The Council is hosting a public meeting, following huge controversy on their ‘stealth’ plans for a new hostel

Posted on December 3, 2023 by David

A few weeks ago we found out about some rather vague plans for a new hostel for rough sleepers opposite Battersea Arts centre, which we noticed on a chance dig deep in the Wandsworth planning database. These were a bit of a surprise to us, so we wrote a short article about the plans, which quickly got a lot of attention – with a few thousand readers within a day (which for a very local site like this one, is rare). And it turns out this new hostel plan was a big surprise to everyone else too! It shouldn’t fall to us to break the news – a major 24/7 hostel operation is not a trivial matter like changing a launderette to a dog daycare and pet supplies shop (and yes, we’ve also reported on that). To our considerable surprise, we later found that even the immediate neighbours at the day nursery and at TaxAssist accountants had not been told about the plans! The proposal did look rather like a ‘stealth’ plan, whether accidentally or deliberately – with a distinct echo of this Douglas Adams quote on a local authority’s planning department’s engagement…

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department… But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

Our friends at Clapham Junction Insider also covered these plans, as well as wider news outlets. It seems that Wandsworth Council has rather belatedly now realised that a ‘stealth’ planning application is not the best way to create an important but potentially very disruptive new facility in the heart of Lavender Hill. As we noted before, there are strong arguments for taking a better and more joined up approach to tacking a significant rough sleeping challenge – and the activation of the ‘severe weather emergency protocol‘ for supporting those sleeping rough in cold weather this week is a timely reminder that supporting people to get off the streets can be a life and death issue. But this has to be done with the support of local residents, who will inevitably live with the impacts of this development, and who need to be confident that any new hostel is well managed, that proper steps are being taken to mitigate the impact on local traders and businesses, and that the Council is working to keep the neighbours safe.

Aydin Dirkedem, the Council’s lead on housing, is hosting a public meeting at the Lower Hall at Battersea Arts centre, from 4-7pm on Wednesday 6th December. It’s running on a just-drop-in basis, there’s no need to register in advance. Aydin grew up here, is a generally all round good guy, and is one of the Councillors in Queenstown ward – please do go and ask questions and discuss your concerns – and feel free to feed in thoughts on how this troubled Council venture could be improved and made more suitable for the neighbourhood it will need to coexist with. We’ve summarised the support comments, the objection comments, and most importantly, many of the ways this could be made to work better at the end of this article.

Looking at the proposal itself – it’s fair to say that the Council’s plans for the hostel did not go down well with its unsuspecting future neighbours. No one had commented when we first reported on the plans, but the application has now had 13 supportive comments, and a staggering 507 objections! That said, we know our readers and neighbours are a thoughtful bunch, and lots of helpful ideas have also been suggested in these comments on how – if it does go ahead – it can be made to work better; we’ll summarise these further down this post.

On a rather darker note, our article clearly didn’t go down well with some of the people behind the hostel project. We received several very unpleasant direct messages, that do seem to be from people involved in it, full of threats and expletives (and we won’t be quoting any of them here; some of you read this at work and it’d be pretty sure to set off numerous ‘inappropriate content’ flags). And that’s despite our article being, in our view at least, pretty balanced on the potential benefits of an innovative approach to rough sleeping that seems to have delivered results elsewhere, and the need to carefully address the genuine challenges involved for neighbouring residents and businesses – have a look for yourselves. Interestingly, these offensive messages also had a distinct party political undertone to them, assuming that we somehow represent the Conservative party (to be clear: none of us are political). This set some real alarm bells ringing: if a community website gets that sort of threatening and aggressive knee-jerk reaction just for reporting that there are plans to develop the building, we dread to think what would happen if we were a neighbour wanting to work with the hostel’s management if there’s a problem with future residents, or the way the place is run. This sort of abuse is seriously out of line, and suggests more trouble may be ahead.

Let’s take a look at the comments that came in. As a reminder of what this is all about, the Council wants to convert a small office building they own, at 201-203 Lavender Hill – pictured above – to a new ‘rough sleeper assessment hub’. Part of the proposal is a traditional ‘homeless hostel’, which aims to provide a bed for the night for people sleeping on the streets, and gradually move occupants on to sustainable long-term accommodation. But the plans provide quite a lot more than just a hostel, with a relatively large number of on-site staff to provide advice to the residents and a variety of specialist services – supporting them to access specialist services and move away from the dangers of rough sleeping. Some staff would also be on site overnight, to maintain safety given that the residents at hubs can often experience a variety of challenges including substance and alcohol addiction, poor mental health, offending behaviour and histories of abuse. Our previous article runs through the plans in some detail.

The 507 objections set out a wide range of concerns. First, we’ve had a go at picking out some of the most common themes in the objection comments –

Unsuitability for a primarily residential areas: Many objections focussed on housing people with mental health challenges and substance abuse issues – as well as potentially unpredictable or aggressive behaviour – in a non-central location, where a relatively small number of nearby residents and small retailers would face the full impact. These were a mixture of fear of increased crime and violence, and of wider antisocial behaviour. One commented that she worked next to a very similar facility, and had seen the unsanitary effect that it had on the area, with individuals from the facility gathering in the streets, often intoxicated and under the influence of illegal substances, urinating in the area and at times being abusive. That vicinity had been declared an ‘anti-social behaviour focus area’; she felt the impact would be even worse in a more residential area with families and nurseries. One commenter noted that most research shows that around a third of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs and around two thirds of those people have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders, with over half having mental health problems, and that people with offending history are over represented amongst single people who are homeless and that housing authorities are obliged to provide services for released prisoners by law. In planning terms, the building is outside the recognised Clapham Junction ‘town centre’ set out in the ‘Wandsworth Local Plan 2023-28’.

Crime, violence and antisocial behaviour: In one of the few concessions to neighbours to date, the Council says the hostel ‘will have CCTV’, but it’s unlikely that this will be much more than what we see in the average corner shop. Many commenters suspected this would only lead to residents congregating further down nearby side streets for drink and drugs. Many noted that as the site has no contained outside area of its own, residents were bound to congregate on the pavement or side streets to smoke. Some noted the fear that women on their own will not feel safe walking in this area, particularly in the dark, as it is quiet and there is a lack of other businesses to ensure safety, and that the proposal was very unspecific when it referred to the security that would be in place. Some commenters were worried that young teenagers using the bus stops by the hostel, and using this as a route to local schools, may be at some risk, given that the hostel may struggle to identify if short term residents had a history of sexual offences.

Safeguarding and child protection concerns: The location, right next to the garden of a day nursery which is heavily used all day for outdoor play (children 0-5 years old), was frequently mentioned as a significant concern from a safeguarding perspective, and the owners of that business (who were not initially informed by the Council about the proposals) were clearly concerned with a detailed series of comments. This is a recurring concern in the comments from parents and neighbours too – with bedroom windows directly overlooking the back playground. There was a view that some parents would remove their children from this nursery – endangering the future of a respected and established local business providing a service to the local community. The plans gave no detail on how impacts would be managed, and it seems from the comments that the building is already creating issues for the nursery, with several reports that: “A month or so ago squatters [at the planned hostel site] got out of the first-floor window onto the flat roof [behind the proposed hostel] and was shouting abuse at around 8am, [young child at the nursery] burst into tears as he was clearly scared and didn’t understand what was happening. It is not acceptable for very small children to be subject to any antisocial behaviour from people staying at or using the services of the proposed hostel next door – and instances like this example would likely increase substantially.” The Asda precinct nursery also commented that while they didn’t oppose the idea – they felt this was the wrong location. The operators of the after school tutorial centre two doors down, hosting pupils from 7 to 16, was also concerned – feeling that the plans present an unacceptable risk for the children, and may also adversely impact the business.

The impact of overflow when the facility is fully occupied: Many people felt that the security and operational aspects were very vague in the original proposal. One commenter noted that even if there were security guards in the building itself, this would not alleviate the effects on the wider community. If the facility became overcrowded then those who are turned away would very probably resort to begging and sleeping rough in the surrounding streets, and that the lack of any public toilets nearby would also create headaches. Many noted that there is no mention of opening hours in the planning application, or indeed any information on how the hostel would be managed. If the hostel facilities are only open at night then there may be an influx of rough sleepers awaiting a bed, with those turned away moving into local business doorways or garden areas.

