After the redevelopment of Peckham Rye Station and the immediate surrounding area was first suggested over ten years ago, Southwark Council, in conjunction with Network Rail and the Greater London Authority have received £5.2m from the Mayor’s Regeneration Fund to “transform the narrow, dimly lit passageways that lead to the station into a generous, vibrant public square”. After planning permission was granted back in March 2016 and the local authority’s application for a compulsory purchase order was successful a number of local businesses were relocated to make way for the development.

Having recently been listed as the 11^th coolest neighbourhood in the world, according to Time Out’s annual ranking, this rapidly gentrifying area of south east London has quickly become London’s hippest neighbourhood. With significant investment in regeneration and its now flourishing cultural sector, Peckham’s reputation, once blighted by an image of social deprivation has experienced a complete turnaround. But gentrification, as a complex and dynamic process that involves the entire social and economic transformation of places is nothing to be celebrated by the majority of Peckham’s existing community. 

Since Ruth Glass coined the term in 1964, gentrification has gathered both critical and popular attention, obtaining a largely negative image associated with driving urban inequality, displacement and social exclusion; and Peckham offers a textbook example of such consequences. After Southwark Council famously demolished five of Peckham’s most notorious estates in one of the council’s biggest regeneration projects to date changes have continued apace. But it would appear to some that “Southwark’s social cleansing agenda is no longer limited to council estates”.

Whilst the use of compulsory purchase orders will always be fraught with tensions having both winners and losers, there is something more deeply concerning about the demolition and associated relocation of the existing businesses along Blenheim Grove that runs adjacent to the station. Whilst the bank, dentist and café have all been offered premises in the new square development, the Afro- Caribbean hair salons that Blenheim Grove became renowned for have been relocated to one of Peckham’s backstreets in a new converted garage space known as Peckham Palms.

Despite Southwark Council’s attempt to ensure that the existing beauty businesses benefited from the regeneration project  by constructing Peckham Palms to “support local black enterprise”, a number of the business owners were unhappy with the move. 

“They don’t want us here”, one of the hairdressers told me as she sat combing through some hair extensions on a chair outside her now boarded up salon in the late summer of 2018. She went on to explain how the businesses on Blenheim Grove rely heavily on the high footfall to and from the station to attract clients and sell products before outlining her shared concerns of how the relocation would totally destroy that setup. She later informed me of how the move to Peckham Palms would not be as straightforward as she had initially thought, proceeding to tell me how Southwark Council were asking existing business owners to put together a pitch and attend interviews if they were wishing to be considered for a commercial unit in the new development. 

With Southwark Council highlighting how the station’s immediate surroundings “create a poor first impression of the town centre”, as they plan to “bring the area to life” by “opening up the station area for new community uses” they reinforce the idea that only certain types of people and work are valued in the creative city. In the case of the station square redevelopment, Southwark Council completely disregard the inherent creativity and entrepreneurialism of the hair stylists of Blenheim Grove, as they favour the creation of creative workspace for freelancers and artists. Extending sociologist Erving Goffman’s stage metaphor, the project in effect creates both a frontstage and a backstage for Peckham where the council, by moving the salons to a more concealed location have essentially ‘written out’ those who tell a different story to the one which they are trying to promote. With Peckham’s new front stage (due for completion in spring 2022) hoped to bring further investment into the area and the Palms on just a 20-year lease, we can question how in an age where economic gain is often prioritised over anything else, if Peckham’s famous hair stylists are really here to stay. 

Walking down the bustling streets of Peckham, post- emptying of the 18.42 overground service: reggae music still blaring from a tinny speaker on the corner of Holdron’s Arcade, small man rattling an old Morrison’s trolley full of goat carcasses along the pavement and loose weave flying around like a mythical species of air-snake in the winds of February’s never-ending storms, there is little that can take me by surprise. But in this rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood in south east London, there is something that catches my attention.

