Inside the group fighting to save Lewisham Shopping Centre

Lewisham Shopping Centre is nearly 50 years old. Opened in 1977 by developers Landsec, it hosts high street retailers like Boots, Sainsbury's and WH Smith. There are also small salons, community spaces, fast food stalls, and bafflingly, a section of the Berlin Wall on display. 

Currently, the Shopping Centre is in the middle of a battle between residents and the landowners, the property development giant Landsec. Landsec wants to demolish the centre and multi-story car park, upgrade the retail space and build over 1700 private rental flats, co-living housing and purpose-built student accommodation.

The first phase of plans was greenlit last week by the council, but nothing is set in stone.

Spearheading the campaign to stop the plans is the Lewisham People’s Assembly, a community-led group which connects residents and local trade unions for campaign activism. 

The group, originally known as the South East London People’s Assembly, is a local branch of the UK-wide People’s Assembly organisation, which was founded in 2013 to bring together left-wing trade unions, campaigns and activists in a movement against austerity.

The South East London branch went dormant in 2016, shortly after Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party. The branch was revived in 2024, following ongoing cuts to public services under the new Labour government. It is now also known as the Lewisham People’s Assembly. 

The group chooses one or two focused campaigns a year, based on open meetings which aim to reflect the borough’s needs. They are funded by local trade unions and resident donations, and have no specific political affiliation. In Lewisham, their campaigns are often supported by the Greens, the only opposition party on Lewisham's Labour controlled council.  

In the past, the Lewisham People’s Assembly have campaigned for the council to divest its pension fund from the arms trade, and to support local Docklands Light Railway (DLR) cleaners striking for better working conditions.

Most recently, they were part of the campaign to convince Lewisham MP Vicky Foxcroft to come out against the government’s recent disability cuts. 

Now, they feel that locals are most worried about the Shopping Centre. At the time of writing, their petition, “Save Lewisham Shopping Centre! Stop Gentrification and Social Cleansing in Lewisham! has 1756 signatures.

“It’s not a bad shopping centre,” says Lewisham People’s Assembly secretary John McGrath. “It gets good light, it’s not depressing.” Yet McGrath is clear that the main gripe is not with redevelopment itself, but with the low amount of social housing it will deliver. 

“We have a wait list in Lewisham of over 10,000 residents who are waiting for social housing. So we have a social housing shortage crisis,” McGrath said. 

“It's the fact that they're going to destroy downtown Lewisham ..  for the professional managerial class that will work in Canary Wharf, that's our projection.”

Landsec’s current proposal promises 1,744 homes, with 16% of the units classed as affordable. 10% of these are classed as Discounted Market Rent (DMR ), meaning they will be rented at up to 80% of market rent. 

Only 6% of Landsec’s promised affordable units are set at London Affordable Rent (LAR) and would be genuinely affordable to lower-income Londoners. 

The scheme offers no social housing.  In last week’s meeting about the plans, Green opposition councillor Hau-Yu Tam called the figures “abysmal.” 

It comes as affordable housing requirements for developers in London are on the chopping block, in a controversial attempt by government ministers and Sadiq Khan to boost construction.

Currently, all of the proposed affordable housing is set to be delivered in the final stages of Landsec's redevelopment plans, meaning it could be scrapped if the developer falls below budget. 

“I kind of think about it like athletes, sometimes when they sign a contract, they have signing bonuses,’ said McGrath. “This would be like a big signing bonus to Landsec, as in the first proposal they get everything that they want, right off the bat.”  

Speaking in last week's council meeting that approved the development, Faris, a member of the Lewisham People’s Assembly, voiced concern about the plans.

“As far as we know, [Landsec has a] £492 million deficit,” he said. “So really, right now, the stuff in the detailed plan is the only stuff we think would be built.

And that’s 117 luxury flats. There’s no affordable housing provision whatsoever in any of these plans.” 

The redevelopment, which is expected to take a decade to complete, will shut down sections of Lewisham Central as construction commences. It will also add several new buildings to the skyline, up to 23 storeys high. 

At least 84% of the homes being delivered by the redevelopment will be rented at private market rates, making them completely out of reach for the many families on Lewisham’s social housing waiting list. 

Council officers responded that the council had negotiated as hard as they could for more affordable housing in Landsec’s offer, but that it is “subject to (financial) viability”. 

Currently, the Lewisham People’s Assembly is fighting an uphill battle. Last week’s vote unanimously approved the first phase of the plans, although controversially, two councillors were blocked from voting after briefly leaving the meeting “for a toilet break and to cough outside.” 

However, to complete redevelopment plans, Landsec will need several more phases approved by the Council. This means there may be more opportunities to block the plans, or to renegotiate better social housing provision. 

With buzz growing around the new leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, and the budding Your Party, McGrath says it’s been “a little bit harder retaining people's interest” in the Lewisham People’s Assembly. 

It’s possible the group could go dormant again, the way it did after Corbyn’s election. Yet, McGrath feels locals need an organisation without a political affiliation to represent their interests. 

“It's really just about the work that needs to be done,” said McGrath. “It brings civic engagement. It's also good because it's definitely for the many and not the few.”

For now, the Lewisham People’s Assembly plans to keep up the fight.

The next community meeting for the Lewisham People’s Assembly is on Tuesday, November 11th, at St. Mary's Centre in Ladywell at 6.30pm.

They plan a demonstration against the Shopping Centre redevelopment at the Lewisham full council meeting on Wednesday, November 12.