Lavender Hill has a smart and unusual new supermarket. Back in March we reported that the large premises at 207-217 Lavender Hill (next to the junction with Latchmere Road & Elspeth Road) was set to become a new supermarket. And sure enough, Harley’s Food Hallhas now opened its doors, and we’ve been impressed by the effort that has gone in to the business. This article gives a brief tour of the new venture.
Harley’s is an independent family-owned business, and this is their first store. They team behind Harley’s are well aware that they’re a couple of minutes’ walk from the largest and most profitable branch of Asda in inner London, and that there’s no point duplicating what they offer – so while there is a convenience offer covering the obvious staples you would expect to find in a local supermarket, they have also pushed the boat out on more unusual and interesting foods that you won’t find in the likes of Asda or a typical corner shop.
There’s also a general emphasis on quality – as well as on sustainable, ethical and responsible suppliers. You’ll find a mix of fresh fruit and vegetables with some less-seen options which on our isit included passionfruits, yellow courgettes and unusual tomatoes (and it’s worth noting that there’s a bit more in place now than you’ll see in our photos, which were taken on the first day of trading during the soft launch, where the produce was still arriving).
The shelf-edge prices, which were still a work in progress at the time, are all in place now as well.
There’s a particularly large selection of interesting jams and spreads, going well beyond the usual suspects – as well as a comprehensive range of dairy free, gluten free and vegan produce.
Our March article noted that this was going to become a Nisa. While there is some link to Nisa group (which provides services to a wide range of independent retailers, some of which trade under the Nisa brand), this is quite a departure from the stores that trade under the Nisa brand – Harley’s are using Nisa as one of their service providers and wholesalers, but are sourcing from far and wide to generate a wider selection of produce.
Interesting chocolates, crisps and snacks are also well represented, with quite a mix of brands and products you won’t find anywhere else on the street.
On the ‘interesting crisp based snacks’ front, you can expect to find the whole of the Tyrrells and Manomasa ranges, as well as Quinoa chips, Mister Free’d, and half a dozen other ranges.
Over at the chilled section there’s a broad mix of fresh pastas, soups, hams and dried meats, as well as an assortment of smoked salmon. The frozen section includes regular and non-dairy ice creams.
Pretty much every conceivable type of milk is on offer, as well as a decent mix of yoghurts, creams and wider dairy produce.
For many years this large unit was an estate agent, Winkworth.
After they rationalised their branches it briefly reopened as Noble Estates (another estate agent, who also have a branch in Clapham Old Town) but that all seemed to go badly wrong within just a few months, and the unit was quickly repossessed by the landlord, with notes taped to the door giving notice that various bits of furniture and a photocopier left behind would be sold unless they were claimed.
There’s been a pretty comprehensive refit since to create an impressively clean and smartly presented store. The ceiling is dark grey – which is a shopfitter’s classic approach – a relatively cheap but pretty effective way of making somewhere look smart and hiding the operational infrastructure it takes to run a modern grocers’ in plain sight. There was also work to install a refrigeration plant to service the store, much of which has been accommodated in a basement lightwell next to the premises.
It’s of course a fully licensed premises, so in addition to a bewildering range of soft drinks and juices, from the cheap & cheerful to quite high end, there’s a range of wines, beers and spirits.
Harley’s Food Hall is an impressive effort and it does bring something a bit different to Lavender Hill. It’s early days but there’s already a steady trade at Harley’s. Their opening is part of a small wave of interesting food retailers arriving in Clapham Junction, coming hot on the heels of the opening of Prezzemolo & Viltale near the station (which we reported on a couple of months ago), with a strong offer built around Italian produce, as well as a cafe whose success has (judging from the expansion in seating and the crowds it sees) significantly exceeded expectations. Clapham Junction was also the location of the flagship new-look Marks & Spencer foodhall, which has apparently been very successful and led to the concept tested here being rolled out widely including at Battersea power station, and now Brixton. Maybe sensing the increasing competition on their doorstep, including from Whole Foods Market who have gradually expanded their Lavender Hill presence, Waitrose is rumoured to be finally planning a somewhat overdue refurbishment of their branch on St John’s Hill, which is frankly feeling a bit dilapidated.
Harley’s is a good development for the street’s retail offer, and brings a lot of interesting foods to the area! The team are keen to meet their new neighbours and open to ideas on what to stock – so do visit and explore if you haven’t already, and spread the word on this new opening by an independent trader.
Harley’s Food Hall, 207-217 Lavender Hill, London SW11 5SD, 07447 002608, hello@harleysfoodhall.co.uk, open daily. We post from time to time on retail developments in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea, London – if you found this of interest you may want to see our other recent posts on retail and on food and drink in the area, or to sign up to receive new posts by email.
The 1880s were quite a big moment for Battersea. The railway had arrived, bringing with them an explosion of development – with houses, streets, entire neighbourhoods being built. There was a lot of money around, and everything and anything seemed possible. Which maybe explains how, for just a few years, we hosted our very own version of Crystal Palace.
The Albert Palace, pictured above, was an enormous hall made made mainly of glass and steel, facing the south side of Battersea Park where the lake is, with its back facing Battersea Park Road. It had a vast central hall nearly 500 feet long, with space for displays and exhibitions, and a space designed to accommodate an orchestra. A separate concert room, the Connaught Hall, was attached at the western end. Even in the late 1880s no visitor attraction was complete without a cafe and gift shop, so the other end included a large tea room. All in, it was about half the size of the Crystal Palace, though a later phase was planned to extend it further.
It all came about because of an ingenious bit of recycling. This was a time when big exhibitions in purpose built buildings were very much in fashion, and one of them had been the Dublin International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures in 1865, housed in a huge, but temporary, glass and steel structure. After the exhibition (which attracted nearly a million visitors) was over William Holland, a larger-than-life entrepreneur and entertainer who had successfully run several large venues including the Alhambra on Leicester Square and the Surrey Theatre in Blackfriars Road, spotted an opportunity to build something even bigger and more spectacular – a real People’s Palace. In 1882 he bought the whole building, dismantled it, and shipped it over the Irish Sea to be reassembled in Battersea. The Battersea Park site wasn’t a completely new choice either – it had originally proposed by Prince Albert for the relocation of the Crystal Palace itself after its run in Hyde Park ended (though it eventually made it to Sydenham).
The back wall, facing what’s now Lurline Gardens, didn’t look out on much so was faced with Bath and Portland stone. That was also recycled, but from a more local source – William bought the materials from the old Law Courts at Westminster, which were in the process of being demolished and replaced with the bigger and better Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand.
William Holland equipped the new Palace with a large garden to the south and west, which was designed by Sir Edward Lee, and included fountains, a conservatory and a bandstand. These included a children’s playground, and would typically see lots of events run in the day, including gymnastic shows, a diving bell, and ballooning (and it’s worth remembering that the site right next door was soon to become a hot air balloon factory, and one of the birthplaces of modern aviation, as we’ve written about previously). The north side also had planted terraces either side of the main entrance on Prince of Wales Road. Our sketch below shows the general layout, superimposed on what’s there now.
Although the new Palace was mostly made of recycled materials, this very much wasn’t a project done on the cheap, with considerable attention placed on getting the details right. As a sign of the level of intent, William brought in Christopher Dresser to design some of the interior of the new venue. He’s now widely known as one of the first and most important independent designers and a pioneer of the British Art Nouveau style, responsible for a lot of designs that were way ahead of their time (to the extent that some of his metalwork designs are still in production, such as his oil and vinegar sets and toast rack designs, now manufactured by Alessi).
There aren’t all that many surviving pictures of the interior. We have found one contemporary wood engraving, pictured below, from the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. It includes the organ, which had 4000 pipes and was one of the largest in the world, and the central hall (as well as some views of the Palace from the lake in Battersea Park, where the separate structure at the end housing the Connaught Hall is visible). This print is currently on sale at The Map House.
With everything assembled, William held the Grand Opening in June 1885, with a concert in the Connaught Hall, and about 5,000 visitors. Unfortunately it was a rainy day – so the main focus ended up being on the indoor exhibition stands, aquarium, picture-gallery, and numerous tea rooms, dining rooms and and bars. The Times reported on it in June 1885:
OPENING OF THE ALBERT PALACE. Despite the bad weather, which probably kept many would-be visitors at home, a large number of persons found their way to Battersea Park on Saturday, for the opening of the Albert Palace. The Palace is a handsome glass building of the Crystal Palace type, standing in extensive and prettily-laid out grounds, of which however the rain on Saturday prevented the public from making more than a cursory inspection. The interior of the building – a large nave surrounded by a gallery, which already contains the nucleus of a collection of pictures – is filled with models representing industries, cases of stuffed animals, among which a couple of splendid crocodiles from the Nile are particularly noticeable, and stalls for the sale of various articles, useful, ornamental, and indigestible. The exhibits as yet incomplete, as is but natural, but among them the beauty of several perfect river gigs and canoes seemed to attract general sympathy and admiration. Scattered here and there about the building are numerous refreshment buffets, tea stalls, &c., and there are several dining rooms, both in the building and in the grounds. This [refreshments] department is in the hands of Messrs. Bertram and Roberts.
The following months saw regular concerts by the permanent orchestra and organist, who were joined by the Viennese Ladies Orchestra. There seems to have been a bewildering range of attractions including cat, bird and flower shows, and all manner of novelties including appearances by a ‘Giant Baby’! The Hall was also used as a general exhibition hall, conservatory, concert hall, aviary and hippodrome.
