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Emerging priorities for Bermondsey

We want to hear what you think will improve the Bermondsey neighbourhood.

This page is for you, the residents of Bermondsey, to raise the priorities that you are passionate about in this Neighbourhood. You can discuss each other’s ideas by commenting on other people’s posts and show your support for ideas by liking posts. This page will be reviewed regularly and ideas will be shared with the Neighbourhood Champion for their consideration and could be discussed at a future Neighbourhood meeting.

If you raise specific issues that might be better addressed by one of the teams here at the council then we will direct you to the best team to contact.

Examples of ideas could include:

· Address anti-social behaviour and improve safety

· Enhance parks and public spaces

· Support young people, especially through youth services

· Celebrate diversity and local identity

· Protect and enhance housing quality

Open for participation

Phases

Phases overview

Emerging priorities

Emerging priorities

26 June 2025 - No end date

As part of our engagement on our Southwark 2030 strategy, residents were asked to select their top priority from one of fourteen options:

Children, young people and families
Climate change
Community safety
Education
Equality and rights
Financial security
Health and wellbeing
Influence over decisions which affect you, your family and your community
Jobs and the local economy
Things to do
Transport
Your home
Your neighbourhood and local community

This chart illustrates how residents in your neighbourhood responded.

7 ideas

Aoife McCarthy2 months ago Bermondsey currently has a significant shortage of trees, planting and biodiversity, which affects residents’ health, contributes to local climate impacts (hotter streets and higher costs to keep homes cool in summer) and makes the area feel less pleasant to live in than greener neighbourhoods. Bermondsey needs a focused programme to change this by greening streets and small public spaces, especially along busy roads and around homes, schools and shops. Sustainable drainage (SuDS) planters offer a cost‑effective way to achieve much of this greening while also managing rainwater and reducing flood risk, and should be rolled out rapidly across the whole neighbourhood.1. SuDS and low street planters (including green corridors)• Install long, low SuDS‑style planters along busy streets and between walking/cycling routes and traffic, designed to capture and filter rainwater and improve air quality.• Use these planters, or depaving, together with existing trees and new planting, to form continuous “green corridors” along key walking and cycling routes and between larger green spaces to enhance biodiversity.2. Pocket parks, micro‑green spaces and depaving• Transform underused paved corners, small vacant plots and traffic islands into small green spaces with seating and planting, using depaving where necessary to free up soil and planting areas.• Incorporate SuDS features into these spaces wherever possible, so they help to manage runoff as well as providing greenery.3. “Right to Plant” in underused public spaces• Introduce a simple local “Right to Plant” approach, allowing residents, schools and community groups to propose planting in underused public spaces (for example, small verge strips, the edges of paved areas or the bases of street trees).• Provide clear guidelines and light‑touch approvals so planting is safe, accessible and easy to maintain.Bermondsey needs rapid, area‑wide rollout of SuDS planters and related greening measures. Greening busy streets and urban spaces in this way would cool the neighbourhood, improve air quality, reduce flood risk, support wildlife, make walking and cycling more attractive, provide small places to rest and meet, lower the cost and discomfort of summer heat in homes, and give Bermondsey a greener, more welcoming and better‑cared‑for appearance for everyone who spends time here.

Caitlin Renner6 months ago Kalmar’s is supposed to be Southwark’s “preferred estate agents,” but they’ve left retail units empty all over the Bermondsey area. Across from the Bermondsey Station stop is a unit advertised as “coming soon” since November of 2024. It’s next to an empty shop that’s been advertised as “under offer” since at least September of 2024. The Blue is similarly empty. Why is Southwark not making sure that our streets are full of shops? Where are we meant to go to get basic goods? Where are local traders meant to sell from? What is Southwark doing to help keep life and character in our neighbourhoods? Why is the only action over in Canada Water?

guy mannes-abbott9 months ago This is an area of low tree canopy in a city that is over-heating & where the impacts of that fall most heavily upon those least well equipped to cope with never mind respond to it. Low canopy maps over other recognised & measurable deprivations; poor housing quality, poor health chances & outcomes, high pollution; dominance of vehicles in the public realm, & systemically-abused other-than-white communities. These heat-islands exist at local & broader neighbourhood levels, but make life much harder for many & soon impossible. Raising canopy is a cheap, accessible & successful response that we can & should deploy NOW to introduce multiple share benefits & address inequity. That means large canopy species trees, but also future-species mixes/variations, biodiversity & ground cover, rain gardens if not SuDs, related modal shifts to bikes & feet as well as to hedgerows & food growing. The urgency cannot be exaggerated.

Community Campaigner David Barton4 months ago

Patrick McNelis6 months ago There's many people complaining about Lime bikes being scattered around Bermondsey streets but the very same people seem to be very quiet when it comes to the multiple Tesco trolley's which have been stolen. These are then disregarded and left on pavements and road's around Bermondsey. It's a disgrace. When you go to shop at Tesco, you sometimes can't even get a trolley to shop. I hear Tesco won't provide new trolleys because they keep on being stolen. I hear residents have reported several trolleys left in specific areas but Tesco do not collect them so they're left on the streets of Bermondsey. Southwark council, Surrey Quays Tesco and those residents stealing and fly tipping trolleys need to get their act together and clean up our streets.

Daniel Quinn6 months ago The junction between New Rotherhithe Road and Ilderton Road/Galleywall Road is quite intimidating, not only is there significant variation in the road surface but it creates a large barrier to cycling with wide junctions and limited cycling protections. The painted cycle lane ends and it prevents me from active transport between my home and the blue, creating a barrier between communities in southwark. If this junction could be improved for cycling I would definitely feel a lot more comfortable to cycle in the area as it would link up multiple schemes already completed by the borough.

Christine McCartney7 months ago When I moved here 30 years ago, the Albion Channel was a jewel of biodiversity, and a feature which it was a pleasure to visit. As part of my commute I used to walk the full length daily. I am very angry that the area has been allowed to fall into such a state that even the mallards, coots and moorhens are deserting it. The rushes have taken over, the green slime is ubiquitous and the water level has sunk so low that the local anti-social element doesn’t even bother to put shopping trolleys and lime bikes in it any more. It is a disgrace and money should be spent on it before any attempt to make Salter Road more user friendly. Salter Road, with its wide verges and abundance of trees is Kew Gardens by comparison. Albion Channel is crying out for help and the current volunteer group is overwhelmed. Please help this dying feature to relive its former greatness.

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