London Borough of Lewisham came out on top at this week’s 2020 Planning Awards. These awards celebrate the diverse talent working across the built environment sector.
The Council was awarded in the following three categories:
Award for Community-Led Placemaking
Team Catford, the locally-based team which leads the community engagement on the regeneration of Catford town centre on behalf of Lewisham Council, won the award for Community-Led Placemaking. Finalists were judged on how their project contributes to the improvement of the physical or environmental quality of a place or the economic or social well-being of a community. Since 2017, Team Catford has held thousands of conversations with local people to gather over 2,500 views and ideas which are helping to shape the emerging framework plan to guide development over the next 10 to 15 years. You can read more about the Catford Town Centre Framework .
Award for Infrastructure Planning
The proposals for the Bakerloo line extension (BLE) won the award for Infrastructure Planning, with judges describing the project as “a great example of new infrastructure facilitating major regeneration”.
Coordinating with the Greater London Authority and Transport for London, Lewisham Council has worked alongside Southwark Council to produce a series of interconnecting planning frameworks for almost the whole route corridor. These proposals aim to generate £8.2 billion of local economic benefits, including the delivery of:
- 50,000 new homes
- 12,000 new construction jobs with 18,000 more in the nationwide supply chain
- 9,500 permanent new jobs along the corridor.
Award for Fostering a Healthy High Street
Developers Really Local Group won this award for Catford Mews cinema and community space. Replacing an old Poundland store in the shopping centre, the multi-functional community space opened in 2019 to provide the first cinema in Lewisham in almost 20 years, a live music space, comedy and networking events, exhibition space for locals to showcase their work and a pop-up food market featuring local traders. The venue’s objective is to be affordable and inclusive, with community-led programming and cheap cinema tickets. The judges said that the “mix of uses will ensure vibrancy at all times of the day”, and that the scheme demonstrated a “bottom-up approach”.