Old Kent Road Breakfast Talk on OKR AAP at NLA 2017
Mark Brearley makes an impassioned plea to LB Southwark to preserve and densify industrial accommodation in their plans for the Old Kent Road.
The ‘Old Kent Road – Breakfast Talk’ at New London Architecture, Friday 15th December 2017 08:30 – 09:30 and The Building Centre, Store Street, London. Launching the consultation of the second Old Kent Road Area Action Plan, this event was intended to explore the capacity for innovative mixed-use development and the opportunities for the community and wider London, asking how the framework will “satisfy growth targets whilst enhancing the existing character of this successful economic area to create a new mixed-use quarter for London.”
But Mark Brearley argued that although there had been a ‘welcome shift to recognising the value of a diverse economy’, urgent action was needed to ‘fix the damage’ inflicted by Southwark in two years of ‘open season’, with many businesses being ‘brushed aside’ and several now making departure plans. Instead the council needed to embrace what the City for All Londoners advocates with opportunity area plans prepared in collaboration with local stakeholders. In response, Cllr Peter John said the AAP was not the final version and emphasised his desire to ‘preserve and enhance what we’ve got’. ‘I’d say to developers or their representatives rushing to kick businesses out stop, stop, stop! That is not the vision for Old Kent Road.’
“Our economy right now is getting a kicking. Our council made it happen… We need Southwark to start a much fuller dialogue now to stop cooking it all up in private with their consultants who don’t get out much.”
— Mark Brearley
Speakers included:
Cllr Peter John, Leader, LB Southwark; Fiona Fletcher-Smith, Executive Director (Development and Environment), GLA ; Janet Senior, Executive Director for Resources & Regeneration, LB Lewisham; Prof Mark Brearley, Cities, London Metropolitan University and Proprietor, Kaymet; Gerard Maccreanor, Founding Director, Maccreanor Lavington and Ulrike Steven, Director, what if: projects.