Focus on life chances

Nunhead and Peckham Rye suffers from multiple deprivation. The statistics bear this out, for example low educational achievement, the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the borough and the highest proportion of long term chronic illness. Supporting young people, tackling poverty and reducing worklessness are key to improving life chances of residents in Nunhead and Peckham Rye.

Supporting young people

We see our young people as being very important. Compared to the rest of Southwark, SE15 has a very high proportion of under 15s. Through education, youth work and supporting their aspirations we can help them achieve their potential. A major challenge is to prevent young people from becoming victims or perpetrators of crime.

Working with partners in the community, the council and other agencies support young people and their families in a variety of ways. In particular it seeks to help achieve young Southwark's outcomes locally.

Spaces for young people include the refurbished BMX track, which with luck will be training young riders for the Olympics. There are also the sports pitches at Spark in Brimmington Park and the supervised activities for eight to thirteen year olds at Central Venture Park in Kelly Avenue.

The local wardens also do a lot of work with young people for example running recycling projects in primary schools, activities in the school holidays with the older children and much more.

Tackling poverty and worklessness

Nearly half the population of Peckham is poor or borderline poor. Today sees Peckham with the highest level of unemployment in Southwark, the highest number of people who have never worked and a lot of residents in low paid jobs. An important aspect of improving local prosperity is removing barriers and increasing our community's access to employment, especially the good jobs in central London, the City and Docklands; areas clearly visible through the glass walls of the Peckham library lifts.