In one of the stranger promotional ventures, Arthur Lasenby Liberty, trader and the founder of Liberty’s department store on Regent Street, tried to bring a taste of India to Battersea by building an Indian Village inside the venue, complete with 40 silk spinners, weavers, carpet makers, metal workers, sandalwood carvers, embroiderers, a sitar maker, singers, dancers, jugglers and snake-charmers he had brought to the UK from India.
The original programme below for a day in April 1886 is maybe more typical of what was on offer. There’s a mix of entertainment from noon that the crowd could explore alongside the many exhibits and food and drink options, leading on to a general variety entertainment show in the early evening. The picture gallery includes Views of Old London, and a Collection of Modern Paintings. At 1pm and 6pm there are organ recitals in the Connaught Hall, at 2pm there’s a military band, at 5pm there’s a trio of Canadian skaters at the west end of the nave, but the main event kicks off at 7 with bands, jugglers, comedians and comediennes and dancers, equilibrists, French chansonettes, gymnasts, acrobats, character vocalists, and (in a sign that this was 1886) what are described as “American Negro Performers”, all wrapped up at the end by the Palace Band and a rendition of the National Anthem.
The programme – which has a picture of William Holland on the cover – also advertises steam boat fares from pretty much every pier in London, with tickets including admission to the Albert Palace. It also notes that there’s a well equipped reading room with all the daily papers, with arrangements to dispatch telegrams, as well as a everything you’d need to write letters (hopefully telling people how great the Palace is) and a postbox with five collections a day. This programme is currently on sale at Michael Kemp Bookseller if you’d like to own a bit of almost forgotten local history, and a similar one is on display until February 2025 at the London Archive in Farringdon (in an exhibition with free access).
The back page of the programme sets out the future events, including all manner of concerts, a series of Grand Firework Displays, a Temperance Fete featuring Old English Sports and Pastimes, a Grand Bicycle, Tricycle and Athletic Exhibition and Races (accompanied by a meeting of the champion cyclists of Great Britain). In May the outdoor illuminations of the site would be opened, and the site would offer balloon ascents.
It also sets out the future plans to develop the Palace and its entertainment offer further – with a considerable enlargement of the Fine Art Galleries, a series of flower and fruit shows (including a strawberry show and feast), a show of domestic pets (which included a category for poultry as well as the more obvious dogs, cats and birds), and a plan to build a grand circus in the grounds ‘in which high class entertainments shall be given, similar to those originated and so successfully produced by Mr William Holland, during the last two winter seasons at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden’. William also planned to develop a spacious billiard room with three tables, and to further develop the children’s playground.
It also confirms that ‘The palace and grounds will be magnificently illuminated by the electric light and gas, with, in extra Fete days, myriads of variegated Japanese lanterns and oil lamps’. The electric lighting was implemented in 1888, but this led to more than a few headaches for William as the place he bought the lighting from (the Jablochkoff and General Electricity Company) had a design that was suspiciously similar to the lighting that had been patented by their rivals the Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company. The latter took both William and his supplier to court, they lost the case for patent infringement but did secure an injunction preventing further use of the designs.
It caught the popular imagination at first, and regularly saw over 20,000 visitors on weekends. But problems quickly emerged. One of the bigger headaches was that the palace was expensive to visit, compared to the large – and, importantly, free – park next door. William had bet everything on attracting people from all over south London, in much the way that Battersea Park itself was already attracting crowds – but while the visitors certainly came, they did so in insufficient numbers to cover the huge costs of running the vast venue. Finances became strained, and in 1888 – just three years after it opened – it closed.
William Holland, as the owner and manager of the Albert Palace, lost £30,000 on the venture, a staggering sum at the time. He’d thrown everything at this hugely ambitious venture, and its swift collapse must have hurt. But he was clearly born and bred a showman, and he didn’t give up easily. He moved north and went on to undertake a significant redevelopment of the Blackpool Winter Gardens. Using what remained of his personal fortune he first stepped in save the theatre from bankruptcy. Armed with a motto of Give ’em what they want!, he then went on to become one of the greatest managers in the history of the Winter Gardens. With three decades of theatre management under his belt, and a huge contact book, he introduced the same eclectic mix of Victorian Variety that had proved popular in the summer programmes of the London music halls he had managed, aiming to offered a sense of upmarket luxury to all classes. Ever the showman, he became well known for his stunts to draw the crowds, including placing parrots in strategic places around the town trained to advertise his latest must-see attraction. He redesigned the gardens to include an opera house and a ballroom, while also rethinking its target clientele to cater for the working class demographic, with an all day admission price and fixed ‘one shilling dinner’ that proved very successful.
The now-empty Battersea building, meanwhile, faced an uncertain future, as it got tangled up in legal disputes. It had become a popular local landmark and many tried to save it, with the Vicar of Battersea heading up an Acquisition Committee. But this would be complicated as any buyer would have to take it subject to the lease which, technically, still belonged to the original developers – the Albert Palace Association. That company was now in liquidation and taking the lease on would mean taking on a lawsuit.
So the grand palace, installed just a few years earlier, slowly decayed and became a ruin. Many of the once spectacular windows were broken and pigeons started to take over the interior. It was finally demolished five years later, with the entire contents of the building put up for auction in 1894 including wrought and cast iron, piping, ornamental gratings, boilers, toilets, bricks, plate glass, joists and beams, staircases, pictures and plaster casts. The grand organ, one of the largest in the world with its 4000 pipes, survived and eventually ended up in Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland, where – having been electrified and reduced in scale to fit a more normal sized building – it’s still working.
The cleared land was then leased to a local developer, C.J. Knowles, who we’ve written about before as he also developed the original houses along Cedars Road. Mr Knowles had wanted to get hold of the land for some time, initially to build large villas. There was less land available now, so to make the sums add up he instead developed a series of tall mansion blocks facing the park.
Albert Palace Mansions and Prince of Wales Mansions now stand on the site of the Palace itself, while its adjacent pleasure gardens became York Mansions. The new mansion blocks were designed to recreate the splendour of similar buildings north of the river in Chelsea, and attract a higher class of resident. It seemed to work – the mansion flats with their commanding views over the park were a new type of residence that was taken up by modern thinking people with comfortable incomes, while the traditional housing nearby were increasingly shared by multiple families of more limited means. A somewhat intellectual and artistic community developed there from the outset which was alluded to in a short story by P.G. Wodehouse (The Man with Two Left Feet) and a novel by Philip Gibbs (Intellectual Mansions S.W.). Blue plaques commemorate authors G.K. Chesterton and Norman Douglas, playwright Sean O’Casey, and artist Charles Sargeant Jagger.
One bit of the pleasure gardens was converted into the Battersea Polytechnic, pictured below, which opened in 1891 to give poorer Londoners access to higher education. It became the Battersea College of Technology, and in 1966, when the college became the University of Surrey, it moved away to Guildford and the building has since then also been converted to flats.
William Holland died in 1895, in his late fifties. The Globe penned a short obituary, which noted that the Albert Palace had ended up as a rare failure on an otherwise successful career: ‘A prominent man the world amusement has passed away by the death of Mr. William Holland at Blackpool yesterday. For many years he was connected with London places of amusement, including the Alhambra, the Surrey Theatre, the Royal and Canterbury music-halls, and the Albert Palace. The last-mentioned was an unpleasant experience for him, as he lost £30,000 there. To recoup his fortunes he went to the Winter Gardens at Blackpool, which he made one of the most attractive places of resort in the North. He was born 1837; his early experiences, like those of many other entertainers, was as a travelling showman.’
The Albert Palace lives on in the name of one of the mansion blocks, but today it’s just another quiet street near the park. There’s very little sign of the drama and excitement that the site once had, when it was one of London’s top entertainment venues. If William’s big project had survived, chances are this bit of Battersesa would have been a very different place.
This is part of an occasional series of posts on history of the area round Lavender Hill in Battersea, London. To receive email updates on new posts sign up here. Our local history articles are here; including posts on how this bit of Battersea was where the UK aviation industry started, on the pioneering women of Battersea’s early days (who included factory developers, social reformers, fearless pilots, celebrated artists, tenacious campaigners and ‘dangerous subversives’), and on the grand plans that could have seen a much smarter and more expensive bit of London built along the Queenstown Road. For more on the Albert Palace you may wish to see Chris Van Hayden’ article here, an article by the South London press here, or Battersea Banter’s post here. Thanks also to the team at The London Archive which is where we first found out about this bit of Battersea history.
They’ve been on the brink of collapse for years! There are cracks around the walls at the back, brambles have taken over the access paths, someone stole most of the roof, and the whole building has a slight lean to it. The inside’s not much better – for those who’re confident enough to venture past the ‘dangerous structure’ signs scattered around the building it’s been a sort of store for groundskeeper junk – bent goalposts, burst footballs, abandoned shopping trollies. The old toilet building on Clapham Common westside – in the corner of the forest, nearest to Clapham Junction – closed decades ago, due to the usual combination of vandalism and dwindling maintenance budgets. The fact that this building was the very epicentre of one of the most notorious cottaging spots in the country, at a time when our LGBT community was a lot more in the shadows, probably played in to the decision too.
But for all of the decay and dereliction, there’s still an undeniable charm to the building, which was built in a country cottage style, to match the rural and wild nature of this bit of the Common. It still has the chimney from when it had a fireplace to provide heating. Its age is uncertain – it’s one of the older buildings still standing on the Common itself, dating to somewhere between 1895 and the 1930s. The image below shows the interior, where the old facilities are still (more or less) in place.
