Town Centre Report
We support most of the recommendations made by the consultancy, The Project Group, in its 1998 report to Lambeth Council on the town centre development, in particular the need for:
signage of car parks, station, other facilities, and West Norwood itself.
greening/landscaping. We want more trees, tubs of shrubs and flowers, hanging baskets, improvement of St Luke's gardens.
Pavement improvement. We would like to see replacement of broken and damaged pavements in the centre (and a long-term programme of laying paving slabs in residential streets currently under tarmac).
Street lighting. We supported the provision of new street lights. Dark green is the suggested colour, following our newsletter mini-survey.
Grants to improve shop fronts and for training shop staff in customer service, etc
Public toilets - we called for these at our first meeting in autumn 1996!
Image: we discussed image and came up with two ideas for further discussion. One was to create and promote a town centre which was attractive to families, with toilets, a playground, toy shop, etc. The other was to take advantage of the large number of flower shops and promote it as a the flower centre of south London. It has a clear advantage over Streatham of being a manageable size with many food shops and over Dulwich of being more accessible on public transport.
Business forum: we have always supported the setting up of a separate business forum, but Jeremy Galloway has not found many traders interested.
Cycle parking at the stations.
However, we had some criticisms of the report. They included:
its failure to address the problems of Knight's Hill and Norwood High Street.
Its lack of an overall "vision" for the town centre, eg as a place for families. We feel a lot could be made of the fact that a wide range of shopping is available in a relatively small space and within walking distance of local housing.
The implication that the lack of a tube was a serious problem, which would prevent the centre ever becoming really well used. Many other town centres in south London overcome this disadvantage.
The contradictory perception that the town centre functioned well as a local shopping and commuter hub and that an evening economy was developing. We wish it was!
The comment that bus services were good - we feel they could be improved.
We had some additional suggestions:
West Norwood should concentrate on destination shopping rather than comparison shopping (ie it should provide food and household necessities, including one or two shoe shops, a toy shop and a bookshop, rather than numerous fashion chains).
We needed "magnets" to draw people into the town centre and help small shops to survive, including, a supermarket, with parking, in the centre. We are completely opposed to the idea of the old college site being used for a supermarket.
The area defined as West Norwood should include Knight's Hill and Norwood High Street. We disagree with the view that the one-way system has had no impact on these streets. Speeding through-traffic makes both streets less attractive for shopping. There is no desire to linger. Signs denoting the "boundaries" of West Norwood need to take this into account.
