In Peckham, developers unwilling to meet affordable housing quotas are facing down residents and the council
T
eekall and his wife are raising a family in Peckham, south London. He runs a successful business as a commercial designer with a studio just down the road, and she works in higher education. Their two boys attend the local primary school. However, the family has outgrown their one-and-a-half-bedroom flat. Although they would like to stay in Peckham, they can’t afford to.
Just around the corner from where they live, the developer Berkeley Homes is proposing to build 877 new units, on the site of the Aylesham Centre shopping complex in the heart of Peckham, claiming it is responding to the government’s commitment to build 1.5m new homes to tackle the acute housing crisis. Given the predicament Teekall finds himself in, he might be expected to welcome plans for hundreds of new homes, but the opposite is the case. “Our budget can’t reach the price of the homes in a Berkeley development. Me and my wife have good jobs and decent salaries but that wouldn’t be possible for us. It’s unrealistic to stay, which I’m really angry about,” he told me.
Thousands of local residents, the MP and Southwark council all agree that the scheme is not suitable for the area, which is one of the most ethnically and demographically diverse in the country. After Berkeley slashed the amount of affordable housing in the project from the 35% then required to just 12%, the council rejected the scheme. Undeterred, Berkeley bypassed the council and appealed directly to the government’s national planning inspectorate for a decision, circumventing the local decision-making process. A public inquiry run by the inspectorate ahead of its final decision, and which opens today (Tuesday), is seen by campaigners as a test case for the government’s ability to push forward with its planning reforms.