Harming local retailers and businesses: Many respondents – including several of the small independent businesses – noted that an influx of residents who may rely on theft to fund addictions would add to the amount of petty crime and abuse and violence against local shop owners (a serious issue, which we’ll also be writing about soon), and that it would make women and young children feel unsafe, especially during winter when the days are shorter – and noted that the Council had not addressed these issues at all in the proposal. One respondent commented that the proposal would result in the area feeling unsafe, dirty, and would deter locals and businesses in the area which had already lost a lot of trade, and further drive businesses away. Another noted that amid efforts to regenerate the area after Covid 19, the potential rise in anti-social behaviour could be devastating for the other businesses and certainly put potential businesses off from moving in; with local coffee shops and restaurants likely to be harassed by people begging and intimidated by antisocial behaviour. A local company noted that in planning terms, the planned use is not in keeping with the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ (Section 6 /para 81), as the viability of the neighbouring business will be significantly affected.

A generally poorly explained planning application lacking any details: Many noted that the scheme was being “somewhat rushed through for the council, by the council”, noting a worrying lack of detail in this planning application that was full of ‘indicative’ rather than actual plans – with only two drawings of the proposals, and a short generic rough sleepers hub background information sheet. It dosn’t even indicate whether people are expected to stay for days, weeks or months. There was not enough for a planning committee to base a decision – one respondent noted that the Wandsworth Planning Committee rightly expect planning application to be detailed and complete prior to being submitted. This application is poorly explained and lacking in any details. This contained no design and access statement, no proper plans, no HMO / hostel management plan, no indication of how the waste from residents (which will include food and maybe also some hazardous clinical waste) will be stored and managed. A neighbouring business commented that when they applied to use their site, they were required to follow strict conditions of use (limiting activity to between 8am and 6.30pm), to ‘safeguard the amenities of the neighbourhood, in accordance with Council policy TCS13’; nothing in the ‘Wandsworth Local Plan 2023-28’ has happened to change that approach – but thsi proposal clearly expects to be open 24/7 without even stating its planned hours in the application. The application includes a very basic fire statement, which was (to put it mildly) torn to shreds by one well-informed commenter, who noted that it was woefully inadequate on many fronts, and in its current form could put residents at risk. Indeed all in all, this is one of the roughest planning applications we have seen to date (and we’ve seen a lot of them). Dare we say, it’s the sort of shoddy back-of-an-envelope proposal you’d only dare put in in you knew that your own Council would be making the decision….

For planning geeks, some noted problems with the proposed ‘Sui generis‘ property use class – which converts a general office / retail use to something much more specific and inflexible – and felt this approach wasn’t appropriate in this location amongst otherwise all ‘Class E’ use properties, and that allowing it would set an inappropriate planning precedence. It is also against the spirit of the 2020 amendments to the Town and Country Planning (Uses Order) 1887 which sought to relax planning laws such that office and shops could be more easily changed to other uses in order to protect the existence of vibrant high street. This proposal would act against that, resulting in the demise of local business/s rather than the support of them.

Some interesting other comments came in. A very nearby neighbour commented that the Council – as the owner of the properties – has already left the building unoccupied and unguarded for several months – leading to it being squatted and disturbances for neighbours. They said – if the Council had shown themselves unable to control the security of their buildings, how could they be trusted to organise a hostel there? Overall, while many people supported the principle, there were many concerns about the actual proposal. This comment maybe sums up the gist of many of the objection concerns –

The people using a facility such as the one proposed have high levels of complex needs and deserve help, but creating conflict and collateral damage to an existing community and local area does not ultimately help them or the other residents. The proposal would make the situation worse not better. A more suitable location can be found – for example, the new developments around Nine Elms and opposite the station could include a purpose-built facility. This is not a case of being NIMBY, there are genuine substantial and material concerns about this application and detrimental impact upon an area and community, particularly the safeguarding or children. – one commenter on the proposal

Not quite everyone is unhappy about these plans – and there were also a handful of support comments. Not many, to be fair – and some were from people miles away from the site, and can be pretty much ignored in planning terms (but special mention to the resident of 71 Bathgate Road, a detached house next to the tennis courts in Wimbledon, whose full response was “Fantastic Idea!”).

But they do also include several near neighbours. A resident of Kambala, off Falcon Road, noted that there is a drug problem in every area it is not just Wandsworth, and that this could be a good idea for the community as it may help more people to get off the streets. A resident of Theatre Street noted that he supports any scheme to help people off the street and into some sort of safety, noting that homeless people are people too, and everyone would do well to remember that. They deserve our respect and care given they are in an intensely vulnerable situation, a situation that anyone of us could end up in if luck and circumstance didn’t go our way. We should welcome any site that may help them get their lives back on track. A neighbour on Lavender Sweep felt this might be a good place to locate a hostel, using a building that is currently out of use, on a main road, easy to find and with access to transport hubs and resources like Battersea Arts Centre.

A gentleman a bit further away, between the Commons, said that in his experience homeless people are often stigmatised and abandoned by society and government – and felt many people would be amazed at just how “normal” most homeless people are, and how much they desperately need help. In terms of the effect on the community, he felt the proposal seemed to be an attempt to deal with the negative consequences of rough sleeping which already exist in the area (anti-social behaviour, begging etc) by dealing with the underlying causes. He noted that there is evidence that helping get homeless off the streets and into shelters – where they can receive medical and mental help, a warm meal and a bed, and support in finding permanent accommodation – is beneficial not just to the homeless concerned but to society in general.

One of our readers, who had worked to provide cancer care to many people affected by homelessness, was concerned that a night-time ‘shelter’ providing chairs in open cubicles – as seems to be the plan for at least some of this new hostel (as shown in the floorplan below) – was not the answer – being hardly conducive to security or comfort.  She noted that most people who are homeless do not want to use these types of places because they have their already few possessions stolen and do not feel safe there. People often needed access to medical care, and after going through difficult medical procedures, there was often nowhere to discharge them to without painstaking effort. Her team would detox them, provide drug and alcohol support, give good nutrition, access to mental health support, benefits and grants for clothing, furniture and items for their new accommodation that the team helped to access. Most did not return to their previous life because of ongoing support and follow-up. These poor people needed proper support, not an occasional chair for the night!

Richard Taylor, the vicar of St Barnabas Church (a short walk from the proposed site), wrote a particularly thoughtful letter in support of the plans. He noted that his church has been hosting a winter night shelter for six ears, and has not had any theft, vandalism or violence, or any complaints from the church’s neighbours. He felt it was wrong to associate homeless people and threatening or criminal behaviour, arguing that the work of the night shelter had enhanced and enriched the church. That said, he also felt the consultation on the plans had not been as transparent as it might have been: the perception was that the Council had been trying to do it on the quiet and sneak it through, which had only served to make residents – who were already worried about these plans – angry about the way they were being introduced.

The ever-sensible Battersea Society noted that they strongly support the Council’s Homelessness Strategy, which includes creating a rough sleeper assessment hub to bring together Council services and support from other agencies. However they expressed significant concern that the planning application for change of use of the former Council offices on Lavender Hill included only scant information about the nature of the hub and the services it will provide – indeed much less than is set out in the draft Strategy. In narrow planning terms, they also noted also that the floor plans provided in the application were marked as only ‘indicative’. They argued that before the application proceeds further, much more information needed to be shared about the proposed hub, the services it will offer, how they will be advertised, how referrals to the hub will work, how it will be managed and operate (including access hours), and the extent of outreach work beyond the hub itself, and that this information should be widely publicised, not least to all those who have commented on the application.

So – what’s the answer to all this? Realistically the Council is going to push this through come hail or high water – they have grant funding to spend on it, and a genuine commitment to try to do something about a real homelessness issue in the Borough. But their plan needs to be much, much better than what’s being proposed here – both for the future residents, and its neighbours. We’ve done our best to pick out the (many) helpful suggestions that have come in in the comments from neighbours, almost all of which reflect good practice in some of the better-run Hostels & Hubs elsewhere, and distill them to a plan of action to make this facility work. We think a new application – with proper details, proper management plans, and explanation of how the following commitments will be included as planning conditions, is what’s needed. With thanks to the many people who explored what might be done – these are 12 recommendations we think are needed to make this work:

