The Homes for All Housing and Planning Bloc on the Peoples Assembly demo against austerity was a real pleasure to support.
Homes for All, supported by Defend Council Housing, SHAPE, SHAC and many others had fantastic Housing and Planning Bloc, and we even got to speak on the platform to promote the movement’s demands for council housing and a challenge to the rule of developers. We called for a revolution in housing and planning. High energy all the way! More than 60 housing and planning campaigners joined us. We brought the noise all the way from Portland Place to Whitehall.
We have a Housing and Planning bloc on the People’s Assembly demo, 7 June.
We are seeking support both from housing campaigns, and planning campaigns. We know the housing emergency will not be solved without a massive overhaul in planning policy. Without doubt the national and local planning regime has turned into a developers’ charter, putting ‘viability’ (read ‘developer profit’) at the centre, and reducing the role of council housing to a bit part. This has to change if we are to get the homes people desperately need.
Of course the only solution to the housing emergency is for the government to build or acquire council housing on a mass scale, and that requires proper funding. We want anyone who agrees with us to join us on 7 June!
Are you a planner?
Are you a housing officer?
Are you active in the planning world?
Are you part of the housing movement?
The Homes 4 All Housing and planning bloc is for you! Get in touch if you want to help build it! If you want your logo on the graphic, please email Homes for All.
The excitement was building as SHAPE supporters hit the streets on Saturday. 11 supporters were mass leafleting and the mood was high to to stop the Berkeley Homes development.
SHAPE also met up with Peter Apps this week, author of “Show Me the Bodies“, to talk about the campaign and what the proposed development means for Peckham. The Berkeley Aylesham Centre proposal, at 12% so-called affordable housing, was heading for refusal at planning committee. That’s why the developer decided to take its chances with the Planning Inspector instead. A big F.U. to the local Councillors and local people. Let’s keep up the pressure, on the council the developer and the government!
📣📣 It’s the PEOPLE vs The DEVELOPERS🤡🤡 ✊️✊️ Peckham Takeover – Saturday 31 May, 1pm @ Peckham Square
Route and timings Peckham Takeover, 31 May 2025 ⭕Circular route around Peckham 📍 1pm Assemble Peckham Square ⏱ 3.30pm Arrive back Peckham Square End around 4:15pm
♿ Accessible March Anybody who wants to participate but maybe feels a long walk will be difficult, can join the disability group: Rye Lane Chapel, SE15 5EX ⏱ 2.30pm The main march will be passing here at around 2:45pm to 3:15pm
SHAPE demands ❌STOP overdevelopment ✅ 50% Council housing on private land ✅ 100% Council housing on council land Homes for people, not for profit Council homes not luxury flats
Homes for All joined the SHAPE demonstration on 1 March 2025
Public meeting in Peckham on 15 May calls for developments with 50% council housing
Campaigners in Southwark are calling on the housing movement to support their public meeting on 15 May and their ‘Peckham Takeover on 31 May.
This follows their 600-strong demonstration in March against overdevelopment and for council housing. Now SHAPE are pledged to take over the centre of Peckham at the end of May.
Developer Berkeley Homes has put in an appeal to the Planning Inspector. Their Aylesham Centre proposal was waiting for local planning approval, but the appeal (on the grounds of ‘non-determination’) means the proposal will be decided by the Secretary of State or the Planning Inspector, rather than the local planning committee.
Campaigners were demanding refusal from the committee, which will still take place in June. Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency (SHAPE) was disappointed that local people have been bypassed by the developer and has pledged to fight on. Southwark Defend Council Housing described the developer’s move as “Arrogant, anti-democratic and aggressive.”
Arrogant, anti-democratic and aggressive
Southwark DCH
The public meeting will hear from Zoe Garbett Green AM, Andreea Vasilcin, Aylesham Community Action, Neil Tasker, Southwark UNITE and Carmen and Michael, SE16 No Price on Culture with Councillor David Parton, Rye Lane Ward.
All three Labour Councillors in the ward affected by the scheme have urged residents to object to it, and Peckham MP Miatta Fahnbulleh stated she would stand with the community against the proposal if the amount of affordable housing remained at 12%.
The proposal by Berkeley Homes promises just 12% ‘affordable’ housing in a development that residents say is not meant for them. Sixteen tall towers, up to 20 storeys high, with little consideration for the heritage of the area, local independent traders or the environment.
SHAPE Public Meeting
Thursday 15 May, 7pm
Rye Lane Chapel, 59A, Rye Lane, SE15 5EX
It’s The People vs The Developers! Peckham takeover!
