Vauxhall developer CLS Holdings has put in a planning permission application for the Spring Mews redevelopment on the northern fringe of the site of Vauxhall Gardens. While some might vote it an improvement on the ragbag of buildings presently on the site, from the illustrations in the consultation material others may conclude the buildings bland, dull and well down to the standard of recent design in that quarter.
Eager hands throughout Vauxhall will be reaching for the Mayor’s London Plan after the hands’ owners read in the 13-26 January issue of Private Eye (‘Regeneration Game’, p.14) that Boris Johnson has asked a developer to withdraw an unpopular plan for riverside ‘regeneration’, a plan approved by the local authority. No, not Lambeth, and not the Vauxhall, Nine Elms & Battersea ‘Opportunity Area’, still less its accompanying Northern Line Extension – likely to be a big local factor in...
You might think that Lambeth Council would be very careful about promising vast sums of your money to fund the VNEB’s Northern Line Extension scheme now NLE’s cheer-leader Treasury Holdings has gone bust. As if. Lambeth’s ‘Cabinet’ has whole-heartedly signed up to NLE, ‘target cost’ £955 million, thus committing millions that otherwise would have gone on schools, hospitals and other good stuff that will be needed along the Vauxhall riverside. Of course, the money for those goodies will still...
If you feel you don’t spend enough time hanging around NHS premises, why not become a member of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust (GSFT)? ‘Members’ vote for the ten governors who are due to be elected this May. These five ‘public governors’ and five ‘patient governors’ advise the Trust’s Board of Directors. You can become a GSFT ‘member’ (or qualify as ‘public governor’) if you live in Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth, Westminster or Lewisham, or (also the qualification for...
At the urging of The Vauxhall Society, Vauxhall Park is back on the map. By the end of 2011, the park had disappeared from maps and text published by Vauxhall One, the consortium of local businesses behind February’s referendum over whether or not the Vauxhall Cross area should have a Business Improvement District (BID). Now, however, after an approach from The Vauxhall Society, Vauxhall One Chairman Richard Tice, confirms that Vauxhall Park is back in the BID area and...
HS2, the proposed new Euston-Birmingham rail link is promised to shave perhaps 33 minutes off the 79-minute journey. Not really Vauxhall Society territory, perhaps but a local conversation threw up this local titbit: after the Southampton line reached Waterloo in 1848 the journey from Woking to Waterloo took 28 minutes. A friend travelled the line yesterday, and his train was on time; the journey took one minute longer than in Victorian times, 29 minutes…
Your help is needed! The Friends of Durning Library have launched a survey to assess how best to plan for the library’s future. They say: “Lambeth Council is currently considering the future organisation of its library service. We know that there are to be severe budget cuts and if the community does not step in, our library may not survive. “As the library’s Friends, we need your help to decide how best to plan for its future, and so...
No? Opera house, then? Two more ideas for what to do with Battersea Power Station from Spectator correspondents, following a suggestion in the 7 January issue that BPS would make a splendid ‘super crematorium’. The 14 January Speccie brings a ‘world-class opera house’ and then ‘a low-ash coal-fired thermal power station’. In his ‘Any Other Business’ column, Martin Vander Weyer says the idea for an opera house (with rail link to Victoria) comes from a reader. Much of the...
Researchers beware – Lambeth Archives is closed for stocktaking from Monday 23 January to Saturday 4 February. Staff won’t be dealing with personal, phone or written enquiries – this is Lambeth, remember. Normal service (and history) resumes on Monday 6 February, and The Minet lending library in the same building will be open as normal throughout. Lambeth Archives
