Greenwich councillors are due to reconsider the borough’s part of a major Deptford Creek housing scheme on 13 October, after neighbouring Lewisham councillors resolved to refuse their side. Greenwich planning officers are still recommending approval, leaving an unusual split in the prospects for one development that crosses the borough boundary.
The proposal by RER London, called Deptford Reach, would deliver 802 homes on the former Lewisham College site beside Deptford Bridge. Of those, 548 are in Lewisham and 254 are in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The two councils are deciding separate planning applications for their portions of the same wider project.
Lewisham’s Strategic Planning Committee voted on 24 September to refuse the 548-home part. Members cited concerns that the buildings’ height and massing would harm the area’s townscape and heritage, as well as effects on people living aboard houseboats on the creek. Before the meeting, Lewisham officers had also recommended refusal on design and heritage grounds.
Greenwich’s Planning Board met on the same evening. It did not decide whether to grant or refuse its application; members deferred it until Lewisham had determined its related case. The Greenwich board is now due to return to the scheme on 13 October. Officers continue to recommend permission for the Greenwich element, which includes a 19-storey building, two 10-storey blocks and a single-storey workshop.
The Lewisham decision is not final
A committee resolution to refuse is not yet the same as a completed refusal notice. The Lewisham decision is subject to referral to the Mayor of London, who can call in the application and make the decision himself. If he does not, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government can also call it in. If neither intervenes, Lewisham can issue its formal refusal.
Greenwich officers say the applicant would then have a statutory right of appeal, and they understand RER London intends to use it if the refusal is issued. The eventual outcome for the Lewisham portion therefore remains unresolved. An appeal, if made, would be a further planning process rather than an automatic reversal of the committee’s decision.
The link between the applications matters to Greenwich’s choice. The only vehicle access route identified for the development is from Deptford Church Street, on the Lewisham side. Greenwich officers have proposed a condition tying permission for their portion to what happens to Lewisham’s application: if the Lewisham proposal is formally refused, or an appeal is refused or withdrawn, Greenwich would also refuse its application. That proposed safeguard does not amount to a decision by Greenwich members, who have yet to consider the application again.
Affordable homes and the creek
The scheme would include 24 affordable homes out of 802 in total, or 3 per cent by dwelling count. The Greenwich portion would contain 10 affordable homes among its 254. In its planning report, the council says the proposed site-wide affordable provision is 5.1 per cent when measured by habitable rooms, a different measure from the share of homes. The report records that the independently reviewed viability assessment found the scheme could not support a higher offer at this time.
That low affordable-housing share is a significant feature of the proposal, but the Greenwich and Lewisham officer recommendations have focused on other planning questions as well. The debate also concerns the scale of the towers, their effect on nearby heritage and the lived experience of people moored on the creek. At the Lewisham meeting, a houseboat resident argued that the development would reduce privacy and sunlight for the community on the water.
There are also competing claims about what the redevelopment could bring. RER London says it would open public access to a part of the creek that has been inaccessible for more than a century. The Creekside Educational Trust criticised the scheme at the Lewisham meeting and called for measures to help restore nature in the waterway.
The 13 October meeting will not settle the whole project by itself. Greenwich members are considering only the 254 homes and associated uses on their borough’s land. The Lewisham application remains on a separate track, with possible intervention or an appeal still ahead. Until those steps are resolved, the development’s future depends both on the decision Greenwich members make and on what happens to the application across the creek.
