Interesting SE11 Planning Applications

One finds out all sorts of things when one starts digging around on the Lambeth planning applications database.

There's currently an application pending to turn 190 - 198 Kennington Lane away from its current usage as offices into a mental health clinic. I think that this is quite a good thing. Mental health is usually underprovided for and an increase of provision is good. However, depending on what the facility will actually offer, it might not be such a good thing for residents of Kennington Lane. Treatment for people with severe (or any) mental illness is a very good thing, but I hope the visiting patients won't lead to the neighbourhood becoming more dangerous. "Mental illness" is such a broad term which covers everything from mild to depression to the infamous, potentially non-existent "severe" personality disorder.

There's another application pending to turn 130-138 Newington Butts into student accomodation (presumably for South Bank university), restaurant, retail, storage and offices. For some reason, I thought that this was going to become residential flats. I think that there is currently retail and offices etc. on the site so I don't know if they're just going to extensively renovate or whether it will be knocked down and started again.

That's all of interest today for the SE11 area. I will try and run the search again in October to see what else might pop up...