Delancey has won approval for its long-running and contentious Elephant & Castle, SE1, development plan.
Southwark’s planning committee narrowly voted in favour of the scheme at a meeting last night, 3 July, two years after the developer submitted its original planning application.
The project, which comprises nearly 1,000 homes, a new shopping centre and university campus, has triggered a backlash among local residents who say that the scheme doesn’t deliver enough affordable housing.
Following the vote, protesters and opposition councillors say they will continue to challenge the plans. They have vowed to lobby London mayor Sadiq Khan to get a “better deal” from Delancey.
The news comes after it emerged on 2 July that Historic England was weighing up an application to give Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre listed building status.
Owing to the ongoing protests, Delancey has already made several major changes to its original proposal over the past two years. The developer only returned to make a second application in January this year, which was refused.
The changes include increasing the varieties of affordable housing to include both social rent and London living rent tenures. These are more affordable than discount market rent, the single tenure it originally proposed.
Delancey has also committed to give first refusal to a bingo operator to lease 20,000 sq ft of leisure space that could accommodate around 1,000 seats.
The Elephant & Castle scheme would provide 979 rental homes in total, 649 of them for the private market across a number of towers, the highest at 35 storeys.
Where part of the shopping centre now stands, a new campus for the London College of Communication will be built, increasing its size from 340,000 sq ft to 445,000 sq ft.
Planning documents reveal that in June 2023 it is intended that the LCC would decant into the new education building on the east site. Enabling works on the west site would commence in July 2023, with completion due in September 2027.
A new Underground station will also be incorporated in the development, and include a ticket hall ten times larger than the current hall.
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