Greyhound – are we now going to see it rebuilt?

The recording above is of last night’s Mayor & Cabinet meeting. Many thanks to Stuart Grove of the Sydenham Town Forum for this.  The video is well worth viewing if you’ve got a few minutes to spare! The upshot of the meeting is that the Greyhound’s owners have replied to the Council’s legal letter stating that they intend to rebuild the pub. The Sydenham Society welcomes this outcome but in our view there is still a long way to go. We have, after all, been in this position before!

Some key quotes from last night’s meeting are as follows:

At about four minutes in, the Head of Law, Kath Nicholson, says that “the legal foot won’t come off the pedal”; and Cabinet Member Cllr Chris Best, Chair of the Sydenham Assembly, says that she hopes to be able to report to the next Sydenham Assembly meeting on Saturday December 6th that Purelake have returned to the site. The Mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, welcomed the letter but said that if progress isn’t made then the matter will have to come back to Mayor & Cabinet for further consideration.

The Sydenham Society will today write to the Mayor and Chief Excecutive asking them to lay out a clear timetable for meetings and discussions between Lewisham’s planners and the site owners which in one month will result in a programme of work with the developer back on site in December.

Let’s hope that this is the breakthrough that everyone in Sydenham has been waiting for.

Annabel McLaren

Chair, Sydenham Society

Please visit http://sydenham.org.uk/ for more discussion on the Greyhound and other local happenings