Hundreds protest against overdevelopment and lack of affordable housing

Demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday to protest against unaffordable developments pushing up rents and displacing communities in Southwark.

More than 600 people marched from Peckham Square to the Borough Triangle in Elephant and Castle, holding banners and placards which read “hands off our homes”, “homes for people not for profit” and “stop overdevelopment”.

The demonstration was organised by Southwark Housing And Planning Emergency (SHAPE), an umbrella group of housing campaigns and activists from across Southwark.

The event came after Berkeley Homes slashed its affordable housing offer at the 867-home development site in Rye Lane’s Aylesham Centre by more than 70 per cent, from 270 to just 77.

The new proposal would also see the loss of a Community Land Trust which would provide community-led affordable housing and is part of the Local Plan site policy.

A Berkeley Homes spokesman said the decision comes as a result of rising costs, “exacerbated by the length of the planning process”.

Siobhan McCarthy, 47, of Aylesham Community Action, said the development would “destroy” the community in Peckham, describing the cut in affordable homes as an “insult” to residents.

She said: “The people of Peckham did not ask for 16 tall towers of mostly unaffordable flats. 

“Everything seems to revolve around developers profit. They’re not going to meet any housing needs in this area and the planning and housing emergency is going to get worse.”

There are currently more than 4,000 households in Peckham and the nearby area on the waiting list for social housing. They join more than 18,000 families waiting for council housing across the borough.

Southwark council’s local plan includes a target for 50 per cent of all new homes to be social rented and intermediate homes.  The policy states that developments must contribute a minimum of 35 per cent affordable housing, but the target is “subject to viability”.

The protest drew attention to other developments across Southwark including proposals to build 4,000 new homes in Canada Water and 900 new homes in Borough Triangle. Both projects will only provide 25 per cent affordable housing.

Co-ordinator of SHAPE and chair of Southwark Defend Council Housing Tanya Murat, said overdevelopment had led to “social cleansing” within the borough.

The 57-year-old said: “Developers never offer enough social housing. 

“It’s a constant cycle of removing working class communities from the areas they were born and brought up in.

“We are also losing valuable small businesses and cultural amenities with these large developments. 

“We have seen the damage done to independent traders at the Elephant and Castle and now the Borough Triangle proposal puts the future of the traders at Mercato market into doubt.”

Eileen Conn has lived in the same house near Peckham Rye Station for 52 years. 

The 83-year-old, who founded Peckham Vision, has led a series of successful campaigns to protect the area’s heritage and culture including saving the historic high street in the 1980s, as well as the Bussey Building and Peckham Levels in the early 2000s.

She said: “There’s an emergency in housing and planning and it is important that people come together, because we’re all being affected.

“Commercial developers are the only sector that is being looked to by the government to build affordable housing, and that means that it’s not going to be built.

“We have to have a new system for the way in which councils can make sure affordable housing is built. The current system is making the situation worse.

“Councils must interact and developers interact with people who live and work in the areas they will build on.”

Cllr Helen Dennis, Cabinet Member for New Homes and Sustainable Development for Southwark council, said the local authority is currently building or starting work on more than 3,000 new council homes.

She said: “Southwark is at the forefront of delivering new council and social rent homes in London. 

“Wherever possible, we negotiate an increase in the affordable and social rent components of a scheme. This approach resulted in us securing 338 social rent homes now being delivered on the Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey. On the Old Kent Road, more than 50 per cent of all the new homes built or currently being built, are genuinely affordable.”

Pictured top: Campaigners hold banners and placards in Peckham Square (Picture: Raquel Diniz)