Saturday 31 May, Assemble 1pm
Peckham Square SE15 5RS
For a demo through Peckham ending at Peckham Square for a happening with speeches and entertainment
SHAPE said:
‘We are living through a housing emergency. Despite huge developments across the borough, we have more people on the council housing waiting list than we had twenty years ago. Berkeley Homes are only offering an insulting 12% ‘affordable’ housing on the new Aylesham Centre – that’s just 77 ‘affordable’ homes out of nearly nine hundred and they might not even be social rent!’
We are also losing valuable small businesses and cultural amenities. We have already seen the damage done to independent traders at the Elephant and Castle and the Borough Triangle scheme puts the future of the traders at Mercato market into doubt. PlushSE16 was a great cultural and social hub in Rotherhithe, but it’s been lost too, to make way for a 48-storey tower with only 25% social rented homes.’
It’s time to end developments which take so much from us, and don’t even give us homes we can afford to live in.’
Siobhan McCarthy, Aylesham Community Action (ACA), said
‘The displacement of local communities and traders, huge mega developments placed in an area with no thought towards what exists already, creating a them and us feel to the community – this is all too high a price to pay (especially in Peckham with the planned Aylesham development). And for what? A disgustingly low amount of social housing, and ‘affordable housing’, and huge amount of developer profit. We need to demand change and now.’
Tanya Murat, Southwark Defend Council Housing (SDCH), said
‘Now is the time for a different kind of housing policy. The market cannot deliver the homes we need, only council housing can do that. We have to send a message to this government, and to Southwark Council, that we won’t accept any more crumbs off the table. Stop submitting to the rule of developers. Their profits are not more important than people’s homes’.
Jerry Flynn, 35% Campaign, said:
‘The Aylesham is right at the heart of Peckham and its redevelopment will shape the whole area for decades to come. Southwark Council must make it clear to Berkeley Homes that its derisory 12% so called affordable housing offer will be rejected. Southwark has a target of 50% affordable housing and that is what should from Berkeley Homes. This should be all council housing if we are ever to reduce our huge council housing waiting list.’
SHAPE’s demands
SHAPE’s main demands are an end to overdevelopment and more council housing – 50% for developments on private land and 100% on council land. It also wants an end to estate demolition and the sale of council homes and an end to the displacement of local traders for developments of unaffordable housing.
SHAPE (Southwark Housing And Planning Emergency) is an umbrella group of housing campaigns and activists from across Southwark. SHAPE is supported by Southwark Defend Council Housing, Aylesham Community Action, Save Borough Triangle, Peckham Vision, Latin Elephant, Up the Elephant, 35% Campaign, Yes to Fair Redevelopment, Southwark Notes , Fight for Aylesbury, PlushSE16 No Price on Culture, Glengall Wharf Garden, Southwark TUC, Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth and Southwark Group of Tenants Organisation, Southwark GMB, Southwark UNITE, PCS SELLS Branch.
Homes for All heard from Tarek Cheriha Dkik, a housing and anti-racist activist speaking from Girona, northeast Catalonia.
The housing rights movement is led by the Tenants’ Union (Sindicat de Llogateres i Llogaters). The Union calls for protecting renters and fighting for the de-commodification of housing including rent control, increasing public housing stock, and stopping evictions. The main demands of the movement in a massive demo in November were:
50% reduction in rental prices
indefinite rental contracts
recovery of vacant and tourist-use homes for residential use
a ban on real estate speculation.
Then on 5 April 5 2025, there was another demo in over 40 cities across Spain, including Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Málaga, and others. Both Madrid and Barcelona saw over 100,000 protesters.
In a stunning victory, left-wing parties in the parliament of Catalonia responded to the massive movement by reaching an agreement to regulate seasonal and room rents, establish a sanctioning regime for housing violations, and build 50,000 rent controlled housing units.
Activists from the city of Salt’s anti-racist network formed a committee to identify and stop migrant families being evicted from their homes, which later became the Salt Housing Union. They also successfully lobbied to remove a discriminatory condition excluding migrants from public housing, and exposed the racism in the private rental market.
It is clear that a huge movement can challenge the political business as usual, and demands which seemed impossible before can take on a life of their own.
Thank you to Tarek for taking the time to explain how to fight for people and housing!
YouTube Video for Tarek’s presentation (including summary of his comments)
Homes for All wishes to thank everyone who joined the housing lobby on Wednesday outside parliament.
Speakers representing 13 housing & planning campaigns and also Fuel Poverty Action, the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) spoke in anger about the scale of the housing and planning emergency and the urgency to keep fighting – demanding radical solutions to address decades of neglect.
The Labour Party plan for “£2 billion new investment to support biggest boost in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation” will not.
But the day was rightfully DPAC’s with disabled people facing inhumane cuts to benefits and their mass demo from Downing St to the rally was just brilliant.
