Environment and Housing

Environment and housing provides a wide range of services to make Southwark

• Cleaner
• Greener
• Safer

In addition we aim to make Southwark a place where people choose to live and have access to a quality home. As the largest landlord in London, and sixth largest in the country, environment
and housing has a key role in achieving this.

One of our department’s biggest jobs is cleaning and maintaining the streets, roads and pavements of Southwark, which includes monitoring parking.

We collect your refuse and recycling, and we educate people about the environment.

We provide a wide range of services from graffiti removal to planting trees. Find out about the services we offer in your area.

Housing management runs eight area housing offices (AHOs) offering tenants’ services and a cashiers service for rent collection. Find out where your nearest area housing office is.

The AHOs deal with rent arrears monitoring, repairs and maintenance, waiting list applications, empty properties, estate services and monitoring contracts including estate cleaning and grounds maintenance.

There is a separate leasehold management unit that deals with right to buy applications and leasehold service charge collection.

Southwark’s culture, libraries and learning is our responsibility too. This includes

• Museums
• Art galleries
• Tourist attractions
• Historic sites

Find out more about the culture in Southwark.

We also look after the libraries in Southwark including the award winning Peckham Library.

You can

• borrow books
• borrow CDs
• borrow films
• use the internet
• read the newspapers
• attend courses to learn skills like Information Technology (IT).

Find out about Southwark's libraries.

All the

• parks
• open spaces
• cemeteries
• crematoriums

in Southwark are maintained by us. 

There are over 130 parks, greens and open spaces with facilities like boating lakes, gardens, cafes, tennis courts, bowling greens and football pitches.

Find out more about Southwark's parks and it's cemeteries and crematoriums.

We are also responsible for the leisure centres and sport development in Southwark.

There are many sports and leisure facilities in the borough and we try to make sure that whatever sport you enjoy there is a place in Southwark where you can enjoy it.

Find out about Southwark's leisure centres and sport and physical activity in Southwark.




We're doing lots of things in Southwark to make the borough a safer place. Find out what we are doing to make Southwark safer.

Contact us

Tel: 020 7525 2000
environment@southwark.gov.uk