Defend Council Housing! Demonstrate against the land grab by property Developers Berkeley Housing today.
Siobhan McCarthy from local action group Aylesham Community Action, (ACA) believes the Berkeley Homes plan is wrong for Peckham and will destroy the area.
She said: ‘We are planning a demo this coming Saturday 8th February at 3pm in Peckham Square outside the library.’
Local campaigners and residents in Peckham are fighting multi-millionaire developers Berkeley Homes, furious the company has reduced its affordable housing commitment to 12 per cent or 77 out of 877 homes – well below Southwark Council’s 35 per cent target on all new developments.
Berkeley Homes plans to build 877 apartments in towers of up to 20 storeys, slap bang in the middle of Peckham’s historic town centre and its low-rise neighbourhood.
Rye Lane Councillors have recently demanded 50 per cent council housing.
Berkeley Homes, who made a pre-tax profit of £525 million last year, claim that building ‘affordable housing’ is ‘unviable’, but campaigners say the homes will be sold to overseas investors at substantial profits.
The company have several private home/tall building development sites in the planning stages in the Borough.
The council have received over 2000 objections to the project and momentum is building up to force the Council to deny planning permission to Berkeley Homes altogether, which they can do.
With over 4000 families on the waiting list, Southwark Council is desperate for more housing.
Successive Tory and Labour governments’ policy has prevented local councils from building new council housing over the last 30 years.
As an additional example of Berkeley Homes’ arrogance towards the local community, last Friday the company closed Peckham Soup Kitchen in a vindictive move against the most vulnerable, poorest workers in the borough, since the premises will remain empty for months to come.
In defiance, Peckham Soup Kitchen continued its work outside Peckham Library last Friday.
Some campaigners believe Berkeley Homes only offered the premises as a sweetener to cynically win local councillors over to supporting their planning application.
Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency (SHAPE) is a coalition of at least 14 campaign groups opposing Berkeley’s schemes for tower blocks in Southwark.
It has ten demands of Southwark Council, including stopping excessively tall developments, enforcing 50 per cent council housing on private land and 100 per cent council housing on council land.
They point out that despite huge new developments across the borough, particularly at the Elephant and Castle and Canada Water, there are more people on the waiting list than twenty years ago.
Homeless families are being rehoused outside the borough and young people can see no way to an affordable secure home of their own.
Council Housing was first attacked in Peckham by Tory PM Margaret Thatcher using the HATS scheme to persuade residents to allow local tenants management groups to take over council housing.
Tenants had a vote then and voted it down decisively.
The right to vote was scrapped and a right to consultation instituted, which of course would be ignored.
Both Labour and Tory parties have continued the sale of council property to the interests of capital, while homelessness soars.
SHAPE calls for an end to ‘fake consultation’, requisitioning of empty homes and an end to the demolition and sale of council homes, and to stop the displacement of traders and destruction of local markets.
What residents in Peckham want is safe tenure council housing, and not be victims to the gluttonous private housing market.
One campaigner described the plans as an ‘insult’ and a ‘horror show’ which would ‘impact everybody’, towering over people on the ground, shutting off light, and creating wind tunnels. A dry and bleak area, in what is now a lively bustling market.
‘The people who are buying those houses won’t be shopping in Peckham, they are using them to park their money,’ McCarthy said.
On Saturday, March 1st, SHAPE are organising a march against Berkeley Homes from Peckham to the Borough Triangle at the Elephant & Castle, where Berkeley has also submitted plans for four buildings of between five and 44 storeys with 892 homes.
Assemble: 1pm Peckham Square SE15 5RS, Saturday, March 1st.