Camberwell Magistrates’ Court could become 15-storey tower block with hotel

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

Plans have been revealed to turn a former court into a 15-storey tower block with a hotel where most of the rooms have no daylight.

Camberwell Magistrates’ Court would become a 150-room hotel and 144 homes under the proposals to give the building, which closed in 2020, a new lease of life.

Hotel brand Zedwell would run the new hotel. The company already has a 728-bedroom hotel near Piccadilly where 90 per cent of rooms are windowless.

In the planned Camberwell branch, 60 per cent of rooms would be located in the basement and lower ground floor of the building and therefore have no windows.

A café, recording studio and co-working space would be included in the building under the proposals submitted to Southwark council.

The 144 homes would be a mix of one bed, two bed and three bed town houses and flats spread across the building’s 15 floors.

City Hall requires half of all houses built on public land to be affordable, but only 35 per cent of the new homes would be classified as affordable.

Planning documents submitted to support the application say that in this case the development wouldn’t make financial sense with more affordable housing.

Of the affordable homes, 70 per cent would be available at the cheapest social rents. The remaining 30 per cent would be shared ownership, where a person buys a share of a property and pays rent on the remaining amount.

Over the next five years Southwark needs to build more than 14,000 new homes, but the borough has failed to meet its house building targets in the last three years.

As of Tuesday, 19 people had left their views on the plans on the council’s website. Most raised concerns about the height of the building and the pressure a hotel would put on the area’s facilities.

Pictured top: CGI of proposed tower block as seen from Camberwell Green (Picture: Southwark Council planning documents)