A letter from over 300 parents, teachers and pupils at John Ball was sent to the John Ball Governors on 14th July 2026 just before the end of the school year. Each signatory to the letter provided a detailed comment explaining why they were objecting to the application and appealed to the school governors to listen to the concerns raised and to consider formally objecting to the development proposal. As of yet we know that the letter was discussed at the final Governors meeting of the year but we have not heard what the outcome was.
The letter was also send to the Lewisham Planning Team to be registered as 300 formal objections since each signatory provided their name, address, contact and individual planning objection.
A total of 206 signatories - over two-thirds and including a number of teachers at the school - explicitly raised "genuine safeguarding concerns" regarding this permanent loss of privacy and the risk of children being observed by strangers.
Concerns raised in the letter included (but were not limited to):
You can read more about this on the updates page
History - an Unwanted and Unsupported Planning Application
On 28th March 2025, Acorn Developments submitted a planning application to develop on the site of the Blackheath Station car park.
This development is neither wanted nor supported by the local community. Of the (unprecedented) 1,168 public comments submitted to the Lewisham Planning Portal for the initial application, 1,127 (over 96%) people came out against the development with just 30 (under 3%) in support.
A number of public figures and celebrities with a strong connection to the area have voiced their concerns about the planning application and have put their names to an open letter written by author and historian John Willis. Signatories range from Hollywood A-listers Jude Law and Dominic Cooper to music industry giants Mark Knopfler and Jools Holland to civic and political figures Sir Terry Waite and Dame Joan Ruddock.
More recently, 101 local businesses including the Blackheath Conservatoire and Blackheath Halls got together to submit to the council a letter of objection to the development proposal.
The campaign to stop the development has been featured on ITV London news as well as in numerous press outlets including The Independent, The Telegraph, The Architects Journal, The Sun, The Express, The Daily Mail, My London, Time Out and News Shopper.
To understand why this development is so bad for Blackheath see here.
