Eyesore empty office block in Southwark's Walworth Road to be transformed in student flats plan

Former council offices at Chatelain House in Walworth will be turned into hundreds of student flats, 23 social rent homes and a new community kitchen under the proposals.

The development will see the 1980s block in Walworth Road partially demolished and remodelled as a pair of six and seven-storey buildings. The scheme was waved through by a Southwark Council planning committee on Tuesday evening (October 26).

Debbie Whitfield from the applicant, property firm Fabrix, told the meeting: “We’re proposing to dramatically remodel the building to turn what is currently an unloved eyesore into a positive contributor to the high street, centred on community and nature. Central to that is the giving over of almost the entire ground floor to community and public facing uses.”

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Local charity Pembroke House is expected to run the planned community centre and kitchen at the ground floor of the redeveloped building.

“This new high street community space will use the power of food to bridge the area’s existing communities and the development’s new residents, using the preparation of food and coming together to eat to tackle social isolation, connect young and old and provide access to healthy and fairer priced food,” Ms Whitfield added.

Previous plans to redevelop Chatelain House approved by the council in 2015 but never built would have seen the building entirely demolished and replaced with a six-storey building with no community centre and less affordable housing than the new proposals.

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Councillor Darren Merill, a local Labour councillor, said Chatelain House had been a ‘blight’ on the area for over a decade and branded the new plans a ‘huge improvement’ on the 2015 application. An unnamed local resident who spoke at the meeting said she supported the development because she believed it would bring more people to Walworth Road and improve the look of the area.

A planning committee made up of Cllr Richard Livingstone, Cllr Kath Whittam, Cllr Reginald Popoola, Cllr Esme Hicks, Cllr Nick Johnson and Cllr Ellie Cumbo voted to approve the plans unanimously. All are Labour councillors except Cllr Johnson, who is from the Liberal Democrats.