In 2011, there was an attempt to knock it all down. Lambeth, who manage the whole Common despite this part being in Wandsworth, applied for permission for complete demolition. They clearly weren’t keen on what they described as “redundant brick built toilets”, arguing that it had been empty for 15-20 years, had suffered from vandalism and structural defects, and was ‘beyond repair’. They proposed to replace it with two steel portakabin-type changing rooms with an attached bathroom.
Lambeth’s application was a pretty shambolic one to be honest – it looked like a Friday afternoon job, with no real explanation of why the existing building was considered doomed, and (rather strangely) no details of the proposed appearance, position or layout of the new structures either, other than that they would be painted green! It saw 13 neighbour objections, with arguments that there was no need to destroy the building when the new structures could be put next to it (or indeed anywhere else in the woods where they’d be less of an eyesore), that the building (and the matching changing rooms next to it that had recently been refurbished) were an elegant structure that was part of the Common, and that contributed to the conservation area, and that the building wasn’t anywhere near as wrecked as the application suggested and could be rescued for cafe or other public use.
Wandsworth’s conservation & design advisor said that the change from a low-key building that upholds the character of the conservation area, and which could be refurbished and adapted or extended, to a harsh and industrial portakabin-type structure, should be refused. Wandsworth’s planning department supported the idea of upgrading facilities – but also felt that there wasn’t a convincing case for knocking the building down rather than repairing it, especially as it was in a conservation area. They recognised it was in ‘a decrepit state’ and seemed to be leaning at one end, but they noted it would be attractive if it was refurbished, and that Lambeth hadn’t really offered up any evidence that the structure was beyond economical repair.
They also felt that the proposed replacement structure was ‘not considered to be acceptable’: for starters it wasn’t specified if it was temporary or whether it was a prelude to a more permanent replacement, plus it would be an eyesore completely out of keeping with their environment, and in any case their dimensions didn’t look suitable for a sports team in any event. The final report was pretty damning, it’s written in quite diplomatic terms but you can sense the planning official sighing and wondering who thought such a weak application would get through. They concluded that “planning permission and conservation area consent should not be granted, until adequate justification is provided for the demolition of the existing building, and suitable replacement facilities are proposed.“
Lambeth tried again the next year, this time describing the portakabins as ‘temporary’, but the second application was later withdrawn (presumably as they got wind that another refusal was on the way) and never got to the final decision stage. And at that point Lambeth lost patience with the project and pretty much closed the book on the old building, leaving it to an uncertain future. Not much happened for a long time, though it’s at some point after this that a fair bit of the tiled roof mysteriously went missing, and was covered with a plastic tarpaulin.
A full ten years later, there was another brief spark of interest: flushed with their success at re-letting the Skate Park cafe for an astronomical level of rent (which as we reported then had a great deal of money spent on upgrading it to become a new outdoor-focussed branch of Megan’s), and conversion of the central La Baita cafe to a new branch of Pear Tree Cafe (which we also reported on), Lambeth explored if anyone wanted to take on a ten year lease on the building. As a building on Common land, the lease would include an unusual condition that ‘The premises must be accessible to the general public providing services or activities of a recreational, social or educational character benefiting the Park‘. There would be a lengthy rent-free period in exchange for the new tenant getting the building back in to a usable condition. As we reported at the time, we didn’t think that Sanderson Weatherall, the estate agents advertising this property (whose video is linked above) would exactly be seeing queues round the block, given the amount of repair work involved – this was going to be a difficult place to let! But the place did have potential. The number of people walking past here on a typical weekend is vast, it’s right next to one of the wealthiest and densest residential catchment areas in London, there’s a surprisingly large amount of enclosed space around the building that could be put to use or even used for a small extension, and it remained a pretty elegant building.
Thousands of people read our article – but no one leased the property. We started to wonder if the place was, after all, doomed. But then in a surprise move that no one really saw coming, Lambeth themselves, the ones who were itching to knock it all down 13 years ago, had a change of heart. They decided the building wasn’t beyond economic repair after all – but would make an ideal premises for a new café (just as Wandsworth had suggested back in 2011). They got the builders in, who haven’t wasted any time getting the leaning wall and chimney straightened up, damaged bricks carefully replaced, the whole building cleaned and repointed, and the roof repaired.
There will be new timber framed windows, including a hatch for outdoor counter service, and the interior will be opened up (as shown in the floorplan design above) to create a cafe with an internal WC, as well as an accessible one that can be accessed from the terrace. The existing railings around the edge of the site will be refurbished, and a small area between the building and the path will be resurfaced (partly with sandstone, partly with permeable resin-bound gravel) to allow for an external seating area. The planning application notes that the small scale of the venture will mean it doesn’t detract from or compete with, the town centre businesses on Battersea Rise, but that getitng the building repaired and back in to use will create a space that is a useful asset for Clapham Common, directly serving the park users and making the Common a better public space.
It’s scrubbing up really well, as our photos of the work in progress show. Just think – that this could by now have been a set of green steel sheds! The similar ones by the old gravel pitches below show what we’ve luckily avoided.
But the newly-enthusiastic Lambeth went further. Probably with half an eye on the huge volumes of trade that the other two upgraded-and-extended cafes on the Common are now doing, and the proximity to the busy but café-less playground at the Battersea corner of the Common, they saw the potential for income. The Clapham Common Management Advisory Committee have reported that rather than leasing it out, Lambeth is considering operating the cafe themselves. The planning application makes a slightly different suggestion that the Cafe will be operated by a private tenant under a lease agreement with the Council.
Opening hours have yet to be agreed, but there will be a requirement to open all day on weekends and holidays between Easter and end of October, and more limited weekday and winter hours operation (typically opening at 8am, and closing at 4 in winter – but with the ability to run to 8-9pm on summer nights, and an ability to open to 11pm up to 15 times a year).
This looks like a happy ending. We’re pleased to see that Lambeth have had a change of heart and decided to invest in this bit of the Common, which was increasingly neglected, with a hint of antisocial behaviour being increasingly drawn towards the derelict-looking buildings. The new cafe should offer a welcoming space with both indoor and outdoor seating, and it feels like a realistic and sensible use of the building, which strikes the right balance between preserving the green and somewhat rural character of the Common, and making the money needed to maintain its facilities & provide services to its users. Above all it’s good to see this historic building, which looked to be doomed to further decay and ultimate demolition, being restored to the picturesque country-cottage style building it should have been all along.
Meanwhile closer to Clapham South the Bowling Green Cafe, which has been the subject of much more controversy linked to plans to convert the whole site to a Minigolf facility, is also seeing works. This building is a rather more fragile structure in the first place than the forest toilet building, and is in a similarly dreadful condition; for some time it has been too unstable to have customers inside. The team on site were doing their best to repair the roof, and we understand it is also being refurbished to be leased out as a cafe
The bowling Green pavilion next door to it currently has a slightly intriguing planning application in – for the change of use from ‘areas or places for outdoor sport or recreation’)’ to ‘Provision of education’. The proposal is so new that no details are available – in due course we’ll find out more (the reference is application 2024/2622 at wandsworth.gov.uk/planning). We did spot some minor works to repair the rather dilapidated building.
The two buildings had been jointly available for lease as a Cafe (the details are here) and it is marked as under offer. Looking at the size of the building, our best guess is that this is for the building closer to the former bowling green itself – which is larger and in a better overall condition – to be leased out as a nursery, but if you have more insight on this we’d be keen to hear from you.
We mainly cover the Lavender Hill area, but sometimes also report on developments on Clapham Common. If you found this interesting, you may want to see our previous articles on planning and development, or on shops and food & drink traders in the area. To receive new posts on lavender-hill.uk by e-mail (for free, unsubscribe anytime), sign up here.
The very last ’empty shop’ in Clapham Junction following the Covid pandemic is coming back in to use. Moss Bros used to have a store next to the way in to Clapham Junction station – which was rather handily placed for them as their headquarters was in the offices above. It did a busy trade in hiring suits and formalwear, but also sold a wider mix of clothes to the crowds of people passing by every day. Th formalwear trade was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and the store closed as part of plans to radically slim down the store estate in a bid to keep the company alive – which seemed to work, as the company came out the other end and has even started to open a few new stores.
What was maybe more unusual is that part of the premises then sat empty for about for years. It was quickly split in two, and the first part quickly became Wasabi. The other half, several years later, is now set to become a new burger restaurant, Fat Phill’s, whose flagship offer is a ‘smash burger’ (made by smashing the ground beef onto the grill with a spatula, to give a sear on the outside of the meat, to lock in juice and flavour). They also offer loaded sandwiches, Philly cheesesteak fries, and juicy chicken tenders – all made fresh to order in an open kitchen.
Fat Phill’s was founded by Armin Vahabian, an Iranian immigrant to the Netherlands and a father of three. As Forbes reports, after getting a taste of an American burger on a visit to the US, he set out to bring that flavour home. He founded Fat Phill’s in Amsterdam in 2019, without any initial investors, and he grew it quickly: within five years he was running a chain with 17 branches. It’s clearly worked pretty well, with over $16 million in revenue in 2023.
The chain’s fast growth in the Netherlands has been helped by several enthusiastic franchisees; and the business is now planning to enter the UK market, also via a franchise agreement. Fat Phill’s UK venture will be led by a firm called Freshly Baked Ltd, who are also the people behind Auntie Anne’s pretzels, who have just under 40 stores across the UK and Ireland (the nearest to here’s a kiosk in Hammersmith). The chain is initially aiming for ‘busy London high streets’, and Clapham Junction is one of the first three UK branches. This feels like a decent choice of location, a very busy bit of the town centre, right outside a very busy railway station. Fat Phill’s aims to go on and develop around 100 branches in the next 10 years, and are currently looking for people wanting to run franchises around the UK.
