SE1 1RF Southwark

Live postcode, introduced October 2005. Ward: Borough & Bankside. Region: London.

Streets

Council tax

What each band costs in Southwark in 2026-27: Band D £1,967 a year on average, including the police, fire and any county and parish charges.

ABCDEFGH
£1,312£1,530£1,749£1,967£2,404£2,842£3,279£3,935

Homes by band in the neighbourhood around this postcode: most are in band E (19% of about 1,340 homes).

Sources: Valuation Office Agency, Council Tax: stock of properties, homes at 31 March 2026 (counts rounded to the nearest 10), for the neighbourhood (census area of about 700 homes) around it, not just this postcode; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, council tax levels 2026-27. Bands are charged as fixed shares of Band D; the actual bill depends on the parish and on discounts such as the single-person discount. Check a home's own band with the official council tax band checker.

Planning and heritage

  • Conservation area: no postcode centre in this postcode is in one.
  • Listed buildings within 100 m of this postcode: none.
  • Article 4 direction (removing permitted development rights): Bankside and Borough District Town Centre, Bankside and Borough District Town Centre, Central Activities Zone, Central Activities Zone, Central Activities Zone.
  • Tree preservation orders: none recorded, though not every council has published theirs.
  • Green belt: no.

Brownfield land registered for housing within 1.0 km

  • 222-224,Borough High Street,,SE1 1JX (100 m)
  • 5,Vine Yard,,SE1 1QL (120 m)
  • Swan Street Cluster, not permissioned (130 m)
  • 4-7 Sudrey Street SE1 1PF, permissioned (150 m)
  • 4-7 Sudrey Street SE1 1PF, permissioned (150 m)
  • 325,Borough High Street,King's Place,SE1 1JH (190 m)
  • 137 Southwark Bridge Road SE1 0EY, permissioned (200 m)
  • 137 Southwark Bridge Road SE1 0EY, permissioned (200 m)

Source: planning.data.gov.uk (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), compiled from councils and, for listed buildings, Historic England's National Heritage List. Conservation areas, Article 4 directions, tree preservation areas and the green belt are checked at each postcode's centre. Listed buildings and protected trees are counted within 100 m of this postcode. Councils publish Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders and brownfield registers to different standards, and some not yet. Planning applications are not here: there is no national open record of them yet.

Flood risk

No address in this postcode is in an area at high, medium or low risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water. The rest are in areas at very low risk: less than a 0.1% (1 in 1,000) chance a year.

Rivers and the sea alone: no home is in an area at risk.

High: 3.3% (1 in 30) or more chance of flooding a year. Medium: 1% to 3.3%. Low: 0.1% to 1%. Very low: under 0.1%. The rivers and sea figures allow for flood defences. Counts cover whole postcodes, which can include other streets.

Flood zone for planning: the postcode centre is in flood zone 2. Zone 2 is between 0.1% and 1% a year from rivers (0.1% and 0.5% from the sea), ignoring defences.

Sources: Environment Agency Flood risk: postcode search tool data (loaded 29 October 2026), Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea: postcodes in areas at risk (loaded 29 October 2026) and Flood Map for Planning (loaded 28 October 2026). Flood zones are checked at each postcode's centre point. These are models of areas, which their publishers say are not suitable for showing whether an individual property is at risk, and they do not cover flooding from sewers or drains. Check an address on the official long-term flood risk service.

Height above sea level

The postcode's addresses are about 5 m above sea level.

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Terrain 50, July 2026: the height of the ground on a 50 m grid, read at each address, in metres above Ordnance Datum (mean sea level at Newlyn). It is the lie of the land, not floor or threshold levels, and is accurate to a few metres. Being low-lying is not in itself a flood risk; the flood section above says what the flood maps show.

Broadband

Superfast 100%, ultrafast 100%, gigabit 100% of premises; 0% cannot get 10 Mbit/s. Ofcom Connected Nations, data as at January 2026.

Getting around

Sources: Department for Transport, NaPTAN (every public transport stop), as at 31 October 2026; Office of Rail and Road, Estimates of station usage 2024–25 (which stations are on the National Rail network, and their journeys: entries and exits in the year to March); OurAirports (public domain, kept by volunteers); car parks and charging points from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and others: not an official register, so some will be missing, private or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre, not routes, and say nothing about how often anything runs. Stations opened since the end of ORR's year appear when ORR publishes the next one, each December; heritage railways are left out.

NearestDistance
Railway stationsElephant and Castle 2.2 million journeys in 2024–25800 m
London Bridge 55 million journeys in 2024–25800 m
London Waterloo East 6.8 million journeys in 2024–251.0 km
Underground, metro or tramBorough Underground Station160 m
London Bridge Underground Station710 m
Southwark Underground Station720 m
Bus stops21 stops within 400 m, 66 within 800 m; nearest Borough Station The Borough110 m
Bus or coach stationVictoria Station3.5 km
Ferry terminalBankside Pier Southwark830 m
Car parks5 within 800 m; nearest Borough Road Pay & Stay Car Park240 m
EV charging points39 within 1.6 km; nearest bp pulse Charging Station430 m
Airport with scheduled flightsLondon City Airport LCY10.5 km
Nearest large airportLondon Heathrow Airport LHR25.5 km

Local services

Sources: NHS Organisation Data Service, as at 31 October 2026: GP practices, community pharmacies and dental practices with an NHS contract, open now, each placed at the centre of its postcode; hospitals are NHS trust and Welsh health board sites named as hospitals, and may not have an emergency department. Police stations and cash machines from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings: not an official register, so some will be missing or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre. Nothing here says whether a practice is taking new patients or a dentist new NHS patients.

