Partnering with constructors

Meeting our housing needs 

Southwark presents great opportunities and challenges in terms of housing. 

As in all London Boroughs, demand for council homes in Southwark far outstrips supply. Private housing prices and rents remain well out of the reach of a significant proportion of local residents, and factors like the benefit cap have made the sector increasingly unaffordable. There is an urgent need for more genuinely affordable housing.

We have embarked on an ambitious programme to build 11,000 new, high quality council homes in the borough and address the deficit in truly affordable housing by 2043 as part of our New Homes Strategy. 

The New Homes Strategy sets out our ambition to maximise the overall supply and proportion of social rent and other genuinely affordable homes as far as programme viability will allow.

As part of our strategy, we have identified sites in the borough for redevelopment with our development partners to support the further tranche of our New Homes Strategy and Programme.

Procurement approach

We are seeking the appointment of 2 different development partners to deliver multi-site programmes through a 'lotted approach' with 2 geographical based lots. 

To do this, we are seeking to partner with 2 highly experienced and capable developers to deliver high-quality affordable and private housing across several prominent and exciting development sites in the borough.

Developers who are interested in this opportunity can find information on the 2026 Development Agreement Opportunity webpage. 

We will be procuring a different development partner for each of the lots (‘Lot A’ and ‘Lot B’) through 2 separate multi-site development agreements. The lots are based on delivering a package of sites in 2 distinct areas of the borough:

Lot A

• Wickway Community Centre
• Bells Gardens
• Lindley
• Wyndham and Redcar

Lot B

• Red Lion Boys Club
• 1–36 Priter Road
• Seven Islands Leisure Centre

Pipeline sites

The pipeline sites are:

• Abbeyfield Estate
• Abbeyfield Housing Office
• Angel Oak Academy
• Ann Moss Way
• Beormund School
• Pelican Estate
• Sceaux Gardens

The locations of the sites are shown in the map below:

Our procurement objectives

We have established objectives for this procurement:

• partners should work together to develop and deliver the programme of lotted sites
• our aspiration is to maximise delivery of affordable housing and to target the delivery of 50% affordable housing for each lot
• our aspiration is to maximise the level of social rent tenures as a priority within the affordable housing provision, with a secondary priority of delivering intermediate rent and shared ownership tenures. Social rent homes should be delivered at council rent levels
• we will receive all social rent tenures and, when provided, shared ownership situated in the same block, in lieu of payment for land at no cost
• affordable housing units should be delivered in accordance with our Employer’s Requirements (ERs)
• all development risk including construction cost and market risk is to be borne by the partners
• no additional financial contribution will be made by us beyond the value of the land and a subsidy paid on each affordable home which will vary by tenure
• the partnership will need to deliver high quality homes through both a process of client design review and conformity to requirements of grant funders (like the GLA)
• we are seeking delivery of the lotted schemes as soon as reasonably practicable, in accordance with a robust and realistic proposal
• all developments should support our sustainability and climate change objectives in line with our 2030 carbon neutral policy
• the partnership should maximise social value outcomes from its activities, delivering additional value and impact for local communities

Our key priority

A key priority for us is to deliver as much affordable housing in Lot A and Lot B as possible, whereby we do not expect or aspire to receive land receipts. 

We have taken responsibility for securing appropriate subsidy to support the delivery of affordable homes across the lots. We have an established relationship and track record of securing grant funding with the Greater London Authority (GLA) and we're currently engaged in active dialogue with the authority on grant arrangements for the lotted sites. 

As part of this, access to GLA grant funding is conditional on achieving a start on site by the end of March 2026, which means that we require the partners to be able to work quickly and support the partnership in meeting this milestone and the funding of affordable homes.