The Clapham Junction branch will be quite small – maybe 1,000 square feet – with a few tables, one larger shared table, and an open kitchen with a big grill; they are presumably also aiming for a reasonably large takeaway & delivery offer. There’s currently a planning application in for some very minor works to support the conversion of the premises from what was half of a clothes shop to a restaurant, mainly including new signage, some vents and extraction equipment at the back (planning case 2024/1726 at wandsworth.gov.uk/planning if you’d like to see or comment).
Fat Phill’s Clapham Junction, 16 St John’s Hill SW11 1SA, Battersea… opening soon.We cover local developments in the Lavender Hill part of Clapham Junction. You may also want to see our recent roundup of retail comings and goings on the street, or our wider articles on retail and on food & drink in Lavender Hill & the eastern area of Clapham Junction.
Marsha de Cordova is the Labour Party candidate in the Battersea constituency for the 2024 General Election. We and our partners at Clapham Junction insider are inviting all the candidates to short interviews – so you can learn more about who they are, what they believe in, and their plans to improve Battersea and help its residents. Details of all the candidates, and the other interviews, are here.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers? I am proud to be standing for re-election as your MP for Battersea and have the chance to continue my work making Battersea the best place to live, work, and visit.
I have been determined to create a fairer and more equal society for everyone. From my career before Parliament as a disability rights campaigner, charity founder and leader, to my work as an MP, I have always sought to break down barriers.
Tell us something about you our readers may not know... My brother is a Premier League footballer [editor’s note: Bobby Decordova-Reid, who plays for Fulham]
You are now running to be elected as Labour MP for a third term. What makes the Battersea constituency, where you have lived for quite some years, special for you? It has been an honour and privilege to represent Battersea, to be your voice in Parliament and to be a champion for our community. One of the things that makes our area so special is the wonderful community spirit and infrastructure we have here.
It has been a privilege to work alongside the many individuals, and community and faith organisations that do fantastic work in the area, including supporting young people, the elderly, refugees and many others.
You held two roles as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and previously as Shadow Minister Disabled People. In 2021 you resigned from the shadow cabinet and you said you wanted to concentrate more on your constituency. What experience do you bring as part of Keir Starmer shadow cabinet and how can it help Battersea? Serving in a shadow ministerial role enabled me to hold the government to account and develop policies which would bring transformative change to our country including for constituents here in Battersea. They continue to provide a blueprint for the kinds of changes I’d like to see.
I led Labour’s response on equalities during the pandemic and highlighted the many health inequalities that Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities, women and disabled people faced in Battersea including leading a campaign locally to encourage take up of the covid vaccine.
With the busiest station at the heart of Battersea, public transport is used by the vast majority of people in the area. What would you like to see improved for that in Battersea? Throughout my time as an MP, I have made it my priority to improve transport and ensure it’s inclusive for all users.
We have had some huge wins here. These include saving some of our vital bus routes such as the C3; forcing the government to U-turn on their planned cuts to local rail ticket offices at Clapham Junction and Wandsworth Town; and securing funding to make nearly all our train stations in Battersea more accessible including Access for All work at Wandsworth Town station. I was also proud to be there for the opening of the Northern Line extension in North Battersea.
However, there is a lot more work to do. The Tories have u-turned on access for all funding at Battersea Park station and I will be calling for funding to be restored to make the station accessible. [editor’s note – we’ve previously posted about this project, and Marsha’s campaigning for it – the article’s here].
Clapham Junction station is one of the busiest interchange stations in the country and it needs to be redeveloped to make it fit for purpose. This includes ensuring it is fully accessible. As part of the redevelopment plans, I want to see the Northern Line extended to Clapham Junction – imagine the investment and opportunity that it will bring to our community!
Housing is also a local concern. Recently we have seen some proposal for massive schemes exceeding local plan rules – which justify their scale on the grounds that they also include a share of affordable housing. Where is the right balance between providing the social housing we need, and making sure that our urban environment remains one people want to live in? Battersea is one of the youngest constituencies in the country and has a higher amount of private and social renters than the national average.
The Tories have failed on housing and presided over continued crisis, exacerbated by their disastrous policies. Particularly impactful have been the scrapping of house building targets, u-turning on ending leasehold tenures, and the failure to pass renters reform legislation. Worst of all, too many residents in Battersea continue to live in unsafe housing due to fire safety which I have campaigned to address in Parliament.
I will continue to campaign for safe, secure and genuinely affordable housing in Battersea. It is necessary to increase housing supply but that must be done with community support and respond to residents wants and needs which is why I oppose the redevelopment of One Battersea Bridge. My first contribution in Parliament when I was elected in 2017 was to call for more affordable housing in the Battersea Power Station development.
Labour will build 1.5 million homes to buy and rent, end the unfair leasehold system, reform the private rental sector including ending S21 no fault evictions, and secure more protection for those affected by the cladding and fire safety crisis.
The cost of living is a real worry for many of our readers. Since Labour took control in 2022, the Council has implemented the London Living Wage for its staff and contractors. What additional measures do you believe are necessary, including in the private sector, and what do you think is the best approach for the government to provide support? We need to kickstart economic growth and move away from the low growth high tax economy which the Tories have entrenched over the past 14 years.
Their mismanagement of the economy has caused the biggest fall in living standards on record and stoked the high inflation which is affecting all of us. The price of the annual supermarket shop has risen by nearly £1,000 since the last General Election.
Labour aims to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 to underpin our recovery. Economic growth will boost prosperity, deliver good jobs and improve living standards.
In addition, we have a number of other pledges which will dramatically improve the finances and security of households across the country. This includes delivering the biggest ever increase in social and affordable housing, offering better job security and pay with our New Deal for Workers, improving educational outcomes, and providing affordable childcare and free breakfast clubs in schools.
Our Green Prosperity Plan, a cornerstone of which will include switching on Great British Energy, will save households an average £300 annually on their energy expenses, while our warm homes plan will lower bills even further by insulating five million homes.
Issues of disability and discrimination have been central to your political engagement. What are the first changes you would advocate for under a Labour government? My lived experience has informed the two guiding principles in my life and career: namely, of making a difference and being a voice for a voiceless.
Over the past 14 years, successive Tory governments have created a hostile environment against disabled people which has resulted in unimaginable suffering for millions. The adverse effects of these policies were so severe that they have prompted investigation by the UN for violation of disabled people’s rights.
The Labour Party is and has always been the party of equality. Our many achievements include strengthening the National Disability Council with the Disability Rights Commission, ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009, and passing the Equality Act 2010 which enforces, protects and promotes the rights of disabled people.
One of the biggest issues of concern for disabled people is access to employment. We need more robust measures to achieve equality in the workplace which the Tories haven’t put in place. I will push to make sure that we deliver quickly on the full right to equal pay for disabled people; for disability and ethnicity pay gap reporting for large employers; for improving employment support and access to reasonable adjustments; and tackling the Access to Work backlog.
In the 2016 EU referendum there was a 70 % remain vote here, one of the highest in the country. There is still a lot of strong feeling about Brexit, however Labour seems to have ruled out revisiting the issue – how would you address the issue in this election? Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster and I have campaigned in Parliament to highlight the negative impact it has had locally. Our country is always stronger when we work with others, and I will continue to call for closer ties with the EU and to tear down unnecessary barriers.
Climate change and environmental issues are core concerns for our readers. Keir Starmer announced last year that Labour will not revoke the decision to drill more oil fields in the North Sea. Some people say that if all the oil in the Rosebank oil field is burnt, it will emit more CO2 than the world’s 28 poorest countries combined in a year. Additionally, Labour has renounced its pledge to spend £28 billion a year on environmental projects. Do you think that Labour can still be trusted to tackle the climate emergency? The climate emergency is the defining crisis of our time. My record shows that I take the climate and nature crisis very seriously. I have been rated “very good” for votes supporting action on climate by VoteClimate and was the Vice-Chair of the Environment APPG.
I’m committed to making Battersea even greener, cleaner and healthier. So, you can be assured that I will be continue holding any future government to account on their climate commitments.
Labour has made the climate emergency a priority. That’s why clean energy by 2030 is Labour’s second mission and we will make Britain a clean energy super-power by 2030 with our Green Prosperity Plan. We will switch on Great British Energy, create a National Wealth Fund to boost green jobs and will not issue any new oil and gas licenses.
Our track record shows we can deliver on climate and nature. We passed the Climate Change Act 2008 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. This was the first global legally binding climate change mitigation target set by a country.
The situation in Gaza is a significant concern for many voters, particularly in London where opinions are strong. You recently rebelled and voted against the party line on a ceasefire motion. What led you to make this decision, despite the potential risk to your prospects for Ministerial positions? Do you foresee yourself taking similar stances in the future? I have been horrified by the violence we saw on 7th October 2023 in Israel as well as that witnessed in the many subsequent months, in both Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
The only solution to the situation is a political settlement. That’s why I voted for an immediate ceasefire in Parliament in November of last year and have continued to call for one at every available opportunity. The need for a political settlement has also prompted me to consistently call for the release of all hostages, for the removal of all restrictions to humanitarian access and aid, including restoration of UNWRA funding, the suspensions of arm transfers to Israel, immediate recognition of a Palestinian state, respect for the ICC/ICJ rulings, and the proactive upholding of international law.
If I’m re-elected, I will continue to campaign for the next government to focus its diplomatic efforts on achieving these goals and a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps and Jerusalem as the shared capital. This the only viable pathway to achieving peace for Israelis and Palestinians.
Marsha’s website is here, her twitter’s here and her instagram is here. This is one of a series of interviews, where we aim to speak to all of the candidates for the Battersea constituency in the July 2024 general election, the others are here. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to take Photo ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID).
Georgina Burford-Connole is the Rejoin EU Party candidate in the Battersea constituency for the 2024 General Election. We and our partners at Clapham Junction insider are inviting all the candidates to short interviews – so you can learn more about who they are, what they believe in, and their plans to improve Battersea and help its residents. Details of all the candidates, and the other interviews, are here.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers? My name is Georgina Burford-Connole, and I am the Rejoin EU Party candidate for Battersea.
Tell us something about you our readers may not know… In my spare time, I run a small business selling Japanese Kawaii merchandise, and I was once killed by a cyberman as an extra on Doctor Who.
What makes the Battersea constituency special for you? Battersea is special and a wonderful place to live and work because of: the Commons, the river, the Park, the power station, Mondo Brewing Tap Room, the Bedford in Balham, Battersea Village Square. The list goes on and on!!
The events that are put on each year in Battersea Park, Clapham Common, particularly the fireworks. And my daughter would not want the regular visits of Zippos Circus and the various funfairs that set up on the Commons to be overlooked.
The transport links are fantastic too: both road and rail, with quick access to Gatwick via Clapham Junction and the A3 taking you (mostly!) rapidly to the south coast. The redevelopment going on (Winstanley Estate, the power station, just up from Clapham Junction, Arding and Hobbs) is testament to Battersea’s attractiveness. And it’s always sunnier in SW London!!
With the busiest station at the heart of Battersea, public transport is used by the vast majority of people in the area. What would you like to see improved for that in Battersea? I don’t know where Crossrail 2 has got to but a link up with the Elizabeth Line would massively enhance Clapham Junction’s utility, providing quick access to Heathrow (in addition to the already good links to Gatwick), as well as rapid cross-London transport. Probably as tricky, if not more so, getting a tube stop into Clapham Junction would be amazing.
Getting to the station by road is already easy due to the large number of buses that pass by, but traffic and dropping off/picking up with luggage can be tricky at busy times.
So maybe more use could be made of Grant Road for drop off/pick up parking and the bus stands there moved to the car park behind the PCS building. Not sure if that’s feasible but providing more of a bus hub right next to the station and more space for cars / taxis could improve the efficiency around the station.
Housing is also a local concern. Recently we have seen some proposal for massive blocks of flats exceeding local plan rules – which justify their scale on the grounds that they also provide a share of affordable housing. Where is the right balance between providing the social housing we need, and making sure that our urban environment remains one people want to live in? This is tied up in wider issues of planning reform. Battersea is a victim of its own success, being an attractive place to live and work! If we had a more rigorous rules based planning system rather than one which is a little too vague and malleable, we might better be able to capture what local people regard as the key attributes to defend and keep.
The fact that the constituency doesn’t exactly overlap with the local Boroughs also slightly complicates consulting on these sorts of issues. But more consultation at earlier stages would almost certainly help. By this, I don’t mean a single town hall style meeting where the developer and the Local Planning Authority set out the plans and people are simply allowed to comment.
Rather I mean a proper conversation that extends over a number of such open meetings with local people, by the end, feeling a genuine ownership of their local area and a partnership with the developer and Local Planning Authority. (Note: I suspect this is about the height of the Glassmills redevelopment on the river – some 30 stories high!!) [editor’s note: suspicion correct; albeit that’s the latest in quite a long list!]
The cost of living is a real worry for many of our readers. Since Labour took control in 2022, the Council has implemented the London Living Wage for its staff and contractors. What additional measures do you believe are necessary, including in the private sector, and what do you think is the best approach for the government to provide support? This is a huge question!! To answer in two (brief!) parts.
First, at a local level I would like to see more participation of local people directly. Especially when times are hard. Participatory budgeting has time and again proved its worth in terms of transparency and understanding. Let’s do more of this. Second, reform of local government financing is long long long overdue. And, conscious of my comment above about the mismatch between constituencies and Boroughs, this area might be the one better suited for action by the local MP. A first action could be to reestablish the Audit Commission, closed in 2015, to provide some consistency and advice to local governments on their finances.
Second, and not to be done without other aspects of tax reform, maybe it’s time to rebase council tax…?? I think the Mirrlees Review had something on this and that was 13 years ago!
In the 2016 EU referendum there was a 70 % remain vote here, one of the highest in the country. There is still a lot of strong feeling about Brexit – but how relevant is it as an issue in this election? Brexit is the driving engine behind the continued cost of living crisis we face today, and it’s going to get worse as the cutting of trade links with the EU will make getting basic food stuffs much harder as accelerating environmental changes make food harder to produce.
Brexit also continues to blight our ability to travel & work beyond the UK, has destroyed the retirement plans of hundreds of thousands of Brits, and stolen the educational opportunities from our young people.
Battersea could be the first place in the country to send a strong, critical voice to Westminster calling for the reversal of Brexit
The environment has become a bit of a political football, getting tangled in arguments about onshore wind farms and even wokeness. What are the most important measures the future government should commit to in order to address the climate emergency? Continuing from my last answer, the UK CANNOT fight alone against climate change – we need to join together with the rest of the European Union to provide real global leadership here.
I don’t think there is still a true awareness of exactly how perilous our planet’s future is : as many scientific voices tell us, if we aren’t frightened, we don’t properly understand what’s happening!
If elected, I will provide a strong voice to ensure every policy debated in Westminster considers the UK’s responsibility to the planet
The situation in Gaza is a concern for many voters, and specifically in London where many have a strong view. What do you think should be the government’s position? The images we’ve seen on our televisions are truly horrific & no decent person should be able to ignore the brutal murders that have taken place.
The Government’s position should be to support an immediate cease-fire and ensure the International Criminal Court is supported in the thorough investigation of this catastrophe.
Closer to home, many individuals have used the situation as an excuse for antisemitism and islamophobia – this should be utterly condemned, and such individuals NOT be supported in having their hateful voices heard
And finally – why should our readers vote for you? Do the people of Battersea really just want one more dull Labour MP who will just follow the herd in parliament?
Why not be vote different!
A vote for me is a vote to show Battersea doesn’t just do what Keir Starmer says it should, and doesn’t just accept the status quo as a fait-accompli.
The Rejoin EU website is here. This is one of a series of interviews, where we aim to speak to all of the candidates for the Battersea constituency in the July 2024 general election, the others are here. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to take Photo ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID).
It’s hiding in plain sight – a giant area of Battersea that many of its immediate neighbours have never been to. In and among the railway arches between Queenstown Road and Nine Elms, this tangle of industrial sites is home to a bewildering array of businesses – including a concrete batching plant, a large bus depot, a railway maintenance site, scrap metal recycling, bakeries for the likes of Crosstown Doughnuts and Madeira Portuguese patisserie, food warehouses, a tile warehouse, and a large area of self storage – as well as several multi-tenant office spaces that house a vast number of small businesses. It’s a far cry from the dense residential streets to the south, let alone the jumble of new developments around the power station to the north.
The industrial area used to stretch much further north and east, to encompass almost all of Nine Elms, where there were print works, delivery depots, a vast mail sorting office, the flower market, a dairy, and more – all visible behind the railway viaduct in the photo below. That has all been swept away by thousands of flats and offices.
A rare confluence of circumstances made this happen, including an enthusiastic group of Malaysian investors & pension funds that finally rescued the Battersea Power Station development (and landed a real coup in letting half a million square feet of space to Apple); a surprise move by the US Embassy to Nine Elms after all the options they initially preferred (like Kensington and Greenwich) proved too small / not for sale/ not secure enough; and what we understand was a direct personal steer from Boris Johnson to TfL to push the Battersea tube extension from somewhere in the ‘maybe-one-day’ middle ranks to the top priority for TfL’s investment plans.
But behind the scenes, a fair bit of Council ‘Masterplanning’ also helped. At least a dozen developers owned bits of land in Nine Elms, and left to their own devices they they would happily have gone their own ways and built blocks of flats that made individual sense, without forming a coherent whole. Wandsworth, together with the GLA, Lambeth, and others, set out to try and tie the projects together and create a new bit of London that would fit together, with the sort of facilities and services you would expect – using a mix of developer self-interest in creating more attractive flats to sell, and the tried-and-tested “planning’s going to be slow and sticky unless you comply” – all backed by a 156-page document published in 2012 called the “Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area Planning Framework” which set out some fairly specific guidelines on what development would and would not be acceptable.
Some of the results of this are visible: particular parts of the development have had to chip in towards playgrounds, make provision to facilities like shops and cycle parking, as well as getting them to pay for upgrades to transport options. The masterplan also sliced off bits of each development site in an organised way, to create a single more-or-less joined up green space that runs the length of the development, shown above. Some of the planning is less visible – like the little-noticed new area-wide heating and power network, and a new school that’s in the works. The seeds are starting to come together even in the rather ‘Dubai-on-Thames’-esque area round Vauxhall, where what started as mix of 50-storey skyscrapers plonked down in a warren of shabby streets is at – slowly – starting to take on a more coherent attractive whole now that the ‘linear park’ is growing.
These factors turned Nine Elms from a lonely warehouse district to a somewhat glitzy new ‘neighbourhood’ with a ten-minute connection to central London. And whether you love or hate the way things have turned out (and we know a fair few of our readers sit on either side of that fence) – there’s no denying that Nine Elms has been pretty successful in delivering what it set out to achieve. It grew impressively fast – from demolition sites to a thicket of buildings in under a decade, in stark contrast to the glacial pace of development in the similarly-sized area around the O2 / Millennium Dome, where a single developer has spent 25 years very slowly redeveloping an area of land that had already had a new tube connection laid on by the government.
