Charlton Forum is pleased to report that at the full Council meeting on 25 October 2023, the petition contesting the exclusion of part of Charlton from the Neighbourhood Area, as set out below, was presented to Royal Borough of Greenwich by Councillor David Gardner, a ward councillor for this excluded area. The petition was signed by over 200 residents of the excluded area.
UPDATE: A response to the petition has been provided by the Council and it is on the agenda for Wednesday evening’s Full Council meeting (31 January 2024 at 7pm – Item 7)
Petition
Charlton Neighbourhood Forum and the Charlton Neighbourhood Area were formally designated by the Council in Feb 2022 but with a ‘sting in the tail.’ The part of Charlton that is within the Greenwich Peninsula ward was removed from the Area proposed by Charlton Forum in its application for designation. Residential streets in SE7 that were removed from the designated Neighbourhood Area include the following: the west side of Charlton Church Lane north of the railway line; Woolwich Road west of Charlton Church Lane; Troughton Road and Rathmore Road; Victoria Way north of the railway line; Bowen Drive; Dupree, Hardman, Rainton, Fairthorn, and Gurdon Roads; Feltram Way, Feltram Mews, and Holmswood Villas. The Council’s decision also cuts Charlton Station in two, leaving the north side of the station outside of the designated Area.
The reason given by the Council in its designation decision to amend the neighbourhood area came about from the (then) Peninsula ward councillors considering it to be ‘inappropriate for the Forum to have a disproportionate level of authority affecting developments and residents living in Peninsula ward,’ and that ‘Peninsula residents would not be fairly and equally represented and therefore would be detrimentally affected.’ It is not clear if the (then) Peninsula ward councillors were made aware that a designated forum would only have authority over the neighbourhood area, not the entirety of the ward, and that there is good representation from Charlton Forum members living in this area. Many people living in these roads consider that they live in Charlton, and Charlton Forum includes members from in this area.
Petition to change the boundary of the Charlton Neighbourhood Area
We, the undersigned, residents of streets within the SE7 postcode (Charlton) that have been excluded from the formally designated Charlton Neighbourhood Area, call on the Council to change the boundary of the existing Charlton Neighbourhood Area to align with the proposed neighbourhood area set out in Charlton Forum’s application for designation and which has been fully justified.
The Council, as the local planning authority for the area, has the power to do this, as conferred upon it in Section 61G(6A)(a) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1900 (as amended by the Localism Act 2011 and the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017).
We, as residents of Charlton within the Greenwich Peninsula ward, disagree with the Council’s justification in its Decision to exclude this part of Charlton from the Neighbourhood Area (that Charlton Forum will not be representative of our area) and suggest that the opposite applies. We consider that we are being detrimentally affected by being excluded from the Charlton Neighbourhood Area, as we will not see the benefits of proposals that will be set out in a Neighbourhood Plan for Charlton, which will be delivered from new developments in the designated Neighbourhood Area.