  1. The Hub must publish and implement a Good Neighbour Plan: Wandsworth must establish, and publish, a proactive plan that addresses the potential challenges and mitigates them, ensuring smooth operation and peaceful coexistence in the neighborhood. This must set out the options for residents if they encounter abusive or antisocial behaviour, and have a clear complaints and escalation procedure including the ability to have issues appealed to someone independent of the local hostel management if complaints cannot be resolved locally.
  2. The Hub needs to commit to community engagement and awareness: The Hub should engage with the local community and businesses to understand their concerns and incorporate their feedback into the Good Neighbour Plan. They should also organise regular meetings or forums with neighborhood representatives to discuss ongoing issues and solutions.
  3. The Hub needs to operate controlled entry, and run by appointments only: An important one is the need for residents to exclusively be brought to the site, and those seeking services to only arrive on appointment, rather than being allowed to turn up unannounced – to avoid the sites becoming a late night magnet for anyone looking for a room, and people then going away disappointed and causing havoc. This is quite standard in some Hubs (but not all) and significantly helps them be calm and effective places. The Hub must, as a planning condition, be required to implement an appointment-only system for those seeking services to prevent unexpected arrivals and potential disturbances.
  4. The Hub needs to commit to an all-hours complaints hotline: A formal planning and licensing requirement must be that the Hub will operate a 24-hour complaints hotline within the service (which is not likely to be difficult if it is, as suggested, staffed 24/.7). They must ensure advertisement of this telephone & email contact service is prominent for local residents and businesses to see and use.
  5. There must be a requirement for strict enforcement of House Rules: We recognise that the Hub can’t fully control who arrives, and that residents can be complicated people with their own challenges. However the culture of a hostel matter – not least for its own residents who will make better progress if they themselves feel safe there. Good behaviour is also essential for this venture not to cause severe harm to its neighbours. The facility should formulate clear and strict house rules pertaining to noise control, prohibition of begging/shoplifting, abusive or antisocial behaviour inside the facility but also in the neighbourhood, and illicit substance use/dealing. The facility must commit to investigating any neighbourhood complaints / concerns in a timely manner and reporting back to those who raised them, and to implement a swift eviction policy for repeat breaches.
  6. Security within the site – and in its neighbourhood: The Hub must more formally be required to commit to the 24/7 security staffing alluded to in the rather vague proposals, and these staff need to be assigned to regularly patrol areas around the hostel, as well as the site itself, to prevent offsite congregation and ensure the safety and cleanliness of the surrounding area. The hostel should introduce a plan to increase surveillance technology especially in darker alleys / car parking areas opening off Mysore Road and Sisters Avenue immediately behind the hostel where crime and loitering are especially likely.
  7. Provision of Supermarket Vouchers to all residents: As is done on some similar facilities, there must be a commitment to provide all residents who need them with supermarket vouchers to enable them to buy food and general supplies without resorting to shoplifting, in order to reduce harm to nearby traders and businesses through shoplifting and threats to staff.
  8. Support and Rehabilitation Programs: Develop and offer support and rehabilitation programs for residents to address underlying issues and assist with their reintegration into society. Potentially, the Hub could partner with local businesses to explore potential employment opportunities for residents, contributing to their stability and reducing potential strain on the community.
  9. Safeguarding neighbouring businesses: The rear facing windows should be non-openable (to avoid smoking and the throwing / dropping of objects), and the three bedroom windows that face the nursery playground must be permanently fitted with frosted glass as a planning condition. The Hub should also commit to screening any new longer term residents and avoid housing anyone on the sex offenders register next to the nursery school.
  10. Daytime activity: The Hub should ensure that its residents assigned to rooms can, while they are residents, be accommodated ‘full time’, rather than on a minimal overnight-only basis, to ensure that they get some stability, that they feel safe (and that they are confident their possessions are safe), and have somewhere warm and safe to socialise other than neighbouring streets. The design also needs to be amended to provide some onsite ‘living space’ other than just the small bedrooms. An important detail is that the Hub needs to make clear, as part of the application, whether it will allow the consumption of drugs & alcohol onsite to avoid consumption in the surrounding streets.
  11. Monitoring and Evaluation: The Hub needs to regularly (and at least annually) evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented measures and adjust strategies as needed based on continuous monitoring and feedback.
  12. Transparent Communication: The Hub should commit to and ensure transparent communication with residents and businesses about any upcoming changes or developments related to the rough sleeping hub, as well as with police – and agree to report any incidents to the police to enable their work to be linked with wider community crime prevention efforts, as well as to inform police if violent offenders from Category A & B prisons are housed.

Reading this list, you may well be a tad concerned. But do please remember – many of the people at this Hub will be people like you or me for whom things have just all gone wrong at once. We’re not about to see an avalanche of violent addicted sex offenders attacking people on the street and terrorising local businesses. The site isn’t going to be a chaotic 24 hour party venue awash with drugs and mayhem. The key to making this work, and making this one of the quiet, capable facilities that gets on with the difficult but important business of helping people put their lives back together when they’re at their most vulnerable, rather than one of the badly managed hostels that hardly help anyone but cause endless headaches (and London already has plenty of both), is that there is a well thought through plan to prepare for trouble before it happens, to have excellent communication with neighbours and authorities, and to be open and honest in handling any situations where things do go wrong or changes are needed. The Wandsworth Hub clearly got off to an unfortunate start with its badly thought-through, stealthy and content-free planning application. The letter sent to residents about the public meeting doesn’t suggest any of the concerns have been taken on board yet either. But now the Council has seen the concerns their plans have caused, fingers crossed they will revisit and improve the plans, re-consult with proper details, and get this back on the right track.

Aydin Dirkedem, the Council’s lead on housing, is hosting a public meeting at the Lower Hall at Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill SW11 5TN, from 4-7pm on Wednesday 6th December. It’s running on a just-drop-in basis, there’s no need to register in advance.

Our previous article, which is all about the planned assessment hub, what it will do and how it will bring services together, as well as indicative floorplans, and thoughts on how the potential challenges can be managed, is here. Please do get in touch with ideas or suggestions (but please don’t bother if you’re project staff determined to insult or threaten us).

If you want to support, oppose or comment on planning aspects of the proposed change of use for the building, search for application reference 2023/3434 at wandsworth.gov.uk/planning – it was originally open for comments until 19th October but was slightly extended when the Council belatedly realised they hadn’t told the neighbours! We’re past even the extended the deadline now, but late comments are usually also taken in to account where possible.

Posted in Business, Planning, Politics, Street by street | 5 Comments

The first part of Clapham Junction’s redeveloped Arding & Hobbs opens for business

Posted on November 24, 2023 by David

It’s been more than two years in the making, but the first part of the redeveloped Arding & Hobbs building has opened to the public. Botanica Hall, part of the small Albion & East group of pub / restaurants, has raced to the finish line to catch the all-important month before Christmas. It’s their sixth location – building on venues up and running in Hackney, Old Street, Brixton, Crouch End and Ealing, and the prime location in a flagship building on the busiest crossroads in the Borough means it’s quickly become a popular spot. What was last open to the public as the perfumery section of Debenhams – whose closure we broke the news on all the way back in 2019 – has seen a major tidy-up, with the removal of the 1960s canopy over the pavement to recreate full height windows, restoring the original stonework, and opening up the internal space to create an impressive venue.

At its heart is a solid food and drink venue, complete with full size pizza oven and lots of internal space – as well as some pavement seating that’s mostly for show for now but which may come in to its own in the summer. Breakfast is on offer daily from 9, as well as a weekend brunch, with an option to have a two-hour ‘bottomless’ one if you are really hungry (or thirsty!). There’s a quiz night – ‘Fizz & Quiz’ – every Wednesday, with bottles of fizz £15 from 5pm till close, and the quiz starting at 7.30.

Albion & East started in 2016, when ways of working were already evolving in some businesses – and have run a hot desking option every week right from the start – which runs every weekday from 8 to 5 (and later if there’s space – if the table you;re on is booked the staff will see if there are other spaces available). It’s free, it’s backed by powerful WiFi, and it runs on a just turn up basis, but with an option of daily, weekly or monthly ‘Hotdesk Passes’ which provide an infinite supply of the full range of coffee options as well as teas & hot chocolates, seven days a week, to have in or take out (which can be used across all the Albion & East venues).

Albion & East have run their own small distillery for seven years in Hackney, and added a small new one at every successive venue they opened – working together with Tiny Tower Liquor to make a range of products for sale – while still producing, bottling and wax sealing all of their gins and vodkas by hand. Our new local venue Botanica Hall includes their biggest distillery yet, with a 180 litre copper still, where they plan to distil their own vodka. They plan to host Vodka & Gin Tastings and Gin Blending Masterclasses, where you can blend, bottle and wax seal your own gin to take home.

This is just the start of a new life for Arding & Hobbs, which we have written many articles on! The office space is a whisker away from completion (with future occupiers yet to be confirmed). The next part of the building to open may well be Third Space, a large and very luxurious gym over three levels (see our article on that, including many artists’ impressions of what’s in store, here). There’s one large retail unit remaining – which had been lined up to be an Amazon Fresh supermarket until Amazon slowed down their UK plans, and which we understand is currently on the market. It’s been a pretty impressive transformation overall, and we suspect W.RE, the developers behind the recent works, will be pleased to have got to this big milestone on the four year transformation of Clapham Junction’s flagship building.

