I've only just searched on the Forum for this as it is something that concerns me (the state of St Francis Park and the proposed scheme at Dulwich Hamlet) and I'd been doing some - fruitless - chasing in my own over the last few months on with regards to St Francis Park. Therefore, it's made interesting reading. I totally endorse the points made by 'mikeb' about the cynical nature of the proposed public space provision in the Meadow planning application. From my reading of things, this is a really good/ important time to be chasing the Council/ Sainsbury's (and potentially Meadow) on how the existing St Francis Park needs to be improved and to make sure that something similar doesn't happen with the new planning applications. In terms of where I've got to: - I have been passed around by Sainsbury's customer services over the last months (Galileo - your post pretty much answers the question about who is responsible). - I emailed the 2 local Councillors 2 weeks ago and haven't yet had a response to the below. I mentioned in it that I put a bid together (in 2018 for Southwark Council funding to improve the park that was unsuccessful): St Francis Park (and the green fringes of Sainsbury's car park) have significant levels of litter, relatively few litter bins and are generally not very well maintained. Whilst the park is 'ok', it could be so much better and less of a glorified cut through to Sainsbury's. I've had an interest in this for a while but not done anything about it until I submitted a bid to the Cleaner Greener Safer Capital Programme 2019/20 (reference number is 1119251). This was unsuccessful. From a bit of research I understand that the park is managed by Sainsbury's. On this basis, I've just emailed Sainsbury's to ask them what they are doing. I think that there are some relatively simple things (e.g. a few new litter bins, actually shutting the park) as well as some things which are a bit more aspirational but would make significant improvement to the park. I went to the planning exhibition for the proposal for the Dulwich Hamlet stadium and asked the applicant whether they planned to fund improvements to the park as part of any Section 106 package; they did not have plans to do so. A few questions which would be useful to understand if you know: - Am I correct in thinking that this is not a Council run park? - Is Meadow being pushed to improve the park as part of any applications (this would seem fair enough to me on the basis of this being the 2nd stab at reducing MOL given that the park was originally built for this purpose in the early 90s)? -Any ideas/ thoughts you are pursing to improve the park. Anyway - I thought that it would be useful to share this if others have also chased on this matter. I've just chased the Councillors and if I get no response will try and thing of some way to escalate it!!
