer to come back – after listening to local people – with a development that prioritises affordable homes which are environmentally sustainable.

“With detailed planning permission granted on the first three applications, we have one last chance to stop their diggers and to help save Deptford heritage from destruction and get more social housing for London.

“The development will erase the history and heritage of the old dockyard, promoting blocks of luxury flats in an area desperately needing social and genuinely affordable housing.

“It will be lost forever to an exclusive, unaffordable, impractical, inequitable and unfair development.”

Hutchison believes the development will create nearly 2,150 full-time jobs and 1,200 construction jobs.

The firms wants to:

• Restore the Grade II listed Olympia building
• Support the Sayes Court Garden and Lenox Project CICs
• Create a new river bus jetty connecting Deptford to Canary Wharf and central London
• Open the Thames Path for the first time in 500 years
• Carry out an archaeological investigation into London’s Royal Dockyards.

Hutchison managing director Raymond Chow said last month: “We are delighted Lewisham has backed our plans to transform Convoys Wharf.

“We will now start work on unlocking future plots across the wider site, thereby unlocking a package of community investment worth £60 million.

“Over the last few years, we have consulted widely with the local community. That collaboration will continue to ensure the plans meet the needs of the area and celebrate Deptford’s rich heritage. We are here for the long haul.”

Deptford Dockyard was an important naval dockyard and base of the Royal Navy from the 16th to the 19th centuries. It built and maintained warships for 350 years.

It built and refitted exploration ships used by Captains Cook, Vancouver – who first mapped the coasts of Alaska – and Bligh – the victim of the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’, as well as warships which fought under Lord Nelson.

The dockyard was largely inactive after 1830, and although shipbuilding briefly returned in the 1840s, the Navy closed the yard in 1869.

The food loading yard continued in use until the 1960s.

Pictured top: An artist’s impression of what the new development could look like