Posted in Arding & Hobbs, Business, Food & drink, Retail | 1 Comment

pHresh Juice, a new juice & coffee bar on Lavender Hill

Posted on November 23, 2023 by David

There’s been building work underway for the last few weeks at 103a Lavender Hill – and late last week the doors were thrown open to Lavender Hill’s latest arrival, pHresh Juice. It’s an independent family business, whose flagship product is fresh juices – properly fresh ones, made in house and to order. The menu includes cold pressed juices, smoothie bowls, ginger & turmeric fruit shots – as well as a range of healthy foods and even seamoss. There’s a big focus on it being properly fresh – which means availability will depend on on what decent fruit is in stock.

But that’s not all – there’s everything needed to make a decent coffee here, with a proper coffee machine. As well as a decent mix of interesting loose leaf teas on offer, and those with small children in tow will be pleased to hear that Babyccinos are on the house! The menu includes porridges, fruit cakes, cinnamon buns, and granola biscuits.

It’s clearly been a big project to fit the unit out, which was previously the Eve & Grace yoga studio (followed by a short stint as office space while the Battersea Business Centre – which these shop units are part of – underwent wider renovations). Externally the premises now have new windows and doors that let more light in and can be fully opened up in summer, and a frontage that is very much in keeping with the new style of the Business Centre, following the big tidy-up we reported on back in February that saw the previously rather tired building facing Lavender Hill get new windows and a deep blue colour scheme, along with consistent style of signs on the businesses.

And internally, the transformation is quite dramatic – you can’t miss the big elephant on the wall overseeing proceedings! The main space has been completely refreshed with new walls, floors, and a general declutter.

There’s a comfortable overall feel, but with a distinct industrial nod to the past of the Business Centre premises, which has seen many uses over the years including being part of a tram and bus depot, a clothing factory, and a wallpaper and envelope factory over the years. New lighting and a black ceiling given it a spacious but comfortable feel, and there’s plenty of seating, with a big comfortable sofa hidden away at the back.

Keep an eye out for the bottle capping machine at the back of the store – as there’s a preference for more recyclable glass bottles, and while pHresh is not making long life juices for long distance shipping (the additives you have to put in do rather detract from the taste, and make them more like the juices you can get anywhere else), they are planning to offer drinks via the usual delivery services.

Owners Donna and Steph are really keen to see as many of us as possible here – whether you’re after a healthy morning drink, the ginger and turmeric shots that first gave them the idea of setting up shop, or somewhere comfortable for a coffee and cake moment – this is a very welcome arrival to our street and does offer something quite different to this part of Lavender Hill.

This is the latest of a series of interesting new businesses to come to this stretch of shops in the middle bit of Lavender Hill. These premises are part of the business centre, but face out to the main road with a helpfully wide pavement, and they are all very much moving towards food and drink – to serve the neighbourhood as well as the many dozens of small businesses within the business centre itself; as part of a long-term effort by he landlord of the business centre to reorganise and modernise how they use some of the site. Baguette Deli cafe have traded here for a few years, baking their own bread and pastries and making a fine line of Croque Monsieurs and Madames, while Pizza da Vinci – who have for many years sold wood fired pizzas, have had a big refit to hugely smarten up the premises and for the first time also have both indoor and outdoor seating. There’s probably another food operator on the way at the site of the unfortunately very short-lived China Garden.

pHresh Juice, 103e Lavender hill, Battersea SW11 5QL (web / Instagram / facebook). At the time of writing they are open from 8-4 Monday-Saturday, and from 8-2 on Sundays – but as with any new business hours can evolve adapt in the first few weeks as they see what works! The latest details are on their Google profile.

Posted in Food & drink, Retail, Useful to know | 3 Comments

Calling parents: Open mornings at the Belleville Wix Academy

Posted on November 3, 2023 by David

We’re blessed with a very popular and successful local school – which is also quite an unusual one, almost unique in London. There are three classes in each year group, one of which – the Belleville Wix Academy – is English and fully state funded, one of which – the École de Wix – is a fee-paying private school that teaches the French national curriculum in French (and which is a feeder school to the French Lycee in South Kensington), and one of which is joint venture between the two streams to create a bilingual English / French class (where half the students pay fees – and half are state-funded) – with an innovative approach of alternate weeks in different languages, and a curriculum that blends the English and French approaches.

While the idea of several different schools on the site may sound confusing, it very much works as a unified single school with the canteen, playgrounds, facilities, after school provision and the like all shared. It’s also an interesting mix of private- and state-schooling – we have yet to see any other example of its kind. Above all, it works – and it has proved very popular and successful over the years – many of our correspondents can attest to this being a really excellent school with very skilled and hugely committed teachers and leadership, across all three language streams. The French and bilingual provision is also one of the reasons Lavender Hill (and especially the eastern end of the street) has such a large French speaking community.

The Belleville Wix Academy has quite an interesting history: it used to be the Wix School, and it’s fair to say the old school had some pretty turbulent years back in the early 2010s where the catchment area briefly grew to over three kilometres! Everything changed, however, when the school had a complete relaunch and joined the ‘Quality First Educational Trust’ back in 2017, which essentially made it part of the same group as Belleville primary school off Northcote Road – a school that was closely linked to the surge in popularity of the Northcote Road area with young families in 1990s, and which had long been so popular that people who actually lived on Belleville Road famously couldn’t find places at the school one year! Although we should reassure readers that local residents do now have a decent prospect of admission to the various Belleville schools – partly thanks to a big crackdown on a once-common practice of of parents who lived miles away renting houses right by the school gates for a year ‘while their other house was having building works’ to get a place – which saw some landlords do ridiculously well but which was not helpful to create a ‘community’ school. The merger was very successful, with the new school benefitting from the strong leadership, enthuisiastic staff and robust academic focus of the wider Trust, and quickly racing up the rankings.

And for interested parents, there are a couple of open days coming soon. These are a great way to find out more about the school – the school is hosting Open Mornings on Thursday 16th and Tuesday 21st November 2023. The one on Thursday 16th will focus on the English stream and the one on Tuesday 21st will focus on the bilingual (French/English) stream, but parents are welcome to attend whichever date is more convenient. The tours will start at 9.15am, followed by a talk by the Headteacher, and the event will be finished by around 11am. The flyer & further information for the open days is below – and for more details or to book a slot on the tours, click here. For those who are unable to make the Open Mornings and would like to come on a tour, there’s also an option to book a small group tour of the school.

Belleville Wix Academy is a successful and vibrant school. We are part of the Quality First Education Trust. In October 2019, we had our first Ofsted inspection as a new school and were delighted at the outcome of ‘Good’ with an ‘Outstanding’ Early Years provision. We believe in doing ‘whatever it takes’ to help every child succeed.

We offer two streams of education, a class in English from Nursery through to Year 6 and a bilingual class in French and English from Reception to Year 6. Children are happy and successful at BWA and achieve well beyond the national average. Our Year 6 leavers go on to a wide range of state and independent secondary schools, including those with selective streams and scholarships.

To support working families, we offer wrap-around care from 7.30am to 6pm. We also offer a wide range of extra-curricular clubs and a great programme of visiting speakers, day and residential trips, and sporting competitions and festivals with other schools. Every child is offered the opportunity to learn to play a music instrument and play in a musical ensemble.

We welcome children from throughout the local community into our Nursery, Reception, or into Years 1 to 6 where there are occasionally places available.

In addition to our November Open Mornings, we have a virtual tour on our website, and we also offer small group tours throughout the year. For more information about these, please visit:
www.bellevillewix.org.uk/admissions/open-days-and-tours/

We very much look forward to welcoming you and your child to Belleville Wix Academy.

Posted in Useful to know | Leave a comment

A sneak preview of the impressive new gym coming to Arding & Hobbs at Clapham Junction

Posted on November 2, 2023 by David

We’ve written many articles about the ambitions refurbishment underway at Clapham Junction’s landmark Arding & Hobbs building, as it goes from a historic department store (which was Debenhams for its final years) to a fully refurbished and much-extended mixture of smaller shops and office space. Things are really starting to come together now, with the internal fitting-out well underway at Botanica Hall (the new bar / restaurant facing the Falcon), and we’ve now got a sneak preview of the gym that will be opening up on the corner facing up Lavender Hill.