But this brings us to an interesting question. Because in this explosion of development, Nine Elms itself was treated as a blank canvas: the previous industrial & business activity was swept away with barely a backward glance. Tenants were given notice to quit, and the buildings reduced to rubble and tangled metal on the back of a series of skip lorries. Even the most awkward site of all, the waste transfer station that creates questionable smells in the summer, is set to be rebuilt with flats above it. Soon the only original features left in Nine Elms will be the power station, the Heathwall pumping station, and seven of the elm trees pictured below (the developers planted two more) –
Back in 2012, Wandsworth Council reckoned there were around 1,200 businesses in the Queenstown ward, generating about 14,000 jobs in sectors including transport and logistics, food and drink, wholesale distribution and knowledge based industries – and the whole of the Battersea and Nine Elms area had been officially labelled as ‘strategic industrial land’, to try and protect its employment uses from rapacious property developers. This label was removed for most of Nine Elms, to free up the space for redevelopment – with an assumption that the rest of the industrial area south of the railway viaducts could become more densely packed to accommodate some of the businesses and jobs, helped by ‘improvements to access and public realm’. This densification is already well underway on the Covent Garden Market site, where a somewhat overdue replacement of the rather tired 1970s buildings is being used as an opportunity to fit the whole market on about half of the previous space. The 2012 planning framework document included a slightly ominous note that “Given the uplift in land values in the Opportunity Area on the basis of land use policy changes, the planning framework envisages that many of the existing businesses in Nine Elms will relocate.” – which was likely a code for these businesses being likely to find the area was to expensive for them!
Will the same thing now happen to the rest of Battersea’s industrial area? The new transport and access has brought Battersea’s industrial area rather closer to the city centre, and it has (as predicted) pushed up land values significantly. A lot of buildings like the old furniture store and later Decca radio & television factory at Ingate Place above already have the look of prime ‘loft apartment’ conversion material, and being five minutes’ walk from a Zone 1 tube station makes that prospect even more likely! Other buildings like the warehouses below on Stewarts’ Lane are more industrial but are still high-value land. It’d be easy to assume that with time, Battersea’s industrial district will go the same way as Nine Elms, as new residential developments gnaw away at the edges and gradually push these businesses out of the centre of London altogether.
But this would be a shame – because while this certainly isn’t the sort of ‘Battersea’ that estate agents get excited about, it is a significant employer. It houses a lot of the unglamorous-but-important businesses that work away behind the scenes to keep the city working, as well as a growing set of creative small businesses. And these sources of local employment matter! The Council even runs job fairs to help this local employment structure work – our photo below shows a typical advert for one of them on Lavender Hill.
For a long time, the future of Battersea’s remaining business district wasn’t been at the top of anyone’s priorities. It just ticked over quietly. The landlords of the small-business workspaces did report a healthy level of demand for their buildings, which led to some investment: the Battersea Studios, originally a TV studio with generous amounts of car parking, realised there was more money to be made as a venue for small businesses, and developed a new five storey building (the one on the right in our photo below) that is let to a huge array of mostly creative and technology-focussed businesses. There was never a shortage of demand for the other facilities either – the concrete plant spent on the left in the same photo spent several years in a row as the busiest in Europe, as it served projects right across Nine Elms and inner London.
But gradually, thought turned to what this area should evolve in to. And the Council, after a bit of consultation and masterplanning, created something a bit unusual, called the Battersea Design and technology Quarter. This is a vision for how the slightly neglected pockets of industrial land labelled as 11, 12 and 13 in the map below could become a cluster for creative design and technology businesses – creating about 230,000 square metres of employment floorspace and over 10,000 local jobs. It’s all about building a more resilient local economy, by building on the strengths of our existing traders and residents, including providing space for them to be able to grow without leaving Battersea, as well as bringing new companies in to fill strategic gaps in the existing mix of businesses, and providing opportunities to accommodate some new industries in Battersea.
In practice this means supporting projects that will create space for small and medium sized businesses, as well as incubators and accelerators to help companies with good ideas grow fast. There’s an explicit aim to deliver some ‘affordable’ workspace – which tends to mean that new developments sign up, at the planning permission stage, to keeping at least a proportion at a reasonable price.
The plans for the new quarter aren’t saying exactly what needs to be done where or when – as that will also depend on what the many landlords and developers can pull together – but they will act as a strong guide to what path future development takes. It carries some weight in the planning and development process, where the local plan (a really important planning document that really does define what is likely to be approved) has been adjusted to reflect these new plans.
A lot of this comes down to supporting projects that help use the existing land, which includes a lot of surface car parking and single storey industrial space, more intensively – to allow light industrial uses to work alongside commercial office and studio uses – the Local Plan says that for new developments “Industrial uses (including logistical) must be provided within ground floor units [in most cases], with the opportunity for industrial and office uses on upper floors“. The approach of keeping these ‘ground floor’ uses in any new developments should ensure that existing businesses can still find a home on the new site.
The image below is a concept sketch of how the whole site could look in the future – with somewhat taller buildings that accommodate light industrial &logistical tenants on the ground floor and lower levels, and smaller business space above. The area around Havelock Terrace, nearest to the tube, is already the most densely used bit of the site and is likely to continue as the highest-rise bit of the project, with the land further south being suitable for a wider mix of lower density industries.
One of the bigger headaches, with a plan that aims to create a bit of a cluster with a good number of companies close to teach other and becoming more than the sum of their parts, is that the quarter is split up in three separate bits of land between the railways that are each cul-de-sacs, and not connected to each other. This is a similar challenge to the one that Barratt faced when they built Battersea Exchange housing development in the space between Battersea park station and Queenstown Road station, but in this case there aren’t a lot of easy-to-open-up railway arches.
The plans therefore want to improve access in and around the site for both vehicles and pedestrians – noting that “Contributions to upgrade pedestrian routes to/from Battersea Park Station and Queenstown Road Station and improve accessibility to the new Northern Line station at Battersea Power Station will be required” as part of new developments. They aim to ensure that Battersea Park Station is able to cater for a future extension of the London Overground (something we’ve written about before), and that better connectivity with Queenstown Road Station is provided though the Battersea Exchange development (a long running aim that we’ve reported on many times). This all feels long overdue, as the street layout is currently somewhat inefficient and was clearly designed on the cheap, with large-vehicle turning circles in mind but not much else.
There are hints that the long-closed pedestrian bridge shown below that runs from Heathbrook Park to the middle of the site (crossing a whole bundle of railway sidings) could be reopened for public use at some stage down the line (which would considerably improve accessibility to Wandsworth Road station), and there’s also some scope for east/west links under the railway from Heathbrook Park to Stewarts Lane using currently-vacant arch spaces.
There’s scope for some helpful changes for the site’s neighbours as well – for example, some relatively low rise building along the Silverthorne Road could provide some shielding of the houses further south from the noise and especially dust from the concrete batching works deeper in the site. Some of the existing sites could easily see upgrades – for example, the large bus depot could become an indoor facility with other uses built above it, giving a somewhat more weather-resistant site.
This is a big and ambitious vision, and it will clearly take time to deliver! But the seeds are already there. There’s already a steady stream of new projects aiming to make more of the space, and the impressive connectivity to the rest of London. One trend that is set to continue is the extension of some of the existing workspaces, and a shift from a few large land-hungry tenants, to a larger number of small businesses. Battersea Studios have had great success with their second building and are planning a third, which could be added in a corner of the site that is currently mostly used by satellite dishes and cooling systems.
This is maybe a good example of the sorts of buildings we can expect – with a light industrial space at the ground level, big powerful lifts, and several floors of offices on the upper levels. It builds on the gradual improvement to the existing buildings, which have seen new external seating areas, a food offer, and improvements to the access road including signage, seating, lighting and road surfacing and widening works.
The new project promises ‘first class amenities, including generous communal roof terrace and London Plan levels of cycle parking and showers at ground and basement level.’. It would have a very flexible interior – with floors that can be let as a whole floor, or in all manner of subdivisions to accommodate businesses of varied sizes – as shown below for a typical floor.
We have reported on quite a few developments over the years, some of which have been built, and some of which are in earlier parts of the development process. One of our favourites is the big old classic hat factory building just south of Queenstown Road station, whose tenants have been moved out ahead of a refurbishment.
Ingate Works across the road has already been built, as a high quality office making good use of an awkward and more-or-less-abandoned set of land behind the Queenstown Road flats.
We’ve also reported on a rather clever building being planned for Havelock Terrace, which will see some low-rise industrial space replaced with a newer, smarter version of the same thing that goes taller – with industrial space on the lower levels and office space above it – but also roof terraces and wider facilities that will make these a nice place to work.
The cross section to the right, for the Havelock Terrace building, is maybe typical of the approach – which allows us to keep some of the more heavy-duty industrial and workshop spaces in Battersea, while also accommodating wider businesses above. It’s undoubtedly a tall building, but it’s worth bearing in mind that its neighbours are a load of railway lines, and some similarly tall new Nine Elms buildings!
Approaches like this will help our local small businesses and workspaces evolve and keep running, and in our view at least it’s better than just creating areas that have lots of flats but where everyone has to commute far away top find work.
This is an evolving area and we can expect to see quite a lot of change in the years ahead. We’re optimistic that this will be done in a way that keeps the disruption to both existing tenants, and neighbours of the site, to a minimum; the projects that have got going so far like Ingate Works seem to have managed this well.