Underneath a new development of luxury studio apartments situated just moments from the station on Peckham’s iconic Rye Lane, a large group of fashionable twenty-somethings sip prosecco and celebrate the opening of a new charity shop branch for national homelessness charity Crisis. Being the ninth shop to open its doors since 2016, Crisis have outlined their hopes for the newest addition to their growing chain to become a valuable community space, whilst “engaging with the Crisis mission”,  which includes providing employment training to homeless people, whilst raising crucial funds to assist the charity’s vital work. 

With the capital’s ceaseless desire for growth and profit and the associated rise in homelessness, it was not the opening of the shop that took me by surprise. What’s more with Peckham in recent years undergoing substantive regeneration and investment (read gentrification and social cleansing), the appearance of eight new studio apartments close to the station, again came as no surprise. The very thing that captured my attention is the stark irony of the shop’s placement, situated directly below the kind of development that has directly contributed to our acute homelessness problem, as London faces a chronic shortage of genuinely affordable homes.

As Kalmar’s signboards advertise the new luxury apartments to potential buyers, a young woman beds down for the night on a piece of cardboard just metres away. “This shop ends homelessness” reads the optimistic, yet largely inaccurate window signage of the new store, whose mission is both literally and metaphorically overlooked by the housing development above it.

The housing crisis we currently face is not just one of insufficient stock, but can be attributed to a vast range of causes including affordability, the disappearance of social housing and the reconfiguration of some of London’s prime properties into investment units rather than homes. Whilst recent times have seen housing move up the political agenda, a number of policies are just dabbling with or actually exacerbating the problem, particularly in an age where local councils have become increasingly reliant on obligatory planning contributions. 

Today’s acute housing crisis is, in fact a systemic problem symbolic of our neoliberal urban planning system and the fundamental failure of successive governments to address the underlying issues. According to a report by Ian Mulheirn from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, even if we were to build 300,000 new homes in England each year, we could expect house prices to fall by just 10% over the course of 20 years. It is now thought that only radical policy changes will be able “overcome a legacy of decades of half-baked and ill-thought-out ad hoc initiatives”. In order to actually fulfil the ambitious hopes printed above the doorway of Peckham’s new Crisis branch, we cannot rely on charities alone to patch-up the symptoms of the neoliberal political and economic culture that became embedded sine the 1980s. 

According to Duncan Bowie, who puts forwards a radical programme for reform we must move towards a new and progressive housing policy and begin by tackling its underlying causes. One of Bowie’s solutions involves socialising the private rented sector, where he argues that this effectively deregulated sector, at present, would benefit from an implementation of rent controls, a guaranteed minimum security of tenure and fixed service charges. Outlining the foundations for a new housing strategy, Bowie concludes how public subsidies will be essential in tackling the prevailing housing crisis and stresses how the tearing down of housing estates and the construction of often private, luxury developments on their grave should no longer be focused on maximum profit extraction, but should be based on the principle of a zero loss of affordable housing; and by that, he means housing that is genuinely affordable and not up to 80% of market rate, which is still far out of reach for the majority of Londoner’s on an average income.

More on Bowie’s ideas can be found in his book: Radical Solutions to the Housing Supply Crisis. 

Local concern growing as plans for a regeneration scheme that derails plans for Bakerloo Line extension into south London are submitted to Lewisham council.

As part of a huge regeneration project that goes way beyond expanding store capacity, Sainsbury’s, in partnership with developers Mount Anvil and A2 Dominion have outlined plans to build 1,161 homes on the car park of their existing New Cross Gate store. But the development, which is proposed to demolish all existing neighbouring businesses in the retail park where the store is currently situated is facing strong opposition from locals. 

