• Introduction
• An Overview
• Regeneration Timeline
• Elephant and Castle - The Future
• Buildings Under Development

Southwark Council is taking a unique lead role to ensure regeneration proposals meet the long-term needs of Southwark residents, and leave a positive legacy for centuries to come.

Resident's needs include more jobs, better security, higher quality housing, improved schools, new business opportunities, more shops and better leisure facilities.

Working with a multidisciplinary professional development team, including Foster and Partners Architects, Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, Space Syntax, Jan Gehl, Inventa, JMP and Steer Davis Gleeve, among others, Southwark Council has created a framework for development for the large scale regeneration of Elephant and Castle.

The framework for development was adopted as supplementary planning guidance in February 2004, following an extensive three-month public consultation, in which 80 per cent of local residents supported the proposals.

The council will now work in partnership with a commercial developer to regenerate the whole area, using the framework for development as planning guidance.

By setting the agenda in this way, Southwark Council has adopted an extremely radical approach. Major regeneration projects are rarely led by the public sector schemes of a similar scale, for example the King's Cross redevelopment, are more usually initiated by private developers. The fact that the council is also the major landowner in the area gives it an unprecedented level of control, real power to speak and act on behalf of its citizens

Key features of the Elephant and Castle framework for development include:

• up to 75,000 sq metres of modern retail and leisure facillities
• development of 5300 new homes
• establishment of a Multi Utility Services company which will deliver zero carbon through a de-centralised network of power, cooling, heating, green water and fibreoptic communications infrastructure
• creation of a new pedestrian-friendly town centre
• demolition of the shopping centre and Heygate Estate
• rehousing of Heygate Estate residents into quality social housing
• replacing the network of subways with surface pedestrian crossings
• an improved public transport interchange
• transformation of St Mary's Churchyard in to a family-friendly park
• creation of over 4,000 new jobs as a result of this development

London’s Former Mayor, Ken Livingstone, commended the framework for development in November 2004, when he presented the Elephant and Castle regeneration team with the award for Best Local Authority Planner at the London Planning Awards. Mayor Livingstone said the judges were impressed by the “excellent team effort focusing on co-ordination of the council departments, external stakeholders and the local community”. He added that the development scheme had the ”added achievement of radically shifting developer aspirations away from a shopping centre, whilst coping with challenges to focus on a comprehensive regeneration scheme that has strong local community involvement.”
 
In June 2006, Southwark Council also won a prestigious international masterplanning award for the Elephant and Castle framework for development at the Building Exchange Symposium.
Download or order the Framework for Development.