Bromley Unitary
Development Plan Proof of Philip
Kolvin Crystal Palace
Park Crystal Palace
Campaign Section
7
"When I go out it gets air into my brain so that I can think and stuff."
Quote from "More than Swings and Roundabouts", Children's' Play Council, 2002
7 Ownerships Within the
Park 7.1 The transmitter occupies a
portion of fenced land between the covered reservoir and the
top-site, pursuant to a 99 year lease first entered into
between the Greater London Council and the BBC in
1954. 7.2 The Sports Centre is
occupied by Sport England pursuant to a 30 year lease
entered into in March 1974. 7.3 The covered reservoir is
occupied pursuant to a 125 year lease from 1978. The current
parties are the London Borough of Bromley and Thames Water
Utilities, who varied the lease by deed in 1997, although
the terms of the variation are not known. 7.4 The caravan site is
occupied by the Crystal Palace Caravan Club Site pursuant to
a 125 year lease granted in 1989. 7.5 There is some land and
buildings to the south-west of Crystal Palace Park road
occupied pursuant to a 25 year lease granted in
1997. 7.6 The bus terminus at
Crystal Palace Parade is subject to a 60 year lease from
1999. 7.7 More recently, it is known
that the London Borough of Bromley has granted a long lease
to a fishing club, which has had the beneficial effect of
giving stewardship of the lake to the club, but with the
adverse effect of taking the lake out of public
access. 7.8 In addition to this,
various land adjoining Crystal Palace Park Road has been
sold off for housing over the last 100 years. 7.9 What is clear from the
above is that there is substantial erosion of the land
originally part of Crystal Palace Park. Moreover, the
erosion has taken place in a piecemeal manner and without
any overall vision for the future of the Park. 7.10 I believe that to reverse
its decline, the Park needs a vision for the future in the
form of a framework document or masterplan. Simply to remove
the designation of a part of the Park, without integrating
it into the vision for the whole in any logical or
consistent way, is to promote further damaging piecemeal
development. At the same time, the fact that the London
Borough of Bromley does not even attempt in the draft UDP to
encapsulate an aspiration for the remainder of the Park (and
in fact actively resists doing so) will, in my view, merely
accelerate that erosion. At the very least, it will impede
its proper regeneration.
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©Philip Kolvin