Garden State of Emergency

Sally is a Wickham Road resident who's been locked in a planning battle over the redevelopment of neighbouring garden land since 2006. For over five years, she has been trying to convince the Council to enforce its own planning regulations, to prevent the land from being built on. Now, the issue is coming to a head again as the land is about to go up for auction:

The freeholder of the two properties is auctioning both the freeholds and the garden land. The land search provided by Lewisham council to the auctioneer made no mention of the recent planning history (although they manage to cover much older events) or of any decision to serve Notice. 

The garden land was described in the catalogue as having “development potential”. It’s already attracted a lot of interest from bullish developers who believe they can push through an application to build...

The garden land [is] up for sale and [was] originally misrepresented as having potential for development and with inadequate information for any prospective buyer to make an informed decision. All it would take is for the council to honour their intention to issue a Notice of Breach. That way the land is not of interest to anyone. Except us. And we are interested. Interested because we want to see justice done. To see a council stand up to a local developer who has flouted any number of planning conditions. To see all the reams of rules and regulations around urban development have some kind of meaning. We don’t want to build on the land but we might like to see our children play on it, to have it returned to the garden use which was the intention of that condition imposed 10 years ago. 

 Meanwhile there’s little we can do except wait and see what happens at auction next Tuesday, February 21st. We fear the most likely outcome is that it will change hands for a sum way beyond our means and remain a derelict overgrown plot, so near to us and yet so very far. 

It's a long story, but for the benefit of planning junkies everywhere, she has told it in great detail on her blog.