When Patrick landed a job in London last year he knew exactly where he wanted to live — Peckham.
“It is where all my friends are,” he said. “I had already spent time in London and most of it was in Peckham. I knew it had everything I needed.”
Patrick now shares a basement flat with two friends. On an annual salary of around £30,000 there isn’t much left over each month to live on after paying his £1,100pcm rent.
And what of home ownership one day? Even the concept makes Patrick, a content creator for a football media company, laugh.
“It isn’t really on my horizon,” he said. “I gave up on that idea a long time ago, especially in or around London. I don’t know anyone who could think about doing it.”
Even worse, Patrick suspects that renting won’t be sustainable for him forever — average rents in the capital jumped 4.7 per cent in the year to January according to Rightmove, the 13th consecutive quarterly rise.
“I love London but I know there is a limited amount of time I will be able to live here,” said Patrick.
Peckham has been hailed as one of London’s great property success stories. Rapid gentrification meant that, between 1995 and 2019, average sale prices leaped by 1,082 per cent, the biggest increase anywhere in the UK.
Today the average sale price in the neighbourhood stands at £616,000, according to Rightmove, making putting down roots in SE15 untenable for the vast majority of young Londoners.
The obvious solution would be to build more affordable housing aimed at people just like Patrick. And when Berkeley Homes came forward with plans to redevelop the Aylesham Centre, the dated shopping mall by Rye Lane, it promised that a third of the 867 new homes it would build would be affordable, aimed at would-be buyers and renters who couldn’t afford local market prices.
Then, just before Christmas, it announced it couldn't subsidise so many homes and cut its offer back to 12 per cent — a loss of close to 200 affordable homes in a neighbourhood where Southwark Council says some 4,000 households currently languish on the housing waiting list.
The planning application will go before the council’s planning committee later this year. Berkeley declined to comment on its move, but the firm’s retreat on affordable housing levels is far from an isolated incident.
Similar scenarios are being played out all over London, and are one of the reasons why the number of new affordable home starts in London last year dropped by 88 per cent year-on-year.
Even the never-knowingly-undersold John Lewis is at it.
In June 2023 the John Lewis Partnership, announced its intention to help ease the housing crisis by building new homes for rent on Waitrose sites, including one in Bromley, south east London.
“Our ambition is that 35 per cent of the properties are affordable housing with a focus on provision for key workers,” pledged the department store giant.
When planning permission for the scheme was granted last year this ambition had been scaled back. Only 10 per cent of the new homes will be affordable.
“We have always said we are committed to providing as much affordable housing as we possibly can, whilst balancing the commercial viability of our proposals,” said a spokesman.
“We always proposed ten per cent affordable housing in Bromley and we have also committed to reviewing the scheme's viability … with a view to potentially increasing the number of affordable properties, which will target key workers, in the future.”
The word viability is crucial here. In 2011, with the recession in full swing and property prices falling, the coalition Government ordered councils to allow developers to renegotiate their affordable housing commitments downward if they felt their scheme was not going to be financially viable.
Most developers expect to make a margin of around 20 per cent on their schemes and, as land and build costs increase, tens of thousands of affordable homes have been lost to London.
Firms are able to simply ignore the Greater London Authority’s long-standing demand that 35 per cent of new homes built in the capital be affordable.
At Battersea Power Station bosses persuaded Wandsworth Council to cut the number of affordable homes back from 636 to 386 — or nine per cent of the total.
Even the world’s biggest hedge fund, BlackRock Real Assets, which is building up to 1,800 new homes on an industrial site on Blackhorse Lane, east London, in partnership with NEAT Developments, has successfully pleaded poverty.
In October 2022 the firms pledged that 35 per cent of the homes would be affordable. That offer has now been trimmed down to 20 to 25 per cent.
“Public trust in the planning system is undermined by developers who commit to delivering affordable homes but later claim financial difficulties to reduce their obligations,” said Kane Emerson, head of housing research at the Yimby Alliance, which campaigns in favour of quality, affordable house building.
“Too often, the system favours large, well-resourced developers.
“The government must give councils the resources and legal backing to properly scrutinise viability claims, ensuring developers deliver on their promises.
“A more robust approach — where realistic affordable housing obligations are treated as non-negotiable — would help strengthen the system so that communities, not just developers, benefit from new housing.”
The loss of a community hub
Last year a Rotherhithe institution disappeared. Plush SE16 was many things to many people. A Caribbean food store, car wash, music studio, barbershop, and de facto community centre, all founded by Michael Clinkett more than 20 years ago on a site in Rotherhithe New Road.
Michael, 44, and his wife Carmen, 37, a photographer and designer, live in nearby Borough with their three children. And they blame rapid regeneration of the area for the demise of Plush SE16, which all began when developer British Land won planning permission to rejuvenate Canada Water with a £3.3bn regeneration scheme.
“What people don’t realise is that when these things happen there is a domino effect,” said Carmen. “People see a way of making money out of an area and that changes the landscape for little people on the ground.”
In 2022 she and Michael saw an estate agent taking pictures of their building and asked what was going on. To their horror they were informed that their long-term landlord was planning to sell off the property, which is on the fringes of the Canada Water site, to another developer.
In January 2024, after two years of stress and failed attempts to find an alternative site, Plush SE16 closed its doors. Carmen notes that the site is currently empty — in 2023 Southwark Council refused planning permission for the new development of flats.
“My husband is now unemployed — he has been stripped of everything,” she said. “This kind of thing is happening all over London and it is destroying our social culture. It is not just about housing. Developers are destroying our spaces and places. Soon there will be nothing left.”
Carmen has chosen to see the positives in her experience. She has founded No Price On Culture (nopriceonculture.com) to help other communities protect themselves from the fall-out from development. But she fears for the future of her own family.
“I can’t even imagine where our three children are going to live when they grow up,” she said. “I lose sleep over this kind of stuff.”
