Unlike Kingfisher who has hidden behind a pseudonym, including when writing to the local papers, I have always sought to fight this campaign openly.

There are a number of serious inaccuracies in Kingfisher's claims above. The new petition is not the old petition with a new name. What people were asked to sign was substantially different in content. Some people who were happy to sign No Demolition Without Designs would not sign Save the Face of Forest Hill: Michael Abrahams, the Chairperson of the Forest Hill Society being an example of someone who followed us part of the way but not all. Everyone signing the SFFH petition has done so by making a positive choice to agree a second time. We have used email addresses to contact people (oh, the shame of it) but there is no question of automatic signing or any such thing.

The current petition is available both online and on paper. The online petition currently has something in the region of 300 signatures. It is in the nature of a petition published on the web that not all of the signatures will be from locals. However, if Kingfisher looks closely he/she will see that the vast majority of signatures are from local people. The remaining 500 or so names we currently have have been collected by standing on the streets and getting local people to sign by direct approaches. I have not made a list but I am confident that by far the vast majority of our signatures are from people in the SE23 and SE26 postcodes.

It is also untrue to suggest that the SFFH group consists of 10 experienced campaigners. I for one have never run such a campaign before. Some of us have, others have not. There is a core group of about 40 people who have been involved closely in various ways and another several hundred whom we have contacted.

It is quite wrong to call either of these buildings ugly. Our opponents have always been gleeful in pointing out that English Heritage would not list the Pools (wrongly in my view). So I will quote from the report on Louise House:

"Louise House is designated at Grade II for the following prinicpal reasons: special historic interest...special architectural interest..group value with the neighbouring buildings...in this striking row of Victorian welfare buildings."

So you don't have to take my word for it!