Housing campaigners beat back housing developers in south London

Campaigners lobbying Southwark council (Photo: Guy Smallman)

Housing campaigners have scored a major victory against property developers in south London.

The National Planning Inspector this week refused Berkeley Homes permission to develop the Aylesham Centre in Peckham, Southwark.

If approved, the development would have seen the construction of hundreds of luxury flats that few, if any, local residents could have afforded.

Developers promised that 12 percent of homes would be “affordable”—but even these would be out of reach to many.

Tanya from Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency (Shape) spoke to Socialist Worker.

“I think most people were mobilised to get involved around the issue of the 12 percent, which had been dropped from 35 percent,” she said.

“What gets billed as affordable housing isn’t really affordable. It’s not affordable for the vast majority of the population.”

In fact, 90 percent of people in Southwark already can’t afford the sort of luxury flats that Berkeley proposed to build.

If it had gone ahead, the development would have gentrified the area further, forcing working class people out.

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So, people got organised, Tanya explained. 

“Aylesham Community Action (ACA) was set up six years ago to get a development plan for the Aylesham Centre that local people could accept,” she said. 

“In mid-2024, ACA and Peckham Vision came to Southwark Defend Council Housing and the 35 Percent Campaign and said, ‘We need a more outward-facing campaign.’

“That was the beginning of Shape,” she said. 

There are now 21 groups signed up to Shape. And the coalition has been instrumental in organising demos, protests and public meetings to beat Berkeley.

Activists in Shape and the Save Old Kent Road campaign are fighting yet another plan for “regeneration” that would only further gentrify the local area. 

The coalition’s next action is a protest at 9am on 9 June outside of the Southwark Council Offices when the Old Kent Road plan will be discussed.

Activists hope to enlist the help of newly elected Green councillors in the fight. The previous Labour-run Southwark council sided with private property developers such as Berkeley against local people. 

But, “Labour have lost overall control in the recent local elections. It seems that there’s likely to be a Labour-Lib Dem coalition,” explained Tanya.

“But the Green councillors are talking to the Save Old Kent Road campaign. We’ve had Green councillors on our protests speaking for the community and against the area action plan as it currently stands.” 

The victory in south London shows it’s possible to beat the developers and fight for homes for all.

“The only genuinely affordable housing is social rented housing,” Tanya said. 

“We’re in a battle to win communities that protect working class people, rather than the profits of private developers.”