Demolition of all existing buildings on site and comprehensive
redevelopment to provide a part-three and part-four storey new care home
(Class C2 – Residential Institutions), including up to 63 bedrooms each
with wet room, plus cycle parking, refuse/recycling storage, mechanical
and electrical plant, new sub-station, landscaping and green/living
walls, amenity areas, perimeter treatment and associated ancillary
works. | 10 Love Walk London Southwark SE5 8AE
The Camberwell Society’s view is that the applicant’s account of their
design intentions to meet the requirements of the proposed elderly
residents did not correspond to the design that they have submitted for
planning. The applicant’s stated mission is:
“Personalised care is provided in “households” where care rooms are
arranged in small social groupings with their own lounge, dining area
and ancillary spaces including support facilities”.
This is not what the drawings show: the building consists of two slab
blocks of 3-4 storeys, the elevations characterised by repetitive
arrangements of window openings and masonry.
The bedrooms are arranged along corridors, two thirds of which have no
natural lighting. The communal rooms also lead off these corridors, and
are mostly barely bigger than the bedrooms they are intended to serve.
The only dining room is on the ground floor.
There is extremely limited access for the residents to outdoor space,
most of which is on the Love Walk and Kerfield Place ground floor street
frontages, and probably beyond the unassisted reach of residents
suffering from dementure. More use could be made of roof gardens, which
could provide amenity space close to the bedrooms.
The applicant’s stated objective to provide a series domestic scale
groupings of bedrooms and communal facilities, each with its own
recognisable character, where the residents could feel at home, is a
worthy one. This is not the design to achieve such an objective.
The likely impact of the proposal on this prominent site adjacent to the
Conservation Area was thought to be damaging. The immediate surroundings
of the care home is characterised by two storey detached houses,
pavilions in a landscape, in which environment this three and four
storey block would be an unsympathetic addition.
The Camberwell Society objects to this application.