Proposed 275 bed Hotel in Ufford Street

This is one of the craziest proposals I have ever seen. There are already too many Hotels in the Waterloo area,with planning permission granted for 3 new Hotels in Lower Marsh and proposal
by Hilton Hotel Waterloo Road to add a further 8 storeys.Ufford Street has already turned into a rat run caused by there being no left turn into The Cut from Blackfriars Road. The CEO of Frogmore is deluded in saying Southwark does not have enough Hotels . There are already 3 Hotels in Blackfriars Road, 2 in Waterloo Road and 1 in Union Street, that is without the Hotels in the immediate area in Lambeth .Enough is enough we o not need any more Hotels

I agree. Our area is being ruined by investor developments and hotels.
We need some homes to be built instead.

It's also an inappropriate site, it's too small a street for a hotel that large.

The downside of large numbers of visitors to the neighbourhood are easy to see - useful shops being turned into coffee shops, restaurants offering a limited range of food and not particularly bothered about repeat custom, crowding out of other developments, and congested pavements, public spaces, and other facilities etc. Unfortunately, as I understand it, planning regulations do not allow a council to say about a specific application 'there is enough of this type of development'. Only the 'market' is allowed to decide that.

The benefits, other than a few not particularly well-paid jobs, go largely to remote business owners.

Other cities and resorts have a local hotel tax to enable the local community to benefit from hosting these visitors. If you can afford a holiday or business visit to London, you can afford another £3-£5 a night in room tax - think of it as a 'congestion charge' on tourists.

I'd hoped that this would be an issue in the GLA/Mayoral elections last year. I think I heard one candidate mention it, but I'm sure it's something that needs pressing.

Really bonkers. There may a shortage of hotel rooms somewhere in Southwark but not around Waterloo!

As a resident of Short Street, this new proposal does not add any value to our neighborhood. The proposed hotel will be located on a very small lot, quite close to residential apartments and homes. The hotel will require constant supplies for services requiring trucks making deliveries and pickups. The increase in noise alone will be unacceptable to a neighborhood that has many working families with children and elders. We have many new hotels that are popping up in the area. Ufford Street does not need a hotel and this proposal should be stopped now

Couldn't agree more with the previous comments and sincerely hope that this doesn't happen. I also feel that Lewisham Southwark College has sold out because the land was initially intended for new homes not another hotel.

Completely agree. Residents are being crowded out of the area and retail facilities are becoming geared to tourists. Soon the area will be unfit for living.

The seemingly never-ending construction of new hotels is something which has been bothering me over the past two or three years. Now that this thread has come up, I thought I'd make good use of my lunch hour by attempting to estimate the number of hotels within a 10 minute and 20 minute walk of my home, just off Blackfriars Road. I won't bore anyone with the actual list, but these are the numbers I came up with:-

Within a 10 minute walk - 20 hotels, plus two currently under construction, one to be added to and another four being considered / proposed (in the Cut and Ufford Street)
Within a 20 minute walk - 14 hotels

In other words, we already have 34 hotels within a 20 minute walk of my flat (going north, south, east and west). If you add in the ones under construction and in the planning stage, that's in excess of 40 hotels that I can walk to in a maximum time of 20 minutes. Bear in mind that I'm unlikely to have compiled a definitive list, so the numbers are probably even higher.

I have to say, this came as something of a shock considering we're being told that there are insufficient hotel beds in SE1. Who says so and how do they arrive at this conclusion I wonder?

Obviously far to much social housing to the area, so another hotel is about the only thing they can think of to build!