Welcome to the new Deptford Job Centre

...or rather welcome to what's been happening on the Job Centre site.

This is an architect's impression of how the site will look - two restaurant-type sites on the ground floor and a number of live/work spaces built up to 2 storeys above.  Permission for this went through over a year ago in June 2009.

Here's a seating plan:

Deptford High Street to the left, Tomi's Kitchen is the top left-hand grey blob, with the restaurant (and flats above) wrapping themselves around it with the western boundary on Resolution Way (top).  The central bar is where the New Deal inquisitors now work.( Illustrations from here)

It appears that there was an initial planning application way back in November 2003, and the planning committee (B) was clearly taken with the idea of how it would improve the look of the area for people emerging from Deptford Station.  I quote: ''The choice of materials and the detailing referred to in the accompanying material should result in a striking new addition in an important part of Deptford High Street, due to its position in relation to the station and the proposals on the other side of the road''.  (Page 43, para 3.3 here)  This continues in the next paragraph, 3.4 with ''Moreover, the added height of the development would mean that it would add interest from the railway and act as an important marker for the High Street and or Deptford as a whole.''     Quite coincidentally, improving the appearance of Deptford High Street entails the removal of lots of unemployed people from the area.

Station view

I didn't know anything at all about this when I spoke to my mole in the jobcentre today.  Of course, I knew about the on-off nature of the closure and when I read  ''Local MP secures promise on Job Centre'' on Joan Ruddock's website I knew that the game was up.  Because the only ministerial undertaking to keep a full jobcentre service in Deptford was  if a suitable building could be found.  So I asked when the closure was expected to happen.  Some staff are already being relocated but the lease runs out in November.  And I learned something interesting while I was at it.  According to the mole, when the last government gave the ok to renew the lease, the job centre management kept on adding, adding, adding to the expansion upstairs taking the cost up to several million pounds.  Yet under the last government there was never a budget for this empire building.  However, they have a convenient scapegoat now that they're now longer in power. 

And another snippet, that I can neither confirm nor deny, was that it was the then Deputy Mayor for Labour, Heidi Alexander, who signed off the change of use to hot food and drinks.  I don't know whether this is true, but I do know that when the application was finally agreed Mrs Alexander had responsibility for Regeneration, which includes the environment, waste management and economic development.

One thing that it is really hard not to be cynical about though, is how Joan Ruddock could use her ''success'' at staving off the jobcentre closure as part of her achievements as MP for Lewisham Deptford when the woman who's now her neighbouring MP in Lewisham East had been the deputy mayor for Lewisham at the time that new use and development was being discussed.  At to make it odder, Heidi Alexander used to be Joan Ruddock's researcher.  So they're neighbouring Labour MPs, they necessarily had a close working relationship, and Alexander was in power when the plans went through.  And yet Ruddock claimed she'd saved it.  I find I can't quite believe that she can't have known that it was already a done deal.