You may be thinking – with nearly a dozen gyms already running in the area around the station, including Milo and the Bull and a recently opened branch of F45 on St John’s Hill, the giant Shapesmiths crossfit complex spread over five arches on Grant Road, Energie Fitness up Falcon Road, and not one but two branches of Fitness First either side of Clapham Junction, as well as several smaller personal trainer gyms dotted along Lavender Hill including newly launched Fitstudioz, and some more specialist sites like IronBodyFit – is there really a market for more?

However looking at the plans, it’s immediately clear that Third Space will be no ordinary gym, and is aiming to be quite a different place to many of its potential competitors. It’s enormous, for starters – it will occupy most of the basement but also a large chunk of the first floor – including an area that had originally been pencilled in by developers W.RE to be office space. Everything about the planned fit out says luxury, with considerable thought having gone in to creating a stylish and well-designed space. The Lavender Hill entrance will lead in to a curvaceous reception on the mezzanine area (pictured at the top of this article), including a lounge and cafe. The image below, which is an indicative one from the Third Space planning application, shows the entrance area, with the doors to Lavender Hill visible at the right.

In a nice touch, the development takes a very modern approach in some areas, but also works with the existing design – and is keeping many of the existing ornate ceilings from the old department store visible. This can be seen in the design for the entrance area, above, where several of the ceiling areas shown in the current view (below) have been left visible as a feature. The newer parts of the reception design will include warm timber and a touch of marble tile, together with a few metal accents to give a modern feel.

The upper floor will have a large gym and fitness area, making the most of the generous windows looking out over St John’s Road and Lavender Hill. It includes a treadmill area with views over the Falcon junction, a large multigym space, a stretch & recovery area, a separate Mind & Body studio with capacity for 30, a large HIIT studio, and several general gym spaces. The proposed floorplan below shows the indicative internal layout of this floor, with the escalators at the right being the access from the (separate) office reception on St John’s Road to the upper levels of the building.

The ceiling and the heritage windows on the first floor level are being fully restored, and will be significant part of the planned design on this floor, keeping the original features as a focus.

There’s a fair bit of careful behind-the-scenes work also underway to install acoustic flooring and provision to ensure that the rest of the building isn’t disturbed by gym noise!

Heading down to the basement leads to generous locker and changing space (well equipped with showers), a hot yoga room with a capacity of 33 people including the instructor, as well as a 25-bike cycle training room, and male and female saunas. The lickers and changing areas have again been developed in some style, echoing the rich mix of material used in the upper floor offices W.RE are fitting out – and are a cut above the usual fare!

This looks set to be a very impressive gym, and to raise the bar with a level of luxury that’s rarely seen in the sector. We know there has been some understandable concern that the premises is becoming a members-only affair rather than a just-drop in retail or food & drink offer, and that as we lose retail ‘critical mass’ this does gradually reduce the overall attractiveness of Clapham Junction as a town centre. that said, it’s hard not to be impressed by the quality of the works on Arding & Hobbs to date, and the huge investment being made here – both by developers W.RE in the building as a whole and by Third Space on the basement and first floor. This does look set to restore a lot of the rather faded glory of the building under its final years as a department store. The impact on the less-noticed back side of the building on Ilminster Gardens is already very noticeable, where a series of messy service entrances and a distinctly tatty facade that had been dominated by pipes, cables and boarded up windows has been completely restored and tidied up – and now even includes a small garden area that’s illuminated at night, significantly improving the street as a whole and the view from the houses opposite. It even includes what we reckon are a few bird boxes (above the door at the right hand side of our photo) –

There’s a very minor planning application currently in for the signage Third Space plan to install above the entrance (necessary given Arding and Hobbs is a listed building), which includes a design and access statement for the fit-out as a whole. We don’t expect this to be controversial at all, but if you do wish to see or comment on the plans, visit wandsworth.gov.uk/planning and search for application 2023/3804.

Third Space are a business that is growing quickly, with nine mostly central-London sites already up and running. Arding & Hobbs is not the only local gym Third Space are opening in Battersea: they also have a very large unit currently under development in Battersea Power Station, over two floors in the flagship building designed by star architect Frank Gehry:

It’s a similarly enormous space, that includes a sizeable part of the basement. That gym is also huge, at 28,000 square feet, but it has a slightly different focus to the one at Clapham Junction, and will include features such as a dedicated combat area and a small swimming pool. The Battersea Power Station gym is set to open in summer 2024 – slightly before the Clapham Junction site.

As a flagship development we often write about Arding & Hobbs – all the previous posts are here. You may also find our wider posts about retail in the Lavender Hill area, or about planning and developments of interest.

Posted in Arding & Hobbs, Business, Retail | 6 Comments

A new cafe, Pique, has opened on Lavender Hill

Posted on October 31, 2023 by David

The former El Patio restaurant at 171 Lavender Hill is being refitted, to open as a new cafe & restaurant called Pique – if all goes well should be up and running in early December. The Pique Café will be serving breakfast & lunch throughout the week, with brunch on the weekends. The plan is to open as an aperitif restaurant in the evenings later in the week, with sharing plates, house spritzes and wines.

Pique’s not new – it was launched back in 2017 by Sophie Richardson, and has operated from a backstreet location in Earlsfield (just around the corner from Earlsfield’s new branch of Marks & Spencer – which is set to echo the flagship one in Clapham Junction). Pique has, for the last six years, specialised in making high quality picnics, hand made to order and delivered directly to customers – with a huge range of finger foods, meat and fish options, sandwiches, salads, and desserts, as well as a sideline in hampers that are tailored to specific kinds of event (one of which is, of course, called the Pique Nique). They have run both a direct-to-customers trade, including an extensive range of event catering, and a corporate offer that has supplied everything from office gatherings looking for more than a tray of soggy sandwiches, to ever-hungry film crews keen for crack-of-dawn breakfasts and quality lunches.

Pique have long aimed to open a proper cafe, so the site at 171 Lavender Hill must have seemed the perfect opportunity It’s a large, elegant space (1200 square feet, with nearly 400 more downstairs for the facilities and back of house), with lots of natural light, that includes a generous front terrace and space for a proper kitchen. Maybe not surprisingly the premises has a long foodie history – having spent many many years as The Lavender, and also (in an unusual twist) having been the El Patio restaurant not once but twice – with the second incarnation having the singularly bad luck of opening the week before the lockdown in 2020. Works are now well underway to reorganise and refurbish the premises – and the blueprint below is a preview of what we can expect. The whole space is being reorganised to put the counter and an open kitchen area at the back, while removing the old bar to free up the whole of the front section as a generous and flexible area for the cafe, making the most of the generously sized windows of this big Victorian corner unit.

There will, of course, also be a complete refurbishment and upgrading of the old premises – and we have got a sneak preview of the mood board from early in the development of the new venture, shown below – expect the exterior to go from black to a shade of pale pink, and the general theme inside to be white with touches of red and candy stripes (matching well with Pique’s brand).

Pique, who are already sort of local, are keen to become a part of the community and a neighbourhood hub with plenty of sociable events & clubs – and are keen for ideas on what would be welcome – for example life drawing; new mum coffee mornings; supper clubs & singles nights, or fortnightly Sunday roast clubs. Dogs will also be very welcome. The team aim for the new cafe to be a place to come and work from home; a cosy spot to meet with friends in the winter, and a sociable after work spot in the summer that can make the most of the generous outdoor seating.

Pique feels like an ideal addition to the street – it sounds like a business set for success, and should be in good company – with a cluster of good cafes on this stretch of the street including Social Pantry (who also started out as a catering-focussed business, before branching out to an ever-busy actual cafe), Il Molino (specialising in coffee, salads and a range of quality cakes), and our long standing and ever popular Cafe Parisienne (for a good quality classic breakfast and lunch range). They’re one of a cluster of planned openings, which will also see Phresh Juice bar opening at 103a LavenderHill (close to the Battersea Business Centre – and next door to the Baguette Deli) in just a couple of days’ time.

Update (January) – Pique is open! Here’s the final result – it;s looking much better. There’s now plenty of pavement seating too, not that it is seeing much use in January. 

Pique, 171 Lavender Hill, Battersea SW11 5TE.  Thanks to our readers who tipped us off on the new opening, and to the team at Pique for sharing details of the plans. You may also want to see our recent roundup of comings and goings on the street, or our wider articles on retail in Lavender Hill.

