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| Mark Clarke with local Councillors Kathy Tracey and Maurice Heaster visiting the Springfield site |
Springfield Hospital Vision
Springfield Hospital want to embark on a massive redevelopment programme. This will see new NHS buildings, up to 1400 new homes with several thousands of new residents, and changes to the green spaces.
This is a huge development which will impact on everyone’s lives in the area. So it is vitally important that the developers get it right. This bulletin is devoted to explaining it to local residents and also to let people know how they can get involved and have their say.
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| Wandsworth Acute Unit (under construction at Springfield) seen from above |
New Hospital Buildings
New NHS buildings would be erected. These might increase security because they would be designed to have internal courtyards. This would mean the patients could take their recreation in the internal courtyards rather than in the outside grounds.
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| An artist's impression of the proposed regenerated heritage at Springfield |
New Homes
These new buildings would be paid for by converting the older buildings into housing (300 homes) and building an additional 1100 new homes – so 1400 homes in total. These homes would vary from large family homes through to a twelve storey block and a variety of other smaller blocks. They would also see around 35% social housing, of which half would be for people on low incomes to buy, and half would be for people on low incomes to rent.
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| An artist's impression of the proposed Springfield Garden Village's central square |
More and Different Use for the Metropolitan Open Land
The golf course would close and be converted into a public park. Some of the NHS buildings which were built on Metropolitan Open Land would be demolished and converted to park land.
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| An artist's impression of a cafe piazza at the proposed Springfield Garden Village |
Timeline
At the moment there is a consultation underway before an outline planning application is submitted. There is no firm date for this yet but the Hospital have told Mark that it is likely to be submitted around May time. The outline planning application sets the parameters of the development.
Building work might then start in 2009. The full development may take up to eight years to complete as the programme is built in stages to minimise the impact on local residents.
- Wandsworth has a shortage of good quality family homes. This development might help to alleviate that.
- Springfield Hospital’s buildings are out of date and not fit for delivering the highest quality of care in the 21st century. This development could help to fix that.
- Investing in our NHS facilities is vital. If the Government won’t give us our fair share of resources then redeveloping the site to release money for local NHS services seems smart.
- The green space, which sees only limited use by golfers, gets converted into a wonderful new park for us all to use with easier access.
- Knocking down some ugly buildings sees more green space returned to local people as Metropolitan Open Land.
- Are the new homes going to maintain the look and feel of the existing area?
- London is a collection of villages and villages don’t tend to have 12 storey blocks in them. So can this development be made to work without such a large tower on site? Many of the other buildings are also significantly larger than the adjacent two storey houses. How can this be improved?
- How are all these new people going to get to work without blighting the lives of existing residents? Sticking on a few shuttle buses isn’t going to be enough.
a) In terms of public transport, residents don’t want to see an overcrowded Wandsworth Common Station, or ever more congestion on the Northern Line.
b) We already have wall to wall traffic on Trinity Road, how does this development help? Is Glenburnie Road going to be transformed from a quiet residential street to a main access route for 1000s of people? - How will the building works affect local residents?
- How are they going to maintain security on the site during building and after construction so that local residents feel safe from some very ill patients?
- How are the developers going to guarantee that they finish what they start? We don’t want them, or the NHS, building half a development which is unbalanced because they run out of money or the Government do yet another NHS reorganisation which throws everything up in the air.
Some of the profits from the development will be spent locally improving Springfield Hospital. But some of the money will be siphoned off by the Government quango called NHS London.
Just down the road, our main hospital, St George’s, has a massive £40m debt with that same body, NHS London. They are slashing services used by local people in increasingly desperate attempts to pay off that NHS London debt. Already St George’s Hospital’s cuts are damaging staff morale and clinical care.
So Mark Clarke is calling for any profits from the development of the Wandsworth based Springfield site to be spent back in Wandsworth improving St George’s Hospital, or to be used to offset the debts that St George’s owes to NHS London.
- Told the Hospital’s PR people that their initial resident’s leaflet on the subject was incomprehensible gibberish which gave local people no sense of what was going on.
- Attended the some local residents meetings to tell them what was going on because they were excluded from the consultation process.
- Visited the site with local councillors to assess the impact.
- Met with Hospital managers to understand the full plans.
- Met with Council Health Committee Chairman to understand health benefits.
- Communicated to local residents about the development via e-mail.
- Protected sightlines by negotiating much lower buildings.
- Significantly reduced the number of proposed homes from 1700- 2000 homes to the current 1400 proposed homes.
- Conducted residents’ surveys which asked residents their viewpoint.
- Regularly met with the developers to pass on residents concerns.
- Classics Club (28 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7PG) between 4pm and 8pm on Thursday, February 21
- Earlsfield Library (276 Magdalen Road, SW18 3NY) between 4pm and 8pm on Friday, February 22
- Restaurant at Springfield University Hospital (61 Glenburnie Road, SW17 7DJ) between 9am and 1pm on Saturday, February 22
- Calling Simon Worsfold on 020 8682 6513.
- Writing to regeneration@swlstg-tr.nhs.uk
You could let Mark Clarke know what you think by emailing him at mark@markclarke.net.