Bermondsey Neighbourhood Forum

The next meeting of the Interim Steering Group will be at 7pm on Tuesday 23 August at Bermondsey Square. The meeting’s start time has been moved so as not to clash with other meetings that evening.

This meeting is only for members of the Interim Steering Group and is not open to the wider community.

The next meeting of the Interim Steering Group will be at 6:30pm on Tuesday 2 August at Bermondsey Square.

This meeting is only for members of the Interim Steering Group and is not open to the wider community.

> Download the agenda for the meeting

The Representatives Group meeting of 20 July was very successful, with detailed discussion about how we can better engage with people and the challenges that some people have in engaging with an abstract plan.

After a long discussion about the issues we have faced so far and possible solutions, the Representatives Group voted unanimously to give the following mandate to the Interim Steering Group:

• That the Bermondsey Neighbourhood Forum should improve engagement with people by taking an active position on current issues, rather than njust focussing on just the longer-term strategic issues to be included in a plan
• That by engaging and mobilising people on smaller-scale issues we can derive some of the broader principles we would need to have in the plan
• These current issues needn’t necessarily be current planning applications and would need to be balanced to engaged with people across the Forum area. Three key issues were suggested :
  • the traffic flows around Guy’s Hospital
  • the consolidation and enlargement of the Bermondsey Street Conservation Area
  • ensuring that affordable housing cash from developments in the Forum area (and the Bankside area) is spent close to those areas and isn’t spent furher south in the borough
• It was recognised that these ideas would need to be worked up in more detail, but these were used to illustrate the need for ‘bottom-up, here-and-now engagement.

The meeting also heard from Guy’s Hospital about their current plans to clad the hospital tower, and the developing plans for a new cancer centre (up to 14 stories high) on the corner of Great Maze Pond and Snowsfields.

We also discussed with Kings College London about the status of the buildings along Borough High Street and stretching back to Great Maze Pond. It was suggested what we could have a much more detailed presentation about the overall strategy for the Hospital/Medical School site at a later meeting.

The next meeting of the Representatives Group of the Bermondsey Neighbourhood Forum will be at 6:30pm on Wednesday 20 July at the Roben’s Suite, 29th Floor, Tower Wing, Guy’s Hospital.

The meeting is open to anybody from Residents Associations or other Community Organisations who want to come along and get more involved in the work of the Bermondsey Neighbourhood Forum.

There will be tea, coffee and biscuits available from 6pm so people can have the chance to meet up and chat – as well as enjoying the fabulous view of our area. We are very grateful to Karen Sorenson of Guys & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust for making this venue available to us.

The meeting will discuss:

• An update on the Forum activity, including projects working in the area
• An overview of planned developments on and around the Guys’ Hospital site
• Reports back from Representatives Group members
• Engaging with the wider community – taking the Forum message out to others

Visitors should use the main entrance on Great Maze Pond and use lifts A in the Tower Wing (Purple Zone) to the 29th floor.