Posted in Business, Food & drink, Retail | 3 Comments

Lavender Hill Retail Roundup – October 2023

Posted on October 16, 2023 by David

Lots of comings and goings since our last update on Lavender Hill traders at the end of 2022 – and this is a review of who has left and who has arrived, roughly running from the east to the west along the street. First up: M’s dining rooms is opening soon at 14 Lavender Hill, promising an African Carribbean takeaway, as well as the best Nigerian Suya spot in London! This is a site with a complicated history – the previous restaurant, Leilani, was initially quite successful but got tangled up in a series of licensing difficulties . They carried on trading on for a while after the license was revoked – but the premises was eventually repossessed by the landlord. Building work is now well underway, and this should be a fresh start for a large venue with lots of potential.

We’ve previously reported that No Boring Beer hit difficulties when faced with soaring utility costs, which tipped this small business over the edge. The site will soon reopen as a new base for SpyWines, who are a distributor of quality wines run by local resident Tim Harmsworth, and and who have been in Battersea since 2014. Stock is in at 22 Lavender Hill, and signage is on the way.

Room 43 at 43 Lavender Hill has closed – having become a popular live music venue, and quite a local favourite for many. As we understand it, it was good while it lasted but the business wasn’t making stacks of money and its owner’s heading on to new things. It’s been an orderly closure where the premises have been handed back clean and tidy for a new tenant – we hear it may become a cafe.

Grand Estates were a local property business, based in a former bank premises at 37 Lavender Hill (which still has a huge thick-walled safe room built in to the structure!) which has a long and varied history including as a recording studio called Lavender Sound Studios. They have been here for quite a while but have now moved on, and the premises has become a personal training gym.

The Hill Launderette next door is (as we have previously reported, with a short tribute article after years of service) awaiting some fairly minor building works to convert it to an animal grooming and daycare business. The front of the premises will house a reception and a selection of pet supplies for both cats and dogs – including packaged food and treats, and pet jumpers and coats, collars, leads and harnesses, grooming supplies like brushes, combs, shampoos & nail clippers, pet beds, toys, enrichment, and dietary supplements. The rear will be a doggy day care, including a stay and play section, small agility and enrichment stations, beds, water bowls, sofas and kennels for rest or isolation. There will also be a small soundproofed room for cat grooming. Yano Sushi at 39 Lavender Hill next door has closed at least for now, and its future is uncertain.

Snog, maker of frozen yoghurts, currently run a dark kitchen at 67 Lavender Hill, which serves the delivery trade only and is not open to the general public. It unfortunately had a fire break out because of an equipment fault – no injuries, but the premises remained closed for several months. Following building work to repair the damage they are now back in business.

Thermaluminium, who make aluminium windows and doors, are opening a small office and showroom in a shop that was once one of Lavender Hill’s longest running empty premises – and which had fallen in to ruin until it had a comprehensive refurbishment and extension, at 71 Lavender Hill (the junction of Lavender Hill and Rush Hill Road).

We’ve written separately about one of the most disastrous openings ever – where China Garden at 103a Lavender Hill took so long to fit out the premises that they were almost doomed from the start, and lasted just a few weeks. That premises has been cleared out for a new tenant, and we hope it goes better this time!

pHresh Juice will be opening at the end of November in 103e Lavender Hill – the premises between Pizza Da Vinci and the Baguette Deli that was previously Eve & Grace Wellness Centre. The place is looking smart already, and will offer cold pressed juices, ginger and turmeric fruit shots, smoothie drinks & bowls, specialty tea & coffee, healthy foods.

The whole row of shop units by the side of the Business Centre has had a spruce up, as part of a wider upgrade to the Business Centre that has seen new roofs, new windows and a lot of repainting and general tidying up – and as part of this, long established maker of proper wood-fired pizza Pizza da Vinci has also had a complete interior makeover – and has gone from being just a takeaway to also having indoor and outdoor seating. It’s quite an impressive change and the premises feels like it does them justice now.

Burnt Furniture – who opened at 125 Lavender Hill at the end of last year, and who specialise in up-cycling furniture, with an emphasis on highlighting the woods natural beauty using burning techniques and bold colours – are looking for local artists & designers who would like to sell their works at the shop.

Little dessert shop, who were about to open at 145 Lavender Hill in our update last year, are doing a healthy trade in delivering sweet treats – with a large range of iced coffees, milkshakes, waffles and crepes, cheesecakes, Italian gelato and cooke doughs.

One of our favourite premises, the big high-ceilinged corner spot at 137 Lavender Hill, on the junction of Lavender Hill and Sugden Road, has opened as Fitstudioz, provider of bespoke personal training. As insured, certified fitness professionals, they offer tailored sessions by appointment, and are part of a small London-centered chain.

It’s a good space, with a weights area at the front, but several more hidden rooms behind that can cater, as well as for a wider set of treatments. It’s a well equipped venture in a good location, and we wish the super enthusiastic team success!

This was previously MyLondonHome estate agents, and their departure is part of a significant retreat and consolidation over the year, of what was a strangely large number of estate agents. Winkworth departed the vast space at 207 Lavender Hill, and were replaced by Noble Estates who lasted just a few months before moving to a rather very different site tucked away in a mews off Northcote Road, the space is currently empty. Courtenay, opposite Winkworths, were merged into ever-expanding Dexters – so the team transferred to Dexters’ existing premises immediately next door. And Gordon & Co next to the post office have been bought by Foxtons, so relocated to the Foxtons office. The survivors of this big shakeout are investing – with both Foxtons and lettings-only agent Winchester White investing in fairly extensive refurbishment works at their Lavender Hill premises.

Lauristons estate agents at 172 Lavender Hill also completely disappeared, and have since become Lavender Hill Local, a brand new minimarket under the Costcutter franchise, oriented towards food and drink (with a decent chilled section) but also stocking household essentials as well as the usual vapes and off licence. They have long opening hours – but have yet to get permanent signage installed!

The former Royal British legion club at 173 Lavender Hill, which needed a pretty comprehensive rebuild after it was sold off by the Legion following a steep decline in numbers (and which we wrote about in 2021), has finally seen the ground floor leased to Colour Me Posh Nail & Beauty – whose grand opening was just a few weeks ago. It’s good to see this back in use after being empty for many years and our resident small child also appreciated the sweets on offer to celebrate the opening!

El Patio, right next door at 171 Lavender Hill, bravely carried on through the Coronavirus and beyond, but all things come to and end and sadly so it proved for this local venture. The premises was reclaimed by the landlord, and has sat empty (but fully stocked) for quite some months – although in the last few days lights are on and people have been seen inside the premises, with the ‘to let’ sign gone so we suspect something new is on the way.

Heading west, we’ve previously written about the arrival of Mahraba Freshly Halal Minimarket – at 227 Lavender Hill, whose ever friendly and helpful staff stock fresh fruit and veg and a fairly eclectic mix of produce you won’t find elsewhere – and which has a small butchers at the back of the store.

The building at 178 Lavender Hill, which has seen a notably high quality refurbishment by MAC Building Solutions (which included the old Victorian ghost sign on the side of the building being restored – our post on that here) has let its rather smartly kitted out ground floor to a new beauty operator, Bamby Beauty, who look a few weeks (at most) away from opening.

Thermomix, the retailer of high-end kitchen mixers which can also cook food, as well as tell you what to do to make specific meals, and who we wrote about late last year, have developed quite a healthy business, as it seems to the move from a rather deserted business park in Chelsea Harbour to a new location just a minute’s walk from Clapham Junction has paid off.

Finally – there’s always a note of chaos somewhere, and on Lavender Hill it often seems to be linked with the Thirsty Camel Food & Wine, which lost its licence in the summer. As MyLondon report, the Metropolitan Police initially ordered a review into the shop, and Wandsworth Council’s licensing committee held a hearing in June which was followed by a decision to revoke the licence, amid concern that the business was selling nitrous oxide to customers, and of a knife being found under the counter, ruling that “there was no appropriate alternative”. The Police reportedly said that ‘the shop had also continually breached conditions on its premises licence concerning CCTV, staffing and recording incidents‘. Thirsty Camel is a small family-run business, and no one wants to see these small ventures fail (least of all us) – but this sort of trade does no one any favours and we’re hopeful that they can now turn the corner.

And finally, the flagship openings remain the tenants at the newly refurbished Arding and Hobbs. This has really come together in the last few weeks as the ground floor has been revealed and the gardens at the back and on the roof have been installed, and we can expect the first to get going to be Botanical Hall, as part of the Albion & East chain, to be followed some time later by a Third Space gym and spa over three levels, whose reception will be in the area pictured below. As we understand it one unit is still available, which is the one on St John’s Road that was at one stage lined up for Amazon Fresh until they scaled back their UK expansion plans. The full details here – and we’ll be doing a photo update on the redevelopment soon.

