The other Monday night I went to the local village hall just off Bermondsey Street in the shadow of the Shard. The weirdness of its setting in the heart of a global city is never lost on me, but that is simply a reflection of the continuing speed of change around a historic south London community, as gentrification marches through and more homes become Air B&Bs, leaving the neighbourhood and its people more fragmented.
The village hall was full of amazing people: members of the tenants’ association of the Guinness Partnership from one of its original eight, red brick, five storey estates. This one is dated 1897 and was built with “health, morality and social stability” in mind.
The main event was to talk to the landlord about concerns like rats, courtyard upkeep and antisocial behaviour. So far so normal. But then came an update on one of the local new developments, the proposed Snowsfields Quarter, 350,000 square feet of tower block offices to be provided for the life sciences sector currently going through the planning process with Southwark Council.
This is but one example of commercial development advancing at a speed unusual even in central London. Within a couple of hundred metres are two active tower block construction sites: Chapter, a student housing block aiming to attract 900 wealthy students, many of them from China, and Edge, a quarter of a million square feet of offices.
Next to them are the sites of two more future office blocks, where work has not yet started but for which planning permission has been secured. Across the road, the “neighbourhood” restaurant, Trivet, has two Michelin stars.
The vibe in the room was downbeat. The prevailing view was that nobody’s listening to us. Many have lived here for decades and already seen enormous changes bring little improvement to their lives. The strongest feeling was of powerlessness – that anything they said would be ignored by the authorities and there was nothing they could do to change that.
These were people who know their locality and had important views about what good progress should look like; people taking all the pain, the noise, dirt, air pollution, dangerous construction traffic and gradually loss of light, and seeing none of the gain.
The four years of pre-application discussions and design reviews run by the planning authority behind closed doors and the consultation process run by the Snowsfields Quarter developer were seen as manipulative and disempowering.
I was struck by the contrast these tenants made with the small number of people who had written in support of the project. Almost all of them were men, almost all were professors and most of them knew each other. None appeared to have studied the planning application or come to talk to these residents.
There had been a lot of neighbours helping neighbours, though. A wider group of residents, We Love Snowsfields, had raised some money and commissioned its own, public, community design review run by Create Streets with high profile figures from the design world. More recently, in the 21 days allowed, it had prepared an eight-page “community summary” of the nearly 4,000 pages of unindexed, opaque planning application documents, finally submitting a well-argued 20-page professional objection.
That was warmly welcomed by this part of the community, but they could see that their fragile, listed local buildings, in a conservation area on a narrow medieval street, weren’t likely to get any protection from the nearly 1,500 diesel-powered heavy construction and demolition trucks proposed to be rumbling past for the next four or five years.
The fate of local girl Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debra, the nine-year-old whose death a coroner attributed in part to air pollution, was mentioned. The idea that they might have labs next door experimenting with Covid, and what the Financial Times recently called “Killer Fungus”, just added to the frustration and depression.
Formal neighbourhood planning has failed in this part of London, having been led by a local property developer which failed, over ten years, to deliver a neighbourhood plan, while alienating both the council and the wider community.
Politics seems to be failing too. This ward, London Bridge & West Bermondsey, like all of those bordering the Thames in north Southwark, has historically been a Labour-Liberal Democrat marginal. Southwark councillors from both parties are now experiencing on the doorstep a rapid increase of support for Reform UK, as lately found in the capital as a whole. The future of Southwark’s version of two-party politics seems up for grabs.
There are many factors influencing voters at the moment, but I left the village hall meeting wondering if planning might be among them. In the past, Labour locally has responded to changing national policy by welcoming development. Southwark has earned itself the industry nickname “developers playground”.
There are good political reasons for this. Over the last 15 years, the planning system has evolved to reward local authorities financially for promoting new development. As austerity has cut through the provision of core statutory services, every penny they can eke out of development funding helps.
This is money the council can use to stay solvent and improve lives, though that is not a case even a Labour administration with a large majority has felt confident to make publicly to its citizens.
Instead, it has used its strong position to push through developments or, for the most contentious, have hidden behind the Mayor of London calling them in and approving them – something these Guinness residents were strongly aware of – and very disapproving of – as precisely this had happened with another scheme nearby.
From neighbourhood, through local authority to London level, the planning system is adding to feelings of voicelessness and powerlessness. It no longer seems designed to listen to the people who really matter. Online portals are incredibly difficult to navigate, publicity about developments is almost non-existent and objections, even constructive criticisms, are usually ignored.
Southwark politicians are not unaware of this. The council has produced a well-intentioned Development Consultation Charter which requires developers of large schemes to consult the local community before drawing up plans. But it has failed to enforce it and, in the face of a backlash from high profile campaigns such as that directed at the Aylesham Centre scheme in Peckham, are reviewing it.
One thing is clear – developers cannot be trusted to be the main route by which local people communicate their views to influence new development. Ward councillors too are rolled over by the planning system. Some may accuse them of having loyalties split between their community and their party, but they also have no power and only slightly more influence, even if they happen to be on the relevant planning committee. So, those the community should look to to defend them are unable to.
All of this adds to the incentive not to vote, even though the polling station is the same village hall, right next door to the estate. And if they vote, who is likely to be their preference? This group has the ear of the local Labour MP, Neil Coyle, and an extremely good Labour councillor, Emily Hickson, who was at the meeting. Will these connections be enough to get these residents to the polling booth to vote for Labour, or are they so fed up that only a complete change will do?
Unless the voices in the village hall, and on all the local estates, are listened to and their views acted on, the planning system will have to take some of the responsibility for whatever politics comes next.
Follow Chris Brown on X/Twitter. Learn more about the work he does here.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture with no paywall and no ads. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money other people won’t. Details HERE. Photo by Chris Brown.