Greenwich Council has confirmed plans to build homes on the remaining parts of the Thomas Tallis School site, which has sat empty for a decade.
Plans were approved last November for 117 council homes on part of the old school grounds, which became vacant when the school moved to an adjoining site.
Now a technical document on the council website seeks approval from council leader Danny Thorpe to use the land for housing.
In 2018, when outlining plans to start work on 750 council homes by next year, Greenwich Council said that the entire site could accommodate 400 homes in total.
At present, 357 homes have been approved for the Greenwich Builds programme – most recently 40 homes behind Eltham High Street – so a speedy approval of housing on the rest of the Tallis site would come as a major boost to the project.
Tweeting about the move, Conservative councillor Spencer Drury said that he hoped “there would be houses for residents to buy under the plans”. While this is unlikely to happen, other boroughs such as Camden have built privately to fund their own council homes.
However, the borough’s own Labour councillors have expressed worries about the strain on the local infrastructure that could be caused by the large number of new homes being built in the area. In 2019 the planning board refused City Hall-backed plans to build 619 homes on TfL-owned land next to Kidbrooke station, only for their decision to be overturned by the mayor’s office.
Meanwhile, Berkeley Homes’ Kidbrooke Village development has grown from 4,000 new homes to 5,268 in the 12 years since it was given the go-ahead. The original Ferrier Estate, which it replaces, had just 1,910 homes upon completion in 1972. Councillors refused plans for the most recent extension to the project, before allowing them last October.
There are no plans for increased train services from Kidbrooke station, although a new Berkeley-built station building was opened in March. Bus services to North Greenwich station have been boosted instead.
Help 853 continue reporting on public interest issues in Greenwich and southeast London – we are the only outlet regularly producing original journalism in the borough, and we can only do it with your funding.
Please join over 100 donors who use Steady, PressPatron or Patreon to give a little towards our costs every month. The money pays the bills, a wage for the editor and pays others to write for the site.
You can also buy the editor a coffee at ko-fi.com. Thank you.