A PUBLIC meeting of over 200 Peckham residents on Thursday evening stepped up the fight against plans by developer Berkeley Homes to tear down the ‘heart of Peckham’, its town centre and its markets, and replace them with high rise accommodation for rich buyers.
The meeting was organised by SHAPE (Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency), an umbrella for all community sections, including Southwark’s trade union bodies who are opposed to the billionaire land grab.
SHAPE said: ‘It’s the People vs the Developers!’
The meeting pledged to defeat the privateers and it called on local Labour MPs and councillors to vote against Berkeley Homes at upcoming planning meetings.
Chair Siobhan McCarthy from SHAPE revealed that Berkeley Homes, have now bypassed Southwark Council’s planning committee, and gone directly to the UK government planning inspectorate in order to thwart local opposition.
Original owners, BlackRock, sold the site to Berkeley Homes in the wake of local opposition, after proposals for 1,050 homes in buildings reaching 27 storeys high were first mooted.
Berkeley Homes’s new master plan is for 877 homes, with as few as 77 of them ‘affordable’, in 13 buildings between four and 20 storeys high.
The ‘social housing’ would be at the back, in a marginalised area, apartheid-like and not wholly integrated.
Southwark Council is now re-consulting on the scheme, after Berkeley Homes reduced the ‘affordable housing’ down from 35% to just 12%.
Neil Tasker, Branch Secretary of Unite at Southwark’s Housing Services, pledged the full support of Southwark unions and Unite to fight against the Berkeley Homes proposals.
Tasker said emphatically to enthusiastic applause: ‘We don’t need “affordable” housing or “social housing”, what we need is Council Housing.’
He pledged to take the fight for Council Housing into the higher structures of the union.
Michael and Carmen Clinkett, owners of small businesses, told of how in 2023 they faced eviction by 20 bailiffs and their dogs from a collection of businesses in Rotherhithe, South London.
They spoke up for the small traders, who face destruction of their livelihoods by the developers who are threatening local markets all over London, including Brixton Market and Billingsgate Fish Market.
Having won his fight against the developers, Clinkett said: ‘Local democracy means “Power to the People”, but it only works if the people shout out and fight back’.
He added: ‘These developers are getting paid astronomical amounts of money to rob us of our bases.
‘Our markets and community spaces need protection.
‘We need to unite to stop the developers and it can be done!’
Speakers from the floor expressed their anger at the deteriorating housing conditions in Southwark which has been going on for years, and years, many expressing their anger at PM Keir Starmer’s attitude to housing and to immigrants, demanding that the Labour Government either restores Council Housing or is brought down!
A ‘Peckham Takeover!’ demonstration is taking place on Saturday 31 May, assembling in Peckham Square at 1pm, marching through Peckham and finishing with noise, music and art back at Peckham Square from 3.30pm.
It demands:
- Homes for people not for profit!
- Council housing not luxury flats!
- Stop overdevelopment!