NearestDistance
GP surgeries8 practices within 1.6 km; nearest Falmouth Road Group Practice500 m
Pharmacies22 pharmacies within 1.6 km; nearest Qrystal Pharmacy140 m
NHS dentists24 practices within 1.6 km; nearest Borough Dental Practice140 m
HospitalGuy's Hospital670 m
Police stationSouthwark Police Station160 m
Cash machines5 machines within 800 m; nearest Payzone520 m

Parks and green space

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Open Greenspace, April 2026: public parks and gardens, play spaces, playing fields and allotments, with their entrances. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre to a site's nearest entrance (or its edge where none is recorded), not walking routes; sizes are the area OS maps for each site. Some sites, such as school playing fields, may not be open to the public.

NearestDistance
Park or garden12 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 6,190 m²130 m
Largest park within 800 mTabard Gardens 1.7 ha410 m
Play area25 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 330 m²130 m
Playing field1 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 3,160 m²590 m
AllotmentsUnnamed 590 m²1.0 km

Within 800 m: 12 parks and gardens, 7.9 hectares in all.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is Church of St George the Martyr, a listed building (Grade II*), 220 m east. 244 listed buildings are within 1.0 km, 2 of them Grade I and 15 of them Grade II*.

Historic places
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Church of St George the MartyrListed building, Grade II*220 m east
St Saviour’s War Memorial, SouthwarkListed building, Grade II*490 m north-east
The George InnListed building, Grade I530 m north-east
Roman riverboat, 136m west of Greenwood TheatreScheduled monument570 m east
Number 142 and Attached RailingsListed building, Grade II*620 m east
The Globe TheatreScheduled monument650 m north
Romano-British bath house and medieval remains at 11-15 Borough High StreetScheduled monument690 m north-east
Inner TempleRegistered park or garden, Grade II1.5 km north-west
Tower of LondonWorld Heritage Site1.6 km north-east
Middle TempleRegistered park or garden, Grade II1.6 km north-west
Natural landmarks within 5.0 km
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Upper PoolTidal water1.6 km east
West DockLake or reservoir1.8 km north-east
St Katharine Docks BasinLake or reservoir1.8 km north-east
RedriffWetland3.6 km east
Holly Grove ShrubberyWood3.8 km south-east
Stave HillHill3.8 km east

Sources: Historic England's registers through planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG), and Cadw through DataMapWales (Welsh Government): World Heritage Sites within 10.0 km, battlefields within 5.0 km, registered parks and gardens within 3.0 km, scheduled monuments within 2.0 km, and Grade I and II* listed buildings within 1.0 km. Ordnance Survey, OS Open Names, October 2026: named hills, valleys, lakes, woods, wetlands and coast (it has no rivers). Distances are in a straight line to the middle of each site, and being on a register does not mean there is public access.

Air quality

Source: Defra, modelled background air pollution, annual means for 2024, for the 1 km square that holds the postcode's centre. These are background levels, away from the kerb: beside a busy road nitrogen dioxide in particular can be several times higher. UK limits are the legal annual limits for England and Wales; the World Health Organization's 2021 guidelines are much stricter, and most towns and cities are above them.

Annual means in µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic metre of air)
PollutantHereUK limitWHO guideline
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2)28.14010
Fine particles (PM2.5)10.1205
Particles (PM10)17.14015

All three are within the UK legal limits; all three are above the WHO guideline, as in most towns and cities.

Road and rail noise

Source: Defra, strategic noise mapping Round 4 (England), modelled for 2021 and published in December 2023, and its airport maps of the same round for the fifteen largest English airports, published in April 2026: Lden, the average sound level over a whole day with extra weight for the evening and night, on a 10 m grid, read at each address. These are models of traffic, not measurements; they leave out smaller airports and airfields, industry and neighbours, and a room at the back of a house is often much quieter than the front. The World Health Organization's guidelines are 53 dB for road traffic, 54 dB for railways and 45 dB for aircraft (below the lowest level shown here).

Noise figures are still being loaded.

People and work

Source: ONS Census 2021, taken on 21 March 2021, for the Output Area (a small census area of about 125 households) that this postcode is in: 391 residents in 205 households. The census was taken during a lockdown, so working from home is high and travel to work low compared with now. ONS swaps a few records between neighbouring areas and adds small amounts of noise to counts to protect privacy, so small differences mean little. Industry is not published for areas this small.

Who lives here

Around this postcodeEngland
Median age3440
Children under 1514%17%
Aged 65 and over5%18%

Homes

Around this postcodeEngland
Owned (outright or with a mortgage)21%61%
Owned outright4%33%
Shared ownership2%1%
Social rented37%17%
Private rented39%21%

Work and commuting

Around this postcodeEngland
Adults (16 and over) in work72%57%
Unemployment (of those working or looking for work)8%6%
Retired (of adults)5%22%
Long-term sick or disabled (of adults)5%4%
Work mainly from home (of those in work)64%32%
Travel to work by car or van5%48%
By train, Underground, metro or tram11%4%
By any public transport, including bus17%8%
On foot or by bicycle13%10%
Work within 10 km of home (of those who travel to work)91%65%
Work 30 km or more away2%8%

Education and languages

Around this postcodeEngland
Degree or other higher qualification, Level 4+ (of adults)61%34%
No qualifications13%18%
Apprenticeship as highest qualification2%5%
Main language English (aged 3 and over)78%91%
Cannot speak English well or at all4%2%

Deprivation

The neighbourhood around this postcode is in decile 4 of 10 on the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, where 1 is the most deprived tenth of England's 33,755 neighbourhoods and 10 the least.

Source: English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), by LSOA (about 1,500 people), through the ONS Postcode Directory. The index combines income, employment, health, education, crime, housing and living environment; it ranks areas against each other and does not describe any one household. Ranks in England and Wales are worked out separately and cannot be compared.

The full dossier for this postcode's main street is on Lant Street.