The New Cross Gate Action Group (NXGAG) have called upon residents to respond to the application after developers revealed ambitious plans to revamp the entire site that lies to the west of the mainline station. The group have highlighted, amongst other concerns regarding congestion and public health, of how the development throws the future of the Bakerloo line extension (BLE) into question, with both TFL and Sainsbury’s in competition for the site. Whilst Sainsbury’s maintain that a smaller vacant site to the east of the existing station offers a suitable location for the BLE, TFL have already “discounted” the alternative site, identifying the area Sainsbury’s is proposing to populate with 12 tower blocks as “a core requirement” for the delivery of the BLE project. Furthermore, Lewisham Council have also stated in their 2019 Area Framework of how the BLE site proposed by Sainsbury’s offers insufficient space for a functioning station and warned of how such a development there would require the demolition of 19 council properties and a further 14 units which currently provide 30 hostel spaces.

In today’s neoliberal urban context, where declining public resources and state investment cannot meet the capital’s demand for homes, a project like the New Cross Gate Sainsbury’s development is no isolated example. With UK real estate consultancy GL Hearn suggesting that London’s supermarkets could provide approximately 150,000 homes either above or alongside their stores, a number of large chain supermarkets are becoming increasingly involved in commercial property development. Whilst Tesco have become notorious for their controversial, town-absorbing redevelopment projects, Sainsbury’s too have become big players in building what they have heralded “outstanding communities” (read gentrified enclaves) across London. With Sainsbury’s having recently completed projects with Barratt homes at Fulham riverside and Nine Elms Point, Vauxhall where a 36^th floor flat can reach prices nearing four million pounds, it is big business. At a time where the urban process is increasingly defined by the principles of capitalism, it is no doubt that supermarkets are now effectively ‘cashing-in’ on their land’s potential value as they exploit their air rights in a bid to maximise profits from minimal land space. This means, if Sainsbury’s proposed development gets the go-ahead, that New Cross Gate could soon be home to 12 new high-rise blocks reaching up to 33 storeys, or 122 metres high. 

Despite London and the south east being in a state of acute housing need, it is often agreed that such developments do little to address the prevailing housing crisis, where shortage is not just an issue associated with numerical supply, but affordability too. With Mount Anvil offering misleading statistics in their affordable housing statement, by presenting the proposed percentage of affordable homes in terms of habitable room rather than unit, we can begin to see where the developer can easily deceive the casual reader into believing that a greater number of the properties built would be available at the London affordable rate. When we deconstruct the developer’s calculations we can uncover that just 17% of the total units will be deemed affordable, with just 2% of the 204 one-bedroom apartments within the ‘affordable’ bracket. This is of primary concern to the NXGAG, who, without mentioning the growing abuse of the term ‘affordable’, have highlighted how the development, not only falls short of Lewisham’s target for all new housing projects to deliver at least 50% genuinely affordable homes, but how it also fails to address the borough’s significant need for council properties.

With a huge number of developers increasingly marketing their properties to overseas investors and London’s new-build property market having become somewhat of a bank for international wealth from questionable sources we can further question the role that the scheme would play in meeting Lewisham’s need for homes. With Mount Anvil, in fact, having both a dedicated international sales team and a webpage listing reasons as to why investors should take interest in south London, we can wonder if the New Cross Gate development would suffer a similar fate.

Whilst Scholars have widely recognised the contribution of retail organisations in kick-starting investment and creating jobs into areas historically unattractive to investors, the NXGAG would argue that such a project, in the context of New Cross, would actually present a greater deal of detrimental consequences to the area. With 1,161 properties proposed on a site that Lewisham Council suggested just a 200-unit capacity for, and the developers having explicitly issued their own concerns on the adverse impact that the scheme would have on access to primary healthcare, there is growing uncertainty over how local public services would meet the demands of such a considerable injection into the local population. 

When locals are already complaining about mass overcrowding on New Cross Gate’s existing overground line, which regularly leads to station closures due to safety concerns at the underground/Jubilee line interchange, they question how existing transport infrastructures would cope with thousands more commuters, especially considering the fact that the scheme remains incompatible with the BLE project.

The group are asking locals to submit their comments and objections to Lewisham’s planning department by the deadline which is March 15^th.