SE1 6BF Southwark

Live postcode, introduced May 2014. Ward: Chaucer. 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 B (47% of about 600 homes).

Sources: Valuation Office Agency, Council Tax: stock of properties, homes at 31 March 2026 (counts rounded to the nearest 10; some small counts withheld), 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): Central Activities Zone, Central Activities Zone, Central Activities Zone, Elephant and Castle Major Town Centre, Elephant and Castle Major Town Centre.
  • Tree preservation orders: 3 protected trees within 100 m of this postcode.
  • Green belt: no.

Brownfield land registered for housing within 1.0 km

  • West Combe Apartments, 123 Newington Causeway SE1 6BN, permissioned (180 m)
  • West Combe Apartments, 123 Newington Causeway SE1 6BN, permissioned (180 m)
  • Plot H4 Within Land Bounded By,New Kent Road,The Elephant Park And Elephant One,SE1, permissioned (180 m)
  • Salvation Army Headquarters, Newington Causeway: up to 72 homes, not permissioned (200 m)
  • 87,Newington Causeway,,SE1 6BD (230 m)
  • Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre and London College of Communications, full permission (230 m)
  • Plot H5 Within Land Bound By,New Kent Road,Rodney Place, Heygate Street,SE17, permissioned (240 m)
  • 16,Harper Road,,SE1 6AD, permissioned (240 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

Rivers, the sea or surface water: in this postcode, 0 addresses are in areas at high risk, 0 at medium risk and 19 at low risk. Each address counts once, at the higher of its rivers-and-sea and surface-water risk.

Rivers and the sea alone: of the 19 homes the Environment Agency counts, 0 are in areas at high risk, 0 medium, 0 low and 19 very low.

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 3. Zone 3 is a 1% (1 in 100) or greater annual chance of flooding from rivers, or 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 1 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 2024–25200 m
London Waterloo East 6.8 million journeys in 2024–251.3 km
London Bridge 55 million journeys in 2024–251.3 km
Underground, metro or tramElephant & Castle Underground Station270 m
Borough Underground Station690 m
Kennington Underground Station1.0 km
Bus stops28 stops within 400 m, 74 within 800 m; nearest Elephant & Castle / New Kent Road80 m
Bus or coach stationVictoria Station3.4 km
Ferry terminalBankside Pier Southwark1.4 km
Car parks2 within 800 m; nearest Borough Road Pay & Stay Car Park420 m
EV charging points53 within 1.6 km; nearest ubitricity110 m
Airport with scheduled flightsLondon City Airport LCY10.6 km
Nearest large airportLondon Heathrow Airport LHR25.4 