It’s been quite a lot of change over a year, and maybe reflects the difficulty of trading in a world of accelerating inflation, soaring utility bills and above all customers with less to spend. Lavender Hill is in one of the wealthiest parts of the country and trade here has fared better than a lot of other places – but it’s still been a tough year for many – and Lavender Hill still needs your custom. So when you’re looking for something or somewhere to go, do think of the hundred or so independent traders whose hard work, enthusiasm and imagination keeps things going on the street.

If you found this of interest you may want to see our wider articles on retail in Lavender Hill. Our 2022 retail roundup is here, with previous ones are here & here.

Posted in Business, Retail | 4 Comments

A house on Garfield Road may be converted to a 14-person HMO

Posted on October 11, 2023 by David

Plans have been submitted to convert 40 Garfield Road – a terrace house about half way along the street, just to the right of the white one pictured above – to an 8-bedroom, 14-person House in Multiple Occupation (HMO) spread over four storeys. The house was sold in a Savills property auction in November last year, for £950,000. It’s currently a three-storey terraced house, spread over three floors with over 1,700 square feet of space, split in to six bedrooms (though a couple of the current rooms are tiny boxrooms at the back), with two bathrooms and a small paved back garden. It’s currently a bit tired and dated, but in reasonable overall condition – we’ve seen much worse!

The new owners – who seem to be running the development via a dedicated company called Clapham Residential Ltd – first applied for planning permission to extend the house in May, getting approval to add an extension to the rear as well as raise the back of the roof to enlarge some of the tiniest rooms (and increase the number of bedrooms to eight). This sort of extension isn’t unusual for the street, and the Council confirmed that this was a ‘permitted development’ (i.e. that it fell within the scope of extensions to buildings that you’re allowed to do without needing to get planning permission).

Then in July the new owners put another application in to reorganise the inside of the property, to turn it in to an HMO – based on the enlarged property, with six two-person rooms and two one-person ones. HMOs are properties rented out by at least three people who are not from one ‘household’ (for example a family) but share facilities like the bathroom and kitchen; they are usually ‘let by the room’ rather than as an overall tenancy for the property. Under the proposals for 40 Garfield Road, five of the rooms would have small en suite bathrooms, with the rest sharing, and there are three shared kitchen / living rooms scattered around the house (which in principle would not be allowed to be used as further bedrooms).

HMOs can work well – they tend to offer small scale accommodation to those who would find it hard to stretch to a larger property, and in London their status of being something between a room in a flatshare and a fully self contained flat can appeal to young professionals, as well as to the wealthier end of the student market – and the past businesses of the people behind the Clapham Residential company profile suggest they have a fair bit of prior experience in similar room letting ventures. The going rates for accommodation round here suggest that it would be in a developer’s interest to aim for the upper end of the market, to make what would be a pretty healthy income from the building. That said, HMOs can also be a bit of a nightmare if they’re not closely managed and the tenants are not picked carefully – and there are a few other HMOs in the wider Lavender Hill area that are run at the bottom end of the range, where the landlords spend as little as possible while cramming as many people in as they can – which are notorious for chaos, and cause real headaches for the neighbours and aren’t much fun for their residents. Whichever route this one takes, it would undoubtedly turn the house in to a notably densely inhabited property – few of these houses currently hold 14 people! – and add a fair bit of new population to the street on one go.

The planning application argued that the development was within permitted development rules (which the property extension is) – but permission is still needed for a change of use. However, while we were writing this post the application was withdrawn – which sometimes is because there has been negative feedback from the planning officers – but which can be for lots of other reasons as well, including developers wanting to update plans. Something will happen to the property, so we suspect revised plans will be back in the relatively near future. If you want to see what was proposed, go to wandsworth.gov.uk/planning and search for application 2023/2385 – which was seeking approval for “Alterations including erection of single storey rear extension and dormer roof extension to main rear roof in connection with change of use from dwelling house (Class C3) to House of multiple occupation (Class C4).“

If you’re interested in development plans in the Lavender Hill area you may find our other posts on planning policy of interest, as well as our occasional series on local development projects.

Posted in Planning, Street by street | Leave a comment

A new rough sleepers hostel opposite Battersea Arts Centre?

Posted on October 4, 2023 by David

Plans have emerged to convert a small office building on Lavender Hill to a new hub for rough sleepers. 201-203 Lavender Hill, pictured above, would become the Borough’s new ‘rough sleeper assessment hub’. Part of the proposal is a traditional ‘homeless hostel’, which aims to provide a bed for the night for people sleeping on the streets, and gradually move occupants on to sustainable long-term accommodation. But the plans provide quite a lot more than just a hostel, with a relatively large number of on-site staff to provide advice to the residents and a variety of specialist services – supporting them to access specialist services and move away from the dangers of rough sleeping. Some staff will also be on site overnight, to maintain safety on site, given that the residents at hubs can often experience a variety of challenges including substance and alcohol addiction, poor mental health, offending behaviour and histories of abuse.

The planned ground floor, whose layout is shown above, would have a reception desk and a small office space, as well as a small coffee and tea area, a set of semi-private booths where staff and homeless customers can have discussions, and a private meeting room, to accommodate various appointment and drop-in services that will be provided at the site. The upper floors would be a series of hostel bedrooms, as well as an office for night duty staff – with 9 private rooms and a further two beds in an open plan area. The customers of these facilities tend to be predominantly male, but not exclusively so – and in a thoughtful move the planned hostel includes a female-only bedroom and bathroom that’s slightly separated from the rest of the hostel and (by being closer to the night duty office) offered a degree of safety from the rest of the residents. The top floor, which will be ‘staff only’ with secure access, has a larger office space with 17 desks, to accommodate the Rough Sleeper Housing Assessment Officers, Homeless Healthlink workers, Drug and Alcohol Homeless pathway and Outreach teams.

There’s no doubt that rough sleeping is a challenge for London – and a more complicated one that many realise. For starters, we’ve all seen the flood of dubious ‘homeless’ beggars dropped off daily by vans at Clapham Junction and other crowded areas in the Borough – and they’re generally not homeless! They have more serious problems though – as they’re mostly victims of modern slavery, being exploited by some pretty well organised criminal enterprises, who keep much of their takings. The ‘real’ homeless are often a bit more hidden – with a fair share of people used to a life of passing under the radar in a world of undocumented and casual labour, where ‘home’ often means quietly squatting in vacant office space or bouncing around from one overcrowded slum to the next, until something goes off track and they’re on the streets. There’s a group of people in short term difficult situations – with relationship break ups and financial difficulties all able to tip people into homelessness. There are specific groups like former prisoners, who can emerge from years of a relatively institutional lifestyle to a world that may have moved on without them, and who find it notoriously hard to get the things going you need to find work and pay rent. And then some – quite a large portion by most accounts – have severe and complicated issues of drug and alcohol dependency, often coupled with various mental health challenges, and may struggle to manage a tenancy.

Wandsworth currently has no accommodation that rough sleepers can be placed in at short notice, meaning they are placed in temporary accommodation miles away from the borough and without access to locally provided support services, which harms efforts to bring them off the streets – and which is also expensive for the Council. Looking at what seemed to work elsewhere led to a plan to develop a local co-ordinated hub – that would act as a location for services to the homeless like specialist support and health need assessments , as well as providing eleven short-stay accommodation beds that could keep people local while work is underway to see what sort of housing they are ready for. It’s a bold idea, and a fresh attempt to tackle the challenge of homelessness with a more root-and-branch approach than just putting people in hotels, and generally a laudable aim. So much so that central government (the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) liked the sound of and agreed to partly fund it up to 2025 with a grant from central government, as part of the Rough Sleeping Initiative.

That said – while the benefits in general are clear, hostels of any type can be problematic neighbours, and we don’t expect this proposal to be popular with those who may feel its side effects more locally. There are several already up and running across London – including in Croydon, in Barnet, in Brent, and in Shepherds Bush – as well as around the country. The experience of their neighbours has been pretty mixed, and seems to depend strongly on how well the hostels are managed, whether the staff run a safe environment for the residents themselves, and how they handle any poor behaviour – some operators seem very competent and effective while others have been criticised for tolerating violence and intimidation inside and outside their sites. A councillor whose ward includes a large hostel run by St Mungo’s in Brighton (one of several controversial sites in the city) reported that “so far this year there have been 38 incidents, 11 emergency calls, and ten urgent calls… it is somewhere many residents pass in the evenings with more caution. I’ve been informed that many people circumnavigate the site from a fear of anti-social behaviour and because it does not feel safe.”

