Planning Inspectorate launches eight days of hearings into 877-home Aylesham Centre redevelopment
Berkeley has defended its decision to slash more than two-thirds of the affordable housing in its controversial 877-home plans to redevelop a Peckham shopping centre on the first day of a public inquiry into the scheme.
The developer said “no reasonable developer” could deliver the 35% London Plan minimum for affordable housing on the Aylesham Centre site and described the number as “simply unattainable” in its opening statement to the eight-day inquiry, which opened yesterday.
The firm submitted its plans to redevelop the shopping centre in July 2024 but in December cut the scheme’s number of affordable homes from the London Plan minimum of 35% to just 12% by habitable space, and to 8% by number of units, from 270 under the original plans to 77.
It took the scheme to appeal in May this year on grounds of non-determination, with Southwark council issuing a symbolic rejection of the scheme in July largely on the basis of the developer’s decision to drastically reduce its affordable housing share.
The start of hearings at the Planning Inspectorate came five days after the government and mayor of London unveiled plans to cut London’s affordable housing requirement from 35% to 20%.
Berkeley said the move, which will undergo a six-week consultation starting next month, reflected “demonstrable and evidenced facts about the London housing market”.
”This crisis needs to be dealt with urgently by ensuring that the capital begins producing the tens of thousands of houses that are needed now. This is not a time to be putting off decisions which are critical to addressing the urgency of meeting housing need locally or in London-wide terms to ’another time’”, Berkeley said.
But Southwark council said in its opening statement that the proposals fall “well short” of its aspirations for the site and would represent a “significant missed opportunity” if granted permission.
It added that viability assessments were “material but not determinative” and that “on occasion profits must to some extent be hoped for rather than banked at the grant of permission”.
While it accepted there are “major financial challenges” to the delivery of affordable housing in the capital, the council argued the viability assessment for the site “must not ‘wag the dog’”.
The Aylesham Centre is a key strategic site in the council’s housing plans, accounting for more than half of the proposed supply of new housing in Peckham under the Southwark Plan for 1,370 new homes in the area.
The council said Berkeley’s revised proposals for the site were a “much worse prospect than what was planned for and applied for” and insisted the 35% minimum affordable housing on the site was a “legitimate expectation” which had been viability tested and found to be deliverable.
Aylesham Community Action, a local campaign group which is a party in the inquiry, described the level of proposed affordable housing in the scheme as a “shocking state of affairs”.
The group heavily criticised the overwhelming share of market housing proposed in the scheme, arguing the “vast majority of what is being offered by this development will not even attempt to meet the overwhelming need of the people in this borough”.
The proposals, which would also contain retail and office space, has been masterplanned by dRMM.
Proposals to redevelop the shopping centre have been in the works for at least a decade with initial plans drawn up by AHMM for developer BlackRock, which were never submitted, replaced by a Sheppard Robson-designed scheme for Berkeley which was junked following sustained opposition from locals. dRMM was brought in to replace Sheppard Robson in August 2023.
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