Come and join housing and other campaigners 26 March, from 11am to the lobby of parliament as Rachel Reeves makes the government’s financial statement.
Homes 4 All protest outside parliament Opposite Old Palace Yard 11am, Wednesday 26 March
We are demanding urgent action by the government to recognise the nature and scale of the housing emergency.
After 14 years of disastrous housing policies and increasing poverty, all indications are that we will see no fundamental changes to the housing regime unless we step up the pressure.
🚩 Bring your banners and placards, and make some noise!
Homes for All joined and spoke the demonstration called by SHAPE – Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency
Over 600 marched for council housing and for justice for Southwark’s diverse communities. Speakers stressed that the community in Peckham will not submit to the rule of developers. A large range of groups came to express solidarity with the people of Southwark including: Aylesham Community Action; Peckham Vision; Latin Elephant; Southwark Group of Tenants Organisation; Southwark Defend Council Housing; South London Stand Up to Racism; Southwark UNITE; Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL); Southwark Notes; Plush SE16 No price on culture; London Renters Union (Lewisham Branch) ; Southwark Acorn and many more.
The demonstration united people of all ages and backgrounds in an angry but carnival-like procession. Highlights included the local drummers, a choir and a massive boost to the demo when HASL’s 60 to 80 members joined at Burgess Park, chanting “3,4,5” which is the number of bedrooms they are fighting for Southwark to rehouse them in.
Speakers included Local Labour Councillor David Parton who expressed his strong opposition to Berkeley Homes’ Aylesham Centre proposal – which is now due to provide an insulting 12% so called-affordable homes in a scheme of 877 flats. Local Lib Dem group Leader on Southwark Council, who is a ward Councillor where the Borough Triangle overdevelopment is proposed, also spoke and brought along other Councillors. Speakers from Stand Up to Racism and others talked about the threat of the far right and the importance of standing in solidarity with migrants and refugees. Migrants didn’t cause the housing crisis!
The demonstration was featured on TV on both BBC London News and ITV London News, and in various publications.
Homes for All heard from the SHAPE Coalition on Saturday. They are planning a demonstration on 1 March and are seeking support from housing campaigners in the capital and further afield. SHAPE say the developments approved and planned in Southwark, and Peckham in particular, have major implications for the housing crisis elsewhere.
Berkeley Homes is proposing just 12% so-called affordable housing on the Aylesham Centre Peckham development – a proposal that includes 16 massive buildings, up to 20 storeys high in the centre of Peckham’s shopping street and beyond. There will be 877 new homes but only 77 will be “affordable”. If this development is approved, either by the Council or on appeal, this will send a message to developers everywhere – ‘Build whatever you like, your profits come first‘ This is a national issue and it requires a radical challenge to this government.
URGENT!!! Aylesham Community Action are calling a demo to oppose the Aylesham Centre development – 3pm, Saturday 8 February, Peckham Square.
We regard this offer as a deep insult to the people of Peckham and Southwark…we… seek to defeat this proposal and others, like Borough Triangle, which aim to increase the number of luxury flats and displace the local traders, much like the already approved development at Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre… We do not believe developer profits should be prioritised. That’s why our slogan is “Stop overdevelopment, homes for people, not for profit”.
From SHAPE Open Letter to Rye Lane Councillors, 13 January 2025
This is a call-out to all housing groups, trade unionists and people who are affected by the lack of genuinely affordable housing. We have to fight for council housing. It is the only answer to the housing emergency, and we expect our political leaders to back us and get out of bed with the developers.
SHAPE’s demands
1. No to overdevelopment – Is it too high or too dense? NO! 2. 50% council housing on private land. 100% council housing on council land 3. No more fake consultations. We want genuine tenant, resident and local peoples’ involvement in the plans 4. Stop unsafe and poorly built development 5. Stop the demolition and sell-off of council housing – Refurbishment not demolition 6. Requisition or acquire empty homes 7. Protect and improve our estates, community facilities and town centres 8. Employ direct labour – give workers the power to challenge unsafe building work 9. Act on the Climate Emergency now. No unsustainable building, no loss of green space 10. Stop displacement of traders for unaffordable housing
If you agree, come to the demos, promote and support – and think about setting up a Housing and Planning Coalition in your own area.
Siobhan McCarthy, Aylesham Community Action said:
Private developers have come to Southwark and destroyed communities in order to make profit, without providing anywhere near enough social housing. We are fighting this battle right now in Peckham.
Tanya Murat, Southwark Defend Council Housing said
Emergency action is required. Instead of letting developers continue to get away with destroying council housing and building more and more luxury flats, Southwark Council should refuse unsustainable luxury developments, fight for council housing and protect our local communities.