Some residents will inevitably have patterns of aggressive behaviour, which can be intimidating for everyone in the vicinity. Some hostels provide vouchers for residents to buy food nearby, but this won’t tend to stretch to alcohol or other substances meaning hubs can still lead to increased theft from nearby shops, and sometimes aggressive begging. At some sites, residents banned from drugs and alcohol on site congregate in nearby streets instead, causing nuisance and intimidation for neighbours and drawing in wider criminal activity. A concentration of residents with complex conditions and unpredictable behaviour can in some cases lead to safeguarding problems if hostels are too close to other vulnerable people (an issue that may also apply here, with a day nursery immediately next door).

The planning application documents argue that “A considerable body of research in dealing with the effects of rough sleeping indicate that rough sleeping has a number of negative consequences for society more generally, such as anti-social behaviour and other street-based activity such as begging. Tackling the underlying drivers of rough sleeping as intended with this Hub, should have many associated benefits for the community and the broader Lavender Hill locality.“. This is true, although clearly concentrating the Borough’s entire homeless service provision at a fairly quiet edge-of-town-centre location will be a bit of a gamble and is likely to have negative effects for some residents and traders.

It’s not a huge change, in ‘planning’ terms, to the site – a Council-owned building which has recently been empty and taken over by squatters (the photo above shows some what they left behind being cleared out). The previous office housed a variety of Council-led services, including the Wandsworth Independent Living Scheme, which provided support to young people leaving the care of Wandsworth Children’s Services and to those who have moved into supported housing. No proposals have yet been made to change the appearance of the building, instead the main change in planning terms will be that it’s now becoming a residential facility with potentially complicated residents, rather than an office building.

There are a lot of things that could be done to minimise the downsides – sometimes as part of independent ‘Good Neighbour Plans’ that could be imposed as a planning condition. Other similar hostels have been required to provide 24 hour ‘complaints hotlines’ based in the service, and to advertise it prominently to local residents and businesses if residents cause problems, to ensure problems can be dealt with quickly and avoid the only option for neighbours being to add to the queue of calls to the police. They have also been required to enforce ‘house rules’ including around avoiding noise nuisance, no begging/shop lifting and use / dealing of illicit substances – with rules on swift eviction for breaches. Some also have an area around the hostels that staff patrol to ensure residents are not congregating offsite. An important one is the need for residents to exclusively be brought to the site, and those seeking services to only arrive on appointment, rather than being allowed to turn up unannounced – to avoid the sites becoming a late night magnet for anyone looking for a room, and people then going away disappointed and causing havoc. Several hostels agree to provide all residents with supermarket vouchers to enable them to purchase supplies without more begging or shoplifting, to reduce the harm on nearby traders.

If you want to support, oppose or comment on planning aspects of the proposed change of use for the building, search for application reference 2023/3434 at wandsworth.gov.uk/planning – it’s open for comments until 19th October, and late comments are usually also taken in to account.

As an aside – it’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time there has been a local homeless hostel. St Mungo’s ran a large 120-bed hostel on Cedars Road for some years, which was one of their largest operations in the country – focussed on vulnerable residents with severe drug & alcohol abuse issues. The Cedars hostel took some innovative approaches to improve the experience and care of those who were pretty much at the end of the road as their bodies threw in the towel – but there were also reports that suggested the hostel was not having much success in moving any residents on to longer term accommodation. That hostel was a bit of a nightmare for neighbours, as the erratic and antisocial behaviour of some residents in a quiet residential area (and right next to a large primary school) proved increasingly problematic. To the relief of some neighbours it stopped running as a hostel in 2010, after Lambeth ended its funding as part of a review of its overall rough sleeper provision, with the services being moved to more centrally located buildings near the bus station in Vauxhall. The Cedars Road site is still a St Mungo’s facility but was converted from a hostel format in to a series of self-contained flats in the form of “St Mungo Community Housing Association”, to serve a calmer and more settled group of residents – for example those who were homeless because they had had to escape difficult domestic situations, or who were well on the road to recovery – which calmed things down quite a bit.

Posted in Planning, Politics, Useful to know | 11 Comments

A spruce-up for the Gideon Road Estate’s neglected garden area

Posted on September 18, 2023 by David

A rather loud day for residents of the Gideon Road estate, as works begin to on a project to improve the estate’s gardens and landscaping. The first stage is the most disruptive, as the large concrete foundations between the blocks are dug up. These used to support a load of rentable storage sheds – which were removed about 15-20 years ago as they were damp and little-used, their roofs were made of asbestos, and the narrow alleyways around them gave cover for all manner of dubious after-dark activities! These areas have been a bit of an eyesore, not to mention a waste of a fairly large area of usable space, ever since.

These new landscaping works are loosely related to the development that has been underway for some time in the estate’s garage area to the north, which we have written about several times (most recently when the first phase completed). There’s a second phase of new building work coming soon, which we’ll write about in the next few days.

Maybe as an indirect effort to make up for the extended disruption that the building works caused to existing residents (including the loss of parking spaces during the works), Wandsworth’s Housing Development team secured funding to improve the shared areas of the Gideon Road estate. They did various investigations to see what could be done to improve the estate landscaping, and developed some initial options that were then discussed with residents – focussed on making the estate a better and more attractive place to live – which included various landscaping and facilities. These conversations led to some tweaks to the plans (for example – people felt that a new playground for young children could be too close to the properties and duplicate the existing one on the other part of the estate). The designs were then updated, and work has now started.

The plan above shows what we can expect for the currently concreted over area between 1-28, and 29-56, which we have shaded in brown. Essentially removing the concrete slabs and converting it to a small grass courtyard surrounded by a new paved pathway and low level planting. We’re lucky to have Wandsworth’s Horticultural Services team involved here, who also look after the Borough’s parks, as they’ve got lots of experience in developing planting schemes that are low maintenance but also likely to provide interest and colour all year round. The footpath that runs from Lavender Hill down to the car park will be realigned to line up with the staircase, moving it a bit further away from the buildings, and will also be repaved with a new surface. The existing London Plane trees will remain in place (and may be a bit happier without huge concrete slabs covering up their roots). One of the foundations was recently adapted as a base for a secure cycle storage shed (pictured above), which has been unbolted during the demolition of the concrete, but which will be reinstalled close to the current location after the works.

Down the steps to the car park between the same two blocks, work is already underway to dig up the sides of the footpaths, with a small strip of the back of the parking spaces and of the pavement removed and dug out.

The plan, shown below, is to create a thin strip of green space between the parked cars and the way in to the flats – adding small shrubs and few trees along each side of the car park. Hopefully this should make the car park area look a bit nicer from the flats facing it, and add some colour to what is currently a very grey and bleak part of the estate. Although the building work needs a temporary car park closure, the number of parking spaces won’t be changed as part of these works.

The other courtyard (between 29-57 and 57-84) is also set to see some works – again removing the abandoned concrete slab and creating a small grassed and planted garden courtyard – but also making some small improvements to the existing garden area down the steps. That area is currently a flat lawn area to create a small hillock to add a bit of interest, as well as an area that would be a wildflower meadow (shown in the area with the green dots on the layout plan below, where Gideon Road is at the top of the picture). The five trees will remain in place (and a couple more small ones may be added).

One final change is a small but sensible one: The messy paths connecting Tipthorpe Road and Pountney Road behind The Crown have always seemed a rather odd and badly laid out part of the estate – as it creates two paths that start off well but turn in to complete dead ends, separated by a steep bank of grass – just behind the large three in our photo below. The lower path that goes nowhere other than some rarely used back garden access gates even has street lighting!

The map below, with the original design of the estate, shows that this strange layout does seem to have been the plan from the outset! Maybe it was a Friday afternoon in the architects’ office at the time. Ever since there has been a muddy unofficial path connecting the two levels, between the row of houses and the rest of the estate, and the schools and facilities lying to the north.

As the plan below shows (where we have shaded the back of The Crown pub in brown, with Tipthorpe Road to the right), a short new path with steps will be built on the current unofficial path, making it tidier and safer; and part of the existing path will be repaved and tidied up.

Overall – it’s good to see some investment in the estate, which is a popular one that’s worked well over the 50 or so years since it was first built. These works seem to have been carefully and sensibly designed to make it a better place to live, while also being durable and low-maintenance. They should improve what ought to be valuable green spaces, but which have definitely been a bit of a lost opportunity for some years.

If you found this of interest you may also want to see our posts on a planned new building in the estate, and on the landscaping in the new houses at the other end of the estate. Our thanks for the team behind the project at Wandsworth Council for sharing details of the planned works.

Posted in Environment, Housing, Street by street | 2 Comments