Local group launches Peckham charter

LOCAL GROUP LAUNCHES CHARTER FOR NEW AFFORDABLE HOMES & SHOPPING DISTRICT IN PECKHAM.

More than 300 people packed a meeting at Peckham’s Rye Lane Chapel on Tuesday to launch their Citizens’ Charter aimed at influencing plans for the redevelopment of a local shopping centre into over 400 homes and a new shopping district.The ‘Citizens Charter’ includes demands around the number of genuinely affordable homes on site, the number of jobs for local people, a desire to celebrate the existing culture in Peckham and calls to fully engage the community in the process of designing the new part of their neighbourhood.

The charter was developed after speaking to 1,000 people in SE15 about what local people are struggling with most in their daily lives, holding meetings, public workshops, and canvassing local traders and shoppers for their views.

Also launched at the event, was a campaign to support the Citizens Charter, named #Peckham1,000Faces, which hopes to encourage over 1,000 people to take a photo of themselves supporting the community groups agenda for the sites

Tiger Developments – the developer for the shopping centre site, and Councillor Mark Williams, Cabinet Member for Regeneration and New Homes at Southwark Council, and Harriet Harman MP attended the meeting. Tiger Developments is owned by Black Rock, the largest asset management company in the world.

At the assembly, Cllr Williams said Southwark Council would ‘do everything in our power’ to make make sure each ambition on the community’s charter was achieved.

Note: Peckham Citizens is a community power organisation. It is an alliance of schools, churches, charities and other organisations in Peckham that take action together to tackle the injustice we see in our community and is part of national charity Citizens UK. It launched in March 2016 with 331 local people at Rye Lane Chapel, on Rye Lane.