71P plan

Peckham Vision's alternative ideas helped create the Contingency Plan

The plan to safeguard site 63P/71P for the tram depot caused blight and degeneration for 5 years, and this would have continued for the 10 years or more before it was completed. In addition the tram depot, which would be a high security site for 24 hours a day, would if built:

• close off and sterilise a very large area of the town centre, and could hardly help in its regeneration;
• lose the opportunity that this huge site presents for providing a wide variety of spaces for the continuing developments in creative industries, small businesses, and community uses, which are now occurring in central Peckham. Read more...

Peckham Vision argued that the Council needed to have a Contingency Plan for the site:

• in the short to medium term over the next 5 years, to minimise blight during the continuing uncertainty about the locations for the Cross River Tram depots, see also here and here.
• in the longer term beyond that, in the event that TfL find an alternative location for the main tram depot.

Such a Contingency Plan would feature the potential major contribution that site 63P/71P can make to the regeneration of Peckham Town Centre, and also to greater Peckham as a whole. With TfL's own review [create link] showing that this site was in fact the wrong site for the tram depot, Peckham Vision's alternative ideas have served as the Contingency Plan, and this site can finally take its rightful place as a major Opportunity Site for Peckham town centre.