October 2024: Peckham Heritage Initial Statement of Objection to Berkeley Homes’ proposals for the Aylesham Centre, in Peckham town centre
OCTOBER 2024
PECKHAM HERITAGE INITIAL STATEMENT OF OBJECTION TO BERKELEY HOMES’ PROPOSALS FOR THE AYLESHAM SITE, IN PECKHAM TOWN CENTRE
This is Peckham Heritage’s initial statement on the proposals for the Aylesham site in Peckham town centre. We will be holding various discussions in the following months and working towards a final statement in early 2025.
The heart of Peckham
In the heart of Peckham, the Aylesham Centre site is owned by developers Berkeley Homes. The site comprises the Aylesham Centre shopping arcade, the Morrisons supermarket, the petrol station, and car park. Berkeley have now submitted a planning application for a mixed housing, retail, leisure and commercial development on the site, in buildings ranging from 5 to 20 storeys.
Peckham Heritage objects to this planning application on the grounds that the proposals are overbearing and unsympathetic to the character of Peckham town centre and are detrimental to both the Rye Lane Conservation Area and the Peckham Hill Street Conservation Area.
The Aylesham site is so central, and so large, that its development will change Peckham as a place and profoundly affect the lives of the Peckham community and economy for decades to come. Local people generally support the principle of development. Back in 2017, the Peckham Citizens Charter, forged in a collaborative process across the community, set out criteria for the development of the site, which included affordable homes, good jobs, meaningful community engagement and ‘An open, street-based design that includes a significant public space, protects key, local retailers and reinforces the existing culture, economy and built environment of Peckham.’
Peckham’s Heritage
Peckham is a distinctive place. Its heritage value has been broadly agreed through substantial work such as the Historic Area Assessment (English Heritage 2009), and Conservation Area Appraisal (2011). The consensus on the heritage value of Peckham’s built environment, established over many years with community support, has been ignored by the proposed Berkeley development, which is damaging to Peckham’s character, while simultaneously not meeting the needs of Peckham’s communities.
Peckham’s built and social heritage have been championed over many years by Peckham Vision and the Peckham Society, leading to the designation of the Rye Lane Conservation Area in 2011, and the Peckham Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) in 2014. Building on years of campaigning, today’s Peckham Heritage (peckhamheritage.org.uk) is a local group founded from the THI, to continue the work to protect, enhance and revitalise the historic fabric of Peckham town centre and the Rye Lane Conservation Area, and also to explore the diversity of built, cultural and natural heritage in Peckham.
The Rye Lane Peckham Conservation Area
The Aylesham Centre site is located alongside, and partly within, the Rye Lane Peckham Conservation Area, and to the south of the Peckham Hill Conservation Area. Into the intricate, layered, low rise historic environment of the Rye Lane Conservation Area, Berkeley Homes proposes to insert a new high-rise neighbourhood, rising from 7 storeys on Rye Lane to a 16-storey tower in the centre of the site, and 18 and 20 storey towers to the east. In the opinion of Peckham Heritage, this new neighbourhood, rising up like a citadel, out of scale with its surroundings, is harmful to the character of the surrounding built environment and townscape setting, including the setting of Peckham town centre in the broader urban landscape of London.
Four example views from the planning application
The ‘before and after’ images below are a small selection taken from the Berkeley planning application. These images are examples that provide evidence of how the proposed development is severely damaging to Peckham’s character and history
Example View 01
(called View 5 in planning documents)
View 5 along Peckham Hill Street
Peckham town centre has, at its old village core, at the junction of Peckham Hill Street and Peckham High Street, buildings and terraces from the 18th and 19th centuries, some of which have been repaired through the recently completed Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI). The most distinctive group, numbers 98 – 104 Peckham High Street, is a surviving fragment of Peckham’s past as a rural village.
The proposed views submitted by Berkeley show an incongruously large development rising up behind numbers 98 – 104 Peckham High Street. The disproportionate scale of the tall buildings behind the modest historic group is harmful to the setting of both the Peckham Hill Street and Rye Lane Conservation Areas.
View 5
View down Peckham Hill Street
BEFORE
AFTER
Example View 02
(called View 17 in planning documents)
View 17 from Peckham Square
The views from Peckham Square again illustrate the scale of the development when approached from the north. The extent of the disruption to the perception of character, texture, urban grain and hierarchy within the Rye Lane Conservation Area simply beggars belief. The effect is that the sense of Peckham as a place is erased – the old village core is subsumed into the vast proposed development, and the Jones and Higgins tower becomes a minor fragment, losing its former significance as a landmark on the northern end of Rye Lane, and marking Peckham on the route connecting central London to Kent.
BEFORE
AFTER
Example Views 03 and 04
(called View 30 and 31 in planning documents)
View 30 from Peckham Levels Viewing Platform
The views from Peckham Levels show the obstructive impact of the proposed development on the wide expansive rooftop view from Peckham Levels. It is no exaggeration to say that this historic vista and experience of place and location on the Thames floodplain, with views across to central London, will be stolen from the public and given to the inhabitants of the most expensive homes in the proposed development.
BEFORE
AFTER
View 31 from Peckham Levels Viewing Platform
BEFORE
AFTER
Conclusion
In conclusion, Peckham Heritage objects to this proposed Berkeley development in the strongest terms. This proposal is not driven by any architectural, environmental or urban vision, but is purely shaped by the drive to cram as many luxury housing units as possible on the site.
In this proposal, ‘heritage’ is approached as a problem to be manoeuvred around and seems to be of little interest to the design team. At the time of writing, the AVR (‘Accurate’ Visual Representation) of View 5 towards Peckham high Street, was inaccurate and had to be updated by Peckham Heritage. An autonomous Heritage Impact Assessment has not been submitted as part of this planning application, as is considered good practice. No one in the design team appears to have any heritage credentials or accreditation.
Developments of this ilk have been replicated across London for around twenty years now, to the extent that this new urban typology is already strangely familiar, characterised by building volumes as large and tall as possible clad in various colourful, textured, shimmering surfaces, and called ‘exemplary design’ to bypass planning restrictions.
Local people have campaigned over the last decade to challenge the overdevelopment of the Aylesham site, assuming, in good faith, that the development site’s setting alongside two conservation areas would mean that a sensitive, contextual proposal would be required. What is the point of creating Conservation Areas, which are ‘heritage assets’ with legal definition, when the nature of such conservation areas is then ignored, as in this planning application?