If you’ve read this far, chances are you find this subject interesting – in which case we’d recommend you join a free talk this Wednesday (26th June 2024 – advert for the talk pictured) at 6.30pm at Battersea library on Lavender Hill, on ‘The Battersea Tangle‘. It’s by Dennis Austin of local architects daab design. Dennis will look at the lasting legacy of the rail companies’ development on this bit of Battersea, and what the rail depot and the industrial spaces around it can play in our future. The talk is free and all are welcome – but you’ll need to book in advance to ensure there’s space, so send an email to heritage@gll.org .
Dennis is based locally and is a proper expert on the area; he has previously run a walk & talk around the Battersea Design & Technology Quarter – visiting the three main sections to see the spaces ‘hiding in plain sight’, while exploring how they could all create new dynamic meeting places for local communities and future tenants. These are quite unusual tours – which include examining the three aggregate sites, peeking over the walls of the active rail depot, and discussing the role of the bus depot! Daab are also the people behind a project calledSilver Linings, a series looking at the history of the Park Town Estate (which is the area either side of Queenstown Road). It’s well worth a look – and it was an inspiration behind one of our previous ‘local history’ posts that looked at the unexpectedly complex and interesting history of the Cedars Road Estate.
This is part of our occasional series that covers development on spaces for business in Battersea; our other business-related posts are here.If you find our local history coverage of interest, you may enjoy a long article on the complicated history of the Cedars Road estate, a similarly detailed look at the past of Culvert Place, a photo story about the Shaftesbury Estate drawing on its conservation designation, an article about the cluster of derelict buildings around the old Artesian Well bar on Clapham North street, a very detailed history of Rush Hill Road, and an article about the area around Falcon Lane that dives in to the area’s messy past and some scary 1970s road-building projects that very nearly got built!Details on how to get in touch, or receive updates from us, are here.
Francis Chubb is the Liberal Democrats candidate in the Battersea constituency for the 2024 General Election. We and our partners at Clapham Junction insider are inviting all the candidates to short interviews – so you can learn more about who they are, what they believe in, and their plans to improve Battersea and help its residents.Details of all the candidates, and the other interviews, are here.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers? I am a solicitor and I live in Battersea with my family. In my past I have been a junior army officer, a journalist in Egypt, and participated in business ventures in south-east Europe. I have also been a trustee, and chair of the trustees, of a charity that operated a museum in London. I studied Philosophy and Politics in Liverpool and Law in London. I initially trained as a barrister before becoming a solicitor and I, together with a business partner, opened my own law firm in 2009. I have also qualified as an arbitrator and mediator.
Tell us something about you our readers may not know... I was in Berlin on 9th November 1989 when the Wall came down. It showed me that change for the better can be attained even when it appears extremely unlikely and that people’s drive to achieve it should never be underestimated.
You spent six years as an army officer – what are you most proud of in your time there? Of having brokered a settlement to a logging dispute between Croat and Serb parties on the Inter–Entity Boundary Line between Glamoč and Mrkonjić Grad, while serving in Bosnia Herzegovina. This was a real test of one’s listening skills and ability to deal with egos and cultural sensitivities in a tactful and diplomatic way.
What have you learned as a Solicitor / Barrister that you will bring to national politics? How to research and marshal facts, to set out an argument, to really listen to people, and to try to see and engage with alternative points of view. Also acquiring a respect for a system of laws which keeps the peace, enables disputes to be resolved peacefully, and creates a framework in which people can cooperate in amazingly different ways.
The Liberal democrats have a loyal following here, and the share of the vote increased towards 15% in recent elections. However, Battersea’s still often assumed to be a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives – how can this time be different? The result of this election appears to be a foregone conclusion.
But, because of the way the odds are stacked, people now have the space to think about how to make their voices heard. Those who wish to see a genuinely freer, fairer, more equal and more accountable form of politics in Britain can demand this without fearing that their efforts to draw attention to this need will let in to power someone wholly unsuitable.
Furthermore, a Labour Party in government will be faced with many serious challenges, so they will have to choose their priorities carefully. The disarray the Conservative Party finds itself in makes it unlikely that it will be a constructive opposition. Having a strong Lib Dem presence in Parliament would mean that issues that are important to people but are not top priorities for Labour will stay on the agenda.
With the busiest station at the heart of Battersea, and many of us relying on public transport – what local transport improvements & developments would you push for as an MP? Accessibility and reliability are two areas in which public transport regularly falls short. I would push for improvements to both. In particular I would like to see a continued effort to make using public transport to travel across London as seamless as possible, especially for those with disabilities or those burdened with small children and luggage.
I am also interested in the operation of the road bridges across the Thames in London. Hammersmith Bridge has been closed to traffic for 5 years, with a considerable impact on traffic through Putney. The responsibility for its upkeep lies with Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which does not have the money for its repair. This situation could easily happen to Battersea, which has bridges at or near its eastern and western boundaries, as well as three bridges between those. The closure of any of them would create choking points that Battersea could ill afford. I think it is worth considering London’s main bridges as strategic assets for the capital, and as such creating an authority whose task is to maintain, repair and replace the bridges to keep them open as much as possible and minimise the disruption that closures cause. This would assist the flow of public transport as well as commercial and private traffic.
Housing is also a key concern here. Many of our readers worry about the proposals we keep seeing for giant new blocks of flats, way exceeding the rules in the Local Plan. However, these projects justify their scale on the grounds that they also provide a proportion of affordable housing. Where do you think is the right balance between providing the social housing we need, and making sure that our urban environment remains one people want to live in? In my view, high-rise does not mean useful social housing and I also oppose them.
It is a balance, but I believe that a higher proportion of affordable housing can be created by recognising that it is reasonable to demand higher density housing within a short radius (say, 500 metres) of a significant transport node. In those areas we should be looking at building low-rise buildings, with green spaces enclosed or around them, with a mix of sizes to enable families to live in them as well as single people or couples. If built like Barcelona or Kensington, these could still be highly attractive places to live.
In the 2016 EU referendum there was a 70% remain vote here, one of the highest in the country – which aligned with the Liberal Democrats’ very clear position! There’s still a lot of strong local feeling about Brexit – but how relevant do you think is it as an issue in this election, and where do we go from here on Europe? Brexit itself has been traumatic, which is a major reason why it has not featured much by name in this election. But Brexit is both a symptom and a cause of where we are as a country today. In my view, we should recognize that sticking-plaster solutions, although urgently needed, will only get us so far. This applies to many of the challenges we face, not just our relationship with Europe, but also climate change, the economy, the health service, criminal justice, public services and infrastructure, housing and immigration. We need to look at our own democracy with a critical eye and make significant changes. Doing so will enable us to revisit previously settled, but inadequate, positions and achieve a level of political consensus to enable us to take mature decisions for the next few decades. Among these will, almost certainly in my personal view, be one to join Europe once more; and it will be much easier to do so when we have both a solid domestic consensus for doing so and when we can demonstrate to our European partners that we have shrugged off the 19th Century at last.
The situation in Gaza is a concern for many, especially in London. As a former journalist in the Middle East, you have also specific experience and expertise in the area. What do you think should be the next government’s position? My personal experience of the region was some time ago now, and much will have changed. However, we all have an interest in seeing peace in the Middle East – and nobody more so than the people concerned, the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves. I think the next government should aim to facilitate a reconciliation and a solution and it should not be afraid to take a different position to that of some of our allies if that is what is needed.
And finally – why should our readers vote for you? Every vote for me is a vote that says: “Actually, I think we can do better than this. I would like to see a democracy that promotes fairness and restores trust to the people. I would like to see a country that defends political and civil freedoms and is ambitious on climate change. I would like to see an economy that responds to the climate emergency and lessens rather than adds to the inequalities across the country.” Every vote for me will put a bit more pressure on the next government to make these changes.
And, as for me, I believe that my training and experience would make me a very effective advocate and representative for Battersea.
Francis’ twitter is here, the Wandsworth Liberal Democrats (who cover the Battersea, Putney, Tooting and Wandsworth constituencies) website is here, and the national party website is here.This is one of a series of interviews, where we aim to speak to all of the candidates for the Battersea constituency in the July 2024 general election, the others are here. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to take Photo ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID).
Dan Smith is the Workers Party of Britain candidate in the Battersea constituency for the 2024 General Election. We and our partners at Clapham Junction insider are inviting all the candidates to short interviews – so you can learn more about who they are, what they believe in, and their plans to improve Battersea and help its residents.Details of all the candidates, and the other interviews, are here.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers? I’ve lived in and around the area most of my life, educated in Dulwich before studying dentistry at Kings College Hospital. I’ve a proven track record of success with 24 years experience of getting things done in Healthcare, business and leadership.
Tell us something about you our readers may not know. I exchanged several letters with Sir David Attenborough as a kid and obviously still a massive fan of his! I’ve always been very fond of nature and won the Natural History prize for my research project on marine life. I actually wrote to him again a couple of years ago and to my surprise, he wrote back another hand written letter.
What makes the Battersea constituency special for you? I live just off Clapham Common and think this such a great part of London! From the vibrant green spaces of Battersea Park, Wandsworth Common, and Clapham Common to the iconic redevelopment of the Power Station and Nine Elms. From the beauty of the Thames to the bustling areas of Northcote and Clapham Junction; it’s just got so much going for it.
With the busiest station at the heart of Battersea, public transport is used by the vast majority of people in the area. What would you like to see improved for that in Battersea? I will fight hard to push through the Northern Line extension to Clapham Junction which will ease congestion on our roads and put more bums on seats in this usually pretty empty part of the Northern Line.
