A housing protest against Berkeley Homes in Peckham (Photo: Guy Smallman)
A housing campaign in south London has made a crucial step towards blocking a destructive private development.
In a council meeting on Tuesday evening, Southwark borough’s planning committee rejected the development plans of Berkeley Homes. The predatory developer is trying to develop the Aylesham Centre in Peckham, building 867 expensive flats with just 12 percent “affordable housing”.
Affordable housing is capped at 80 percent of the market rate—so it would barely be affordable. The development would tear apart the local community and do nothing to address the housing shortage facing Peckham.
Berkeley Homes had already launched an appeal to the housing secretary Angela Rayner before the planning committee rejected the plans. They were appealing on “non-determination”—that the council had not taken a decision about whether the plans should go ahead.
Planning rules mean this appeals process will continue despite the decision on Tuesday. But the housing campaign has won an important victory in stopping the development at this stage.
Eileen Conn has been part of the fight against Berkeley Homes. She’s from Peckham Vision, the local community action group which has been campaigning for 20 years.
“It was a great relief that Southwark’s planning committee voted unanimously to refuse Berkeley’s plans for the redevelopment of the Aylesham Centre,” she told Socialist Worker.
“We were also very glad that their reasons for refusal included that the plans do not comply with the planning policies for town centres.
“This means that the appeal inquiry can examine the way this plan is the wrong one for this town centre site.”
Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency (Shape), alongside Aylesham Community Action (ACA), Southwark Defend Council Housing and others have run an extensive campaign. They organised demonstrations and protests, lobbies of the town hall and social media campaigns.
Tanya from Shape told Socialist Worker, “The council could not get away with approving 12 percent so-called affordable housing—but only because we were there.”
The campaign pushed the Labour council, and the local Labour MP, to oppose the development. But Berkeley Homes is appealing to the government and many fear that Berkeley Homes could win it.
So Tanya warned that the fight is far from over. “We managed to force a refusal at local level, but Angela Rayner isn’t subject to the same democratic pressures as the local council,” they said.
She said that the “whole system is stacked in favour of the developers”. “It will cost the council a lot of money to get legal representation at the appeal, and ACA has to crowdfund for its own legal representation,” she said.
“So everything is stacked against the needs of the community. Everything needs to change because the entire system doesn’t meet the needs of the community, even at the most basic level.
“We need development that pays attention to the local environment, local people, the climate emergency—but right now, all of these are secondary to profit.”
Labour is determined to hand more power to private developers rather than address Britain’s housing emergency.
But as Labour emboldens private developers, the fight against Berkeley Homes in Peckham is an inspiring example of resistance.
A staffing crisis in the NHS
Health workers set to strike across four Manchester hospitals
Bus workers rejected an offer and came back out
