St Agnes Place (site of old Rastafari Temple) housing consultation & playground space

London and Quadrant are holding a consultation on their proposals to build 58 homes on St Agnes Place.  I'm afraid I'm rather late with this post, but there's still an opportunity to view the plans tomorrow (Saturday) at St Agnes Church (SE11 4BB) between 10am and 1pm.

St Agnes Place has a disputed and intriguing past, with the first house on the street squatted in 1969.  According to the wikipedia entry here, the council obtained a demolition order for the street and evicted the residents of 21 properties back in 2005.  However, that still left in place the Rastafari temple which was forcibly closed by the Council in 2007.  The residents were removed and subject to a police raid due to allegations of the site being used for drug dealing.  When the police raided, very little evidence of drug possession (other than marijuana) was found.  However, that conveniently left the temple free of residents and the council were then of course able to demolish it.   I'm not sure whether the worshipers of the Rastafari Temple were ever able to find another site to rent.  Does anybody know?

One pertinent matter at issue is the question of the One O'Clock Club and the Kennington Adventure playground.  We all know that cuts in youth provision from Lambeth may well be pending, but most people would not agree that developers would be allowed to build over the sites of an existing playground without agreeing to the provision of a new playground area of equivalent size. 

There is a possibility that some of the play space on the current Kennington Adventure playground site would be lost to a new housing development, which I'd contend should not be allowed to occur.  I'm unclear from the leaflets available so far (I'll scan and post these ASAP) whether any new playground would be of an equivalent size and contain the same facilities.  Note that in 2008, some of the local residents and children protested against the Council's plans to move the playground to a smaller and less suitable site.  I'm not sure (before anybody starts to shout) quite whether the new plans would mean the replacement of the current playground with one of a smaller size, so I think clarification from the Council about their plans in this regard would be useful.  (This matter bears a worrying resemblance with the Council's attempt to allow Archibshop Tenison School to build over the Triangle playground in Oval, and I've another post about that shortly.)

Edit:  See here for a more recent post on St Agnes Place consultation with accompanying plans and proposals.