the economy is getting a kicking. that is unfair

Southwark Council plan to build 20,000 new homes, extend the Bakerloo line and incorporate the Old Kent Road into the Central Activity Zone (CAZ). We support regeneration and understand that residential densities must be increased across the capital. However, planners and consultants consider the working economic land to be underused and ripe for total demolition and reconstruction. This approach is ill-conceived, inaccurate and will damage the wider city. Proposed policies include the removal of protective planning designations for lower value uses such as light industrial accomodation and the strip out of well designed, functional buildings. 

Planners insist that the Old Kent Road has surplus vacant working land that can accommodate the decanting of existing businesses through the regeneration process.  Our in-depth research has concluded that currently vacant and available land equates to only 1.25% of the Opportunity Area, where as existing economic uses account for over 30% of the current land use.

This makes the two largest vacant and available chunks of land all the more important, we believe that both Malt Street and the Gas Works should therefore remain protected by planning designation.

Meanwhile new planning applications are emerging daily. Most of these continue to violate current policy and threaten the fine grain economic and civic networks. Developers are hurriedly consuming land and pricing existing economies out of town or out of business.