Clarendon Terrace Society

We are an unincorporated association whose primary aim is to defend the interests of independent small shops within the Camberwell Green ward and surrounding area, and to improve the lives of all residents living locally. We achieve this by creating an effective mechanism for liaison with local government, which often means finding the right individual decision-maker, not just the right department or local authority.

A council policy sensitive to the several residential micro-environments within each ward, which have their own individual needs, will also be able to respond to the needs of local shops. That means we are interested in anything which residents want to improve their area.

Provided your aim is to strengthen local communities and if your local councillor is not interested, you can trust us to take a real interest in your case. Read more.

Our History
Our organisation takes its name from Clarendon Terrace, a parade of shops on the Camberwell New Road, the longest Georgian Road in England. Clarendon Terrace lies on the border between Southwark and Lambeth, on a route administered by TfL. Because of this, CTS members have great experience of the compartmentalisation of local government responsibility, and the "culture of remit" or accountability avoidance (the unwillingness of some elected officials to take up an issue if it is possible to interpret it as being another department's responsibility, whether or not that is the case).

The coat of arms of Sir Edmund Bowyer of Camberwell, who settled in Wyndham Road in the time of Henry VIII

Your Future
There has been serious interest for some time from specialist businesses including a perfumer and an independent café-patisserie from the Soho district in relocating to Clarendon Terrace, or opening a second store here. These businesses are following CTS negotiations on local parking availability closely, as they cannot relocate here unless local free short stay car parking is guaranteed by Southwark. At the moment Southwark's policy is skewed towards residential parking, but since these new businesses would transform the area for local residents, there is a chance this policy may change in order to attract investment into the area.

Project Boulevard Camberwell New Road^TM
CTS is consulting with local police, residents and community associations on a radical plan to attract grant money to a boundary zone which has historically been neglected by both councils on which it borders. The project aims to transform Camberwell New Road into the grand boulevard-style prospect which it should be, without unnecessary street furniture and with a strict requirement to consult locally before installing street furniture. Annual tree audits will be scheduled in order to anticipate problems with our oldest residents and put them right before felling them becomes "unavoidable".

Issues
Street furniture - at least as influential on the character of an area as the buildings themselves.

Can you really "tell" people it is a nice area by putting up bright signs designating historical boundaries, or do you need a coherent approach to street design involving local consultation?

In a sea of soft orange lamplight, the replacement lamppost for its perfectly-working predecessor now gives out a harsh neon light topping a silver spike, where its neighbour lampposts are exclusively black.

The £250,000 invested in the unpopular "Welcome" signs could have been better spent on the Camberwell Leisure Centre. Not only has the money been wasted, but the signs are now doing active harm to such communities as conservation areas, for which the silver spikes and purple backgrounds are completely unsuitable. It is essential to introduce a culture of consultation in the planning department as soon as possible.

Parking - Tim Walker, of Southwark Council, is implementing the NC CPZ (North Camberwell Controlled Parking Zone) plan, for the third-most-deprived ward in Southwark. Under the NC CPZ it will be possible for residents to park in front of shops all day during trading hours blocking customers and deliveries, and for anyone to park in the area after 6.30pm, before many commuter residents will have made it home. This means the NC CPZ does not serve the needs of anyone local.

Local authorities allow cars to choke small shopping communities, and rubber stamp ugly shop conversions in conservation areas. Right: Denmark Road SE5, is on a Lambeth/Southwark boundary; not a priority for either Council.

The indifference of local authorities to boundary areas led to a previously flourishing community in Denmark Road converting most of its shops to flats, sending out a message of failure to the local community.

There is a discrepancy between the treatment of small shops and supermarkets by local authorities. It is unimaginable that Southwark would allow pavement parking to block Morrisons on Walworth Road, or Safeway in Camberwell Green. TfL would never allow residential parking all day in front of the Co-Op on Camberwell New Road. This would be a direct assault on their ability to trade, and the supermarket lobby is simply too powerful for local authorities to permit this.

Business permits cost almost five times as much as residential permits, and there is no provision for suppliers to deliver to shops. To find out why the NC CPZ is also racist in its effect, read this.

Clarendon Terrace shopping precedes the introduction of parking restrictions in the UK by over fifty years, so should continue to be taken into account in contemporary planning policy.

Planning - Three shops locally are being lived in, in violation of their commercial use, despite being listed buildings in a conservation area. Southwark say they can do nothing, as it is an "enforcement issue".

Local Democracy - In Southwark, poor maintenance of the electoral database and misleading advice from the returning officer's assistant led to the disqualification of four candidates from the local elections in 2006. This involved Deborah Holmes and Frances Biggs, Electoral Services Officer for Southwark Electoral Services. Read more.

Crime - What is the best way to combat it? To give an area hope, raise the self-esteem of residents in danger of turning to crime, encourage local enterprise and protect anything about the area which gives it individual character and sets it apart from other areas. The importance of local shops and good street furniture cannot be underestimated, because they are symbols of whether the local authority values the area, which criminals equate with the likelihood of the area being policed effectively. They use graffiti on areas which they believe the local authorities do not care about.

The post collection box on Clarendon Terrace has become a magnet for crime and a symbol of local authorities' disinterest in this boundary area

Supermarkets - "consumers are voting with their feet". The idea that the market will 'right itself' depends on there being no market distortions - an equal playing field. However, where the market is distorted by planning and parking bias towards supermarkets, no-one can talk about "consumer preference" or the "law of the market" in relation to the decline of local shops. How can you speak of a real "choice" between a supermarket where you can park, and a local shopping community where you cannot? Until this market distortion has been addressed, it is not open to anyone to suggest that the decline of local shopping is a matter of consumer choice.

Environment - We encourage a "use-based" approach to local government policy. This means equal pricing of utilities, parking permits for small businesses and residents. Since the principle behind parking and utilities pricing is based on limited resources, it makes sense to charge based on use, not on whether the entity is a business or an individual..

The majority of supermarkets rely heavily on commuter shoppers driving between one and five miles. The big four supermarkets have, on average, five times as much free parking space as their actual retail area, whereas the majority of shops only have the equivalent of a fraction of their retail area available for their visitors by car. Since taking parking away from local shops closes them, forcing locals to commute to supermarkets, it is not possible to suggest that the NC CPZ is "anti-car".