“Greed, greed, greed,” says 86-year-old south Londoner Charles as he sips a Greggs cappuccino while watching the world go by in the Aylesham Centre in Peckham. “They want to knock this all down and for what… private housing nobody can afford.”
This 80s centre with discount stores, a butcher, clothing shops and many empty units and the community which surrounds it finds itself in the middle of a battle over housebuilding in Britain.
The site was earmarked for redevelopment by Southwark Council over a decade ago in 2014 and has been owned by housebuilding giant Berkley Group since 2021.
However, earlier this year, Berkeley’s plans to demolish Aylesham and build 867 flats in major tower blocks here, of which 77 would have been affordable, were rejected by the Planning Inspectorate after years of back and forth with the council.
The Planning Inspectorate ruled that the development did not include enough affordable housing, and that the scale of the development was not sympathetic to the local area.
