76a and 76b The Avenue 20/05047/FULL
In the last few days we’ve been informed that amended plans have recently been submitted for an application made last Christmas for the demolition of these two 1930s houses, replacing them with a five-storey block of flats, and houses to the rear of the site, is also still under consideration by the Council. The application also includes the resurfacing of The Avenue between the site and the junction with Westgate Road, which is an unmade road.
The new block of 18No flats comprises 10No one-bedroom and 8 No two-bedroom units. 3No three-storey terraced, mews-style houses are proposed behind, providing accommodation for up to 70 people. Car parking is provided for 16 cars behind and in front of the block.
The three houses appear fairly well appointed, however the layout and size of the flats is cramped and many barely meet the minimum space standards required.
This development doesn’t include any affordable housing provision.
Some residents on the road are concerned about the size and height of the development, that it is an over-development of the site and the traffic problems that could result from any resurfacing of the road.
The amended plans include additional windows to several individual flats and some of the common areas to improve natural light into these spaces.
If you commented on the original scheme earlier this year, we would recommend you submit your views again for this amended scheme. The closing date for comments is 26 October. Beyond this date you can still submit your comments by email to both planning@bromley.gov.uk and the case officer jessica.lai@bromley.gov.uk. Don’t forget to include the case reference number above and give your name and address, or your comment will not be recorded.
The case is expected to go before a planning sub-committee meeting either on 25th November or 9th December.
Copers Cope Area Residents' Association (CCARA) & West Beckenham Residents' Association (WBRA) 
ANOTHER HOUSING ASSOCIATION SCANDAL LOOKING TO BROMLEY COUNCIL FOR AFFIRMATION
This is yet another instance of the Liverpool housing magnate, Riverside Housing (masquerading as a social housing provider, and hence acquiring charitable status) having acquired valuable inner and outer London sites from genuine social housing providers, with the sole object of demolishing existing social homes, and building for profit on the sites thus freed of unwanted social tenants.
Riverside in fairly recent times acquired at least three large and valuable estate sites in South London from the then struggling ECHG, formerly Church Army Housing, via merger. They are the Lambeth estate, Calverley Close, and Pike Close. Riverside also simultaneously acquired a number of smaller such groups of dwellings, of which this, Langtry House, is one.
They are all doomed to fall victim to corporate greed and ambition.
Any current social housing tenants of these estates and dwellings, whom all of these sites were designed to house securely and economically, will lose their homes as soon as Riverside is given planning permission by Bromley for such disgraceful projects. The Bromley Homeless register will lose many currently available homes, and acquire more homeless applicants, because any ‘affordable housing’ promised by the developer will disappear as the result of cunningly implemented ‘financial viability assessments’, which will show that the developer can no longer afford to supply an ‘affordable’ element. In the case of this Langtry House site, the developer has not even bothered to make such false promises, because it knows the law allows it to get away with not reproviding any preexisting social housing, and that historically protected tenancies disappear as soon as demolition orders are acquired from the local authority.
‘Affordable’ in any case means up to 80% of market rent, and also ‘part buy/part let’. It is never truly ‘affordable’ by those whom social housing was designed to help, and does not include genuine social housing, the tenancy agreements and rents of which have to date been government controlled.
Bromley Council has so far largely ignored warnings by Bromley residents that it is continuing to haemorrhage its existing social housing supply by appearing to be oblivious of what these unscrupulous ‘housing associations’ are doing. Langtry House housed quite a number of elderly and vulnerable Bromley social tenants in their own self-contained flats, with allegedly a degree of ‘support’ (not satisfactorily given by Riverside once it took over the building).
Bromley Council, like many local authorities, handed over its own council housing stock to a manufactured housing association called ‘Broomleigh’. This stock has since been passed on to other preexisting HAs, and latterly handed over to private letting agents.
Beckenham does not need more private housing-for-profit blocks of flats. Everywhere we look in Beckenham we see this mushrooming. It needs dedicated social housing.
BROMLEY COUNCIL’S HOUSING DEPARTMENT SHOULD STOP IGNORING THIS SCANDALOUS TAKE-OVER OF VALUABLE SITES BY COMMERCIALLY ORIENTATED ENTITIES SUCH AS RIVERSIDE HOUSING, AND STOP ENCOURAGING THE DELIBERATE EROSION OF THE SUPPLY OF GENUINE PUBLIC HOUSING THAT SUCH BLATANT ENCOURAGEMENT IS CREATING.