Southwark Council has set out its response to the draft London Plan, backing the capital’s growth ambitions while arguing that new development must be matched by genuinely affordable homes, transport and public services, climate action and a meaningful role for residents.
The council says the draft’s proposed annual target of 2,780 homes for Southwark is 18 per cent above its current target. It compares that scale of delivery to a new Aylesbury Estate every year. The figure is a proposed target in a draft city-wide strategy, not a record of homes already built or a final requirement.
Southwark’s response supports the plan’s brownfield-first approach and its focus on affordable housing, sustainable transport, retrofit and climate resilience. But the council says growth should bring benefits for existing communities as well as new residents. It identifies social-rented and family-sized homes as particularly urgent, and says intermediate and key-worker housing should not displace homes that address the borough’s most acute needs.
Transport and services tied to housing growth
The council argues that the proposed building rate would require investment in transport, healthcare, schools, utilities and community facilities. Without that support, it says, development risks adding pressure to services that are already stretched. The position makes infrastructure a condition of its support for growth, rather than a separate issue to be addressed after homes are planned.
Southwark singled out the Bakerloo Line Extension, describing it as essential to unlocking around 21,000 homes in Old Kent Road and supporting sustainable growth in south-east London. That figure is an estimate of homes associated with the extension; it is not a promise that the homes will be delivered or that the railway project has been approved or funded.
The council also wants the plan to address the effect of competing demands for land. It calls for the cumulative impact of purpose-built student accommodation to be considered, so that such schemes do not undermine conventional housing or genuinely affordable provision. At the same time, it says boroughs need enough flexibility to reflect local evidence when setting affordable-housing requirements, energy standards, carbon offsetting, cycle and car parking rules, and the balance between homes and employment, industrial, cultural and community uses.
Climate and local influence
Climate policy, in Southwark’s view, should run through the plan rather than sit only in environmental sections. The council points to retrofit, resilience to climate impacts, lower long-term costs for residents and funding for local decarbonisation. It also links healthier and fairer neighbourhoods to better homes, active travel, green space and access to essential services.
Residents, it says, should have an early and genuine role in shaping their neighbourhoods, with a clear account of how their views influenced plans and proposals. The council says these principles will inform its emerging Southwark Plan and that it will continue working with the Mayor, the Government and other partners.
The response comes after the public consultation on the draft London Plan closed on 15 October. The plan is intended to guide how London develops towards 2050 across housing, jobs, transport, the environment and public spaces. Its policies are still in draft form, and borough responses form part of the process of shaping the final strategy.
Southwark’s position is broadly supportive of growth, but it sets out tests for how that growth should happen: affordable housing that meets local need, infrastructure delivered alongside development, climate action embedded across policy, and local decision-making that remains responsive to residents and borough evidence.
