Planning Applications

Masterplan Planning Application

Introduction

Crystal Palace Park is one of the most important parks in the country, and is of strategic significance. Created in 1853-5 by Sir Joseph Paxton, it was to be the permanent home for his 'Crystal Palace' that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. Overall, it was to be a celebration of past, present and future, a peoples' Versailles, a showcase from the prehistoric to the most up to date thinking on park design and use. Crystal Palace Park today has significant remains from Paxton's design, although the Palace itself burned down in 1936. Changing use and status over the years have taken their toll, and the Park has lost the coherent vision of its designer.

The London Development Agency's (LDA) vision is to rejuvenate Crystal Palace Park as a metropolitan park, heritage asset, cultural, leisure, educational and recreational resource to meet the needs of the local people, sports people whether elite or amateur, and the public at large. It is anticipated that the regeneration and rejuvenation of the Park should act as a catalyst for the wider regeneration of the area.

The LDA's Masterplan

The aim of the Masterplan is to create a 21st century Park which reflects Paxton's original ideas while responding to today's concerns and opportunities. It would respect and build on the history of Crystal Palace Park while addressing the need for a site-wide reinterpretation and redevelopment of a large park suffering from decades of incoherent development, management and neglect. The Masterplan aims to establish a park that is:

The vision responds to heritage, current condition and future needs, with an overall aim of re-establishing the Park's local, regional, national and international significance.

Planning Policy Background

The site lies entirely within the London Borough of Bromley, although adjacent borough boundaries at the north and eastern sides of the Park include LB Croydon, LB Lambeth, LB Southwark and LB Lewisham. For the purposes of determining these applications, the development plan is the London Borough of Bromley Unitary Development Plan (UDP) 2006, and at a regional level, the London Plan 2004 (and Early Alterations 2006) and with less weight but still relevant) the 2006 Draft Further Alterations to the London Plan. National planning policy in the form of Planning Policy Guidance Notes (PPGs) and more recent Planning Policy Statements (PPSs) are also material planning considerations. LB Bromley include as a strategic aim in the UDP:

"To maintain and enhance the role of Crystal Palace Park as a principal strategic park for south-east London and to recognise its value as open parkland and as an important cultural, recreational and sporting asset."

The planning submission consists of three applications as follows:

We have also provided a series of supporting documents that were used by the Masterplanners to help shape their decisions.