If building in London is so hard, and green belt land so sacred, why not just build on a park?
From the outside, that looks like what Southwark Council has set out to do at Flaxyard in Peckham, SE15. However, the council says the space (pictured) is brownfield and was mistakenly listed as a park. That, aside, Southwark’s track record in development, and that of other councils, may explain why building on the plot is necessary.
For local authorities wanting to add to their housing stock, replacing the homes taken away through right-to-buy disposals often means redeveloping estates.
For Southwark, the largest social landlord in London and one with the highest proportion of council housing to homes of any local authority in the country, that route has become toxic. Southwark’s Heygate and Aylesbury estates have not been universally seen as success stories.
At the Heygate, the council demolished 1,200 council homes and will replace them with just 82 social-rent homes. For shared-ownership homes, a minimum salary of £57,500 is required, prompting claims of social cleansing.
Similarly, major plans for the redevelopment of the Aylesbury Estate have also hit a stumbling block after leaseholders won a battle over the amount of compensation they will receive from compulsory purchase orders.
Council estates should provide ample opportunities to redevelop where it makes sense and should build in-fill development when wholesale demolition and redevelopment do not make sense.
The new-build council housing that went up after the war is notorious for being badly designed and non-space-efficient. Many of these blocks are surrounded by green space over which “no ball games” signs prevail.
Southwark aims to build 11,000 council homes by 2043, with the first 1,500 to be delivered by 2018. It is hard to imagine how it will reach this target without redeveloping existing stock at much greater densities.
Southwark’s application to build 168 homes on what looks like green space at Flaxyard has been submitted to its own planning department.
The much-needed development comprises 48 homes to be sold privately, with another 120 designated as social housing, 96 earmarked for social rent and 24 for intermediate rent. That means essential homes for the community but the disappearance of “green space”.