Housing is also a local concern. Recently we have seen some proposal for massive schemes exceeding local plan rules – which justify their scale on the grounds that they also provide a share of affordable housing. Where is the right balance between providing the social housing we need, and making sure that our urban environment remains one people want to live in? I think where we are now is pretty perfect and has the right balance of housing and space. There are however, over 30,000 long-term empty homes across London. I would want to massively increase council tax on these empty homes to such a level that even the super rich would consider selling these properties or at least help to reduce the council tax for the rest of us if they don’t.
The cost of living is a real worry for many of our readers. Since Labour took control in 2022, the Council has implemented the London Living Wage for its staff and contractors. What additional measures do you believe are necessary, including in the private sector, and what do you think is the best approach for the government to provide support? We have strong plans to bring down the cost of living by nationalising our public utilities and reduce tax. Our money tree will come in the form of public owned alternative to Amazon, Netflix and Starbucks with all profits going back into the UK. Amazon made £25 billion form the UK alone last year and paid no tax. Add in Netflix, Starbucks and a few more and we’re talking at least £40 billion every year for the UK economy.
In the 2016 EU referendum there was a 70 % remain vote here, one of the highest in the country. There is still a lot of strong feeling about Brexit – but how relevant is it as an issue in this election? I voted remain and if there is the right opportunity to rejoin, I will push hard for this. I know politicians like to be overly prolix with their words but I prefer my responses to be more concise and to the point.
The environment has become a bit of a political football, getting tangled in arguments about onshore wind farms and even wokeness. What are the most important measures the future government should commit to in order to address the climate emergency? I am massively in favour of net zero and pretty fervid with both climate change and with science. There are a great many studies to back up that nuclear energy is actually one of the safest and most efficient ways of getting to net zero. Both Labour and Tories are famous for their U-turns after the election and I fear this will happen in this particular instance. We need more fighters in Parliament who are going to hold them to their word and I won’t be holding back!
The situation in Gaza is a concern for many voters, and specifically in London where many have a strong view. What do you think should be the government’s position? Within the next year, I suspect many people will be ashamed of voting Labour and Tory when these parties equally ramp up their support for the genocide after the election. Taking a moral stand against the actions of our two main parties is one of the biggest reasons I am running for MP. I will do all I can to bring about an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, recognition of the Palestinian state and proper justice for Palestine. I am heavily in favour of a stable 2 state solution and it is something I have researched at length.
And finally – why should our readers vote for you? I am fighting hard for all our health workers who are rapidly burning out and either want to leave the profession or leave the country; this also goes for our teachers as well! Our requests have fallen on deaf ears in Parliament and we need a loud voice in government to stop the exodus of our key workers as soon as possible. As a dentist, I have left the profession that I love so I can protect its future and to help SAVE OUR NHS!
Dan’s website is here, and his instagram is here. This is one of a series of interviews, where we aim to speak to all of the candidates for the Battersea constituency in the July 2024 general election, the others are here. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to take Photo ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID).
We’ve got an unusually wide set of choices for the election – with nine candidates! We and our partners at Clapham Junction Insider have contacted all the candidates we can track down, and offered them an interview – to find out who they are, what they’d do as our MP, and why you might want to vote for them – and to ask some difficult & awkward questions too. This is our summary of the candidates, with links to the interviews; we’ll keep updating this page as we interview the remaining candidates. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to takePhoto ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID, including everything from 60+ London Oyster photocards to national identity cards issued by an EEA state).
Joe and his family have lived in Battersea for six years, and they love it here! Since his daughter was born he has dedicated as much time as possible to combating climate breakdown, to secure a future for her and all young people. He agues that we need a World War II-sized mobilisation to change almost every aspect of life in Battersea and Wandsworth as well as the UK as a whole, as everything we hold dear is under threat, not on some distant timescale but in the lifetimes of most people alive today. That is why he is running in the general election for the Green Party – the only party that takes the climate crisis seriously.
Joe’s interview is here – where he also reveals an unexpected Eurovision link! You may also want to see Joe’s very active twitter & party website.
Tom’s a proper local, having lived in the area for ten years, first near Clapham Junction, then in Balham, and now in a flat just off Lavender Hill. He’ll be a familiar face to many of our readers, having represented the Lavender ward as a local Councillor at Wandsworth Council for two years.
His main political interests are housing (in particular making home ownership a more attainable ambition for people who are struggling to get on the housing ladder), crime (where several years on the front line as a local councillor means he’s well aware many of us feel less safe than we did a few years ago), High Streets (where he has been a vocal campaigner to reinstate the summer weekend pedestrianisation of Northcote Road), and foreign and defence policy (where the world has become a more dangerous place in the last few years and he believes it’s important to take these threats seriously). He’s very proud of the UK’s support for our Ukrainian allies and also the large number of Ukrainian refugees that have been taken in by residents in Battersea, and Wandsworth more broadly.
Tom’s interview is here, which contains a fair few surprises – including an insight to the less-glamorous-than-it-sounds life of being a wine waiter! Tom’s own website, (very active) twitter, and linkedin.
Barry is a Management Consultant and Chartered Environmentalist. What makes Battersea special for him is its relationship with the Thames Estuary, Battersea Park, Falcon Park, Heathbrook Park, Clapham Common, and all the other wonderful small open spaces that make it such a green constituency.
He’s standing because Labour was in power for 14 years and crashed the economy, then the Tories did the exact same, and the LibDems have worked with both Labour and Tory and nothing got any better. He feels that the only reasonable therefore rational choice is to choose something else, and that Reform has common sense and will balance society, environment and economics to find the good life for everyone no matter their nationality or culture.
Barry’s interview is here, with lots of thought about how we can tackle the housing crisis in Battersea and London – and his own website is here.
Francis Chubb is a solicitor, an arbitrator and an accredited mediator, who set up his own law practice 15 years ago. He is also a former Army officer, has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and as a businessman in Southeast Europe and has senior not-for-profit experience as the former chair of a charitable trust.
He was prompted to stand by dismay at the direction of politics in Britain and the growing inequalities in our society: the danger of ‘Two Batterseas’ – those with and those without. He believes that it is within our grasp to push for better politics, an up-to-date democracy with stronger civil and political liberties, that will be fairer and more accountable and make us freer and more equal. He feels we need to dare to believe that we can make a difference, and that change can happen.
Francis’ interview is here. His twitter is here, the Wandsworth Liberal Democrats (who cover the Battersea, Putney, Tooting and Wandsworth constituencies) website is here, and the national party website is here.
A born and bred South Londoner, Dan was educated in Dulwich before studying dentistry at Kings College Hospital. With 24 years experience of getting things done in Healthcare, business and leadership, he wants to address the cost of living crisis and the environmental disaster posed by our sold-off utilities. He lives just off Clapham Common and knows the Battersea area well – including the advantages and challenges of living here compared to other areas of London.
Dan’s interview is here, with ideas on how nationalising more of our public utilities could help the UK economy and how to get the 30,000 long-term empty homes across London back in use; he also reveals that he’s a semi-regular correspondent with David Attenborough! His website is here, and his instagram is here.
Marsha is a well known person to many of us, because she’s our current MP. She became an MP in 2017 after three years as a Lambeth councillor, beating Battersea’s previous Conservative MP Jane Ellison with a majority of 5,668. Before starting her career as an MP she was a disability rights campaigner and charity founder, ad while in parliament she has been a shadow Minister, first as shadow Minister for Disabled people, and was later promoted to a more senior role as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities.
Marsha’s interview is here, where she shares thoughts on her guiding principles of of making a difference and being a voice for a voiceless, as well as a wide range of her policy priorities including improving transport in Battersea, and how to help disabled people have equality in the workplace, with more on her website, twitter and Instagram.
Georgina is standing in election for the Rejoin EU party. She argues that Battersea could be the first place in the country to send a strong, critical voice to Westminster calling for the reversal of Brexit. She argues that Brexit is the driving engine behind the continued cost of living crisis we face today, and it’s going to get worse as the impact of cutting our trade links with the EU takes effect. Brexit also continues to blight our ability to travel & work beyond the UK, has destroyed the retirement plans of hundreds of thousands of Brits, and stolen the educational opportunities from our young people.
Georgina’s interview is here, where she shares thinking on a wide range of areas including on how we could do a better job of delivering new housing while also making places that people want to live in, and even how she was once killed by a cyberman as an extra on Doctor Who! She asks whether the people of Battersea really just want one more dull Labour MP who will just follow the herd in Parliament – and suggests we should vote different! The Rejoin EU party’s website is here.
Ed Dampier, Social Democratic Party
The SDP describes itself as a patriotic, economically left-leaning, and culturally traditional political party, whose campaign promises include ending mass immigration, re-nationalising our railways and utilities, and making a decent home available for everyone, with more details on the Party’s website and Youtube. We know Ed himself lives in the heart of Battersea, although we haven’t managed to find out much else about him.
Jake Thomas, Independent
Jake Thomas is standing as an independent candidate. He’s a sole trader living on the Shaftesbury Estate (near Queenstown Road), with his wife and three children, who also stood as a candidate for the Brexit Party back in 2019. His policies include controlling migration, putting people before parties, resisting the rise in corporate capitalism / socialism, and not buying imported Chinese products.
Lavender Hill for Me is a community website working to support Lavender Hill, a neighbourhood in Battersea, London and a home to about 250 shops, restaurants and small businesses. We take an active interest in developments that could improve Lavender Hill for residents, traders and visitors.
Lavender-Hill.uk : Supporting Lavender Hill 