Canning Town and Custom House sit at the heart of a wider network of working-class docklands communities—places bound together by shared histories, challenges, and aspirations. For decades, these neighbourhoods have faced similar struggles: insecure housing, displacement, neglect by developers and authorities, and communities being fractured rather than strengthened. PEACH recognises that the future of Custom House and Canning Town is deeply tied to the common good and wellbeing of our neighbours across the ‘back of the docks’ communities. We’re standing together with our neighbourhoods, pushing for changes that protect our members and residents, keep our communities intact, and ensure that change finally delivers real, lasting benefits for the common good.

Mears Cats

After 4 years of organising against Mears (formerly Tando), PEACH members won 60% rent reductions for 250 temporary tenant households, all households returned to council management and a £300k rent arrears amnesty. This transfer was completed in 2021.

Love Custom House Now

Love Custom House Now started in autumn 2021 when we started a petition, which we got all our neighbours to sign and took it to the Council offices to demand that they fix our homes and communal areas as soon as possible. The states of disrepair in the area were even worse due to Mears’ neglect of our homes. We won over £1 million refurbishment programme for the area! Now, hundreds of homes in the area have new kitchens, bathrooms and windows.

This hasn’t been without it’s challenges… members have been working hard since then to make sure the council does the repairs and refurbishments efficiently, fairly and everyone’s homes are brought up to good standard. The council have endlessly slipped on their promises, many homes are still waiting for refurbishments that the council promised to finish in 2022 and those with refurbishments complete are seeing the issues come back. It’s not good enough!

Alternative Regeneration

The Alternative Regeneration was initiated in 2016 as a response to the lack of action from the council on the proposed regeneration of Custom House. We decided to develop a resident-led proposal for a Custom House masterplan to show what residents wanted for the regeneration and demonstrate that it was economically viable. The Alternative Regeneration plan was developed over a year with a core team of 5 local residents, 1 union organiser, 2 architects and 2 urban designers all working one day per week, supervised by the PEACH community organisers.

In 2017 the council began to look for a design team to lead the development of phase one of the regeneration. The impact of the Alternative Regeneration Plan led to PEACH being invited to collaborate on writing the design brief for the regeneration which would include the plan. PEACH negotiated for the a coproduction steering group to be set up comprising of elected residents and council officers. PEACH worked closely with the officers to develop plans for the coproduction steering group, trying to make sure that the coproduction process gave the community real power to make decisions.

Following the publication of the Alternative Regeneration Plan as part of the design brief, the Alternative Regeneration Project has been working on supporting the coproduction process, negotiating for a meaningful participatory regeneration and building community power around the landlord offer and resident ballot.

Regeneration Plans: Phase 1 Ballot & The Landlord Offer

In December 2022, the ballot vote for phase 1 of the regeneration plans took place. PEACH members living in the Phase 1 area were not happy with the Landlord Offer and decided they wanted to vote ‘NO’. While the Landlord Offer was much better than offers for other estates across London, thanks for the Alternative Regeneration organising by PEACH members, the offer still did not reflect the promises the Mayor made to PEACH members.

Our campaign to vote no to the ballot lost by a mere seven votes making the majority a ‘YES’ vote for demolition. PEACH members are asking: was this democracy or deceit? Despite this, we managed to pull off one of the closest regeneration ballot results ever seen. PEACH members’ voices were heard, and while we didn’t win, we sent a message loud and clear. In the weeks following, we organised a block meeting with Leslie, Throckmorton and Ethel Road and worked with journalists and other parties to document what had happened. Following the ballot, we will represent resdients in ensuring that the promises made by the council are now kept. Now the Phase 2 ballot is underway and we are hearing from PEACH members in the Phase 2 area that they too are not happy with the Landlord Offer. With these plans set to go ahead, PEACH members fear that they will be pushed out the area.

Permanent Safe Homes NOW

PEACH Housing Club relaunched in September 2023, after a 2 year break, as a regular meeting space for members across all PEACH blocks to come together, make plans and decisions about our housing campaigns, support each other with their housing issues (Member Solidarity), share knowledge and skills, news and wins, whilst getting to know each other and sharing food. In these meetings PEACH members agreed and developed a strategy for our new campaign: Permanent, Safe Homes NOW.

Safe: No more mould, damp, disrepair or overcrowding in our homes; conditions that too often are the difference between life and death.
Permanent:  For Newham Council to facilitate the transfer of all our temporary council tenancies to permanent, secure council tenancies. End the instability and fear of being kicked out of the community we know and love. 
Now: We are demanding this happens now, we won’t wait any longer for regeneration that will push us out of our own community.

We call you to sign and share our petition. We call you to speak and post about our campaign.

We call you to share stories of unsafe housing and temporary tenancies on social media under the hashtag #PermanentSafeHomesNow and #SafeHomesNow and #KeepOurCommunityTogether

If you would like to join the Housing Organising Committee working on this, get in touch with Scott: scott.benton@peach-e16.org.uk . To arrange media interviews, please contact Bryn: bryn.phillips@peach-e16.org.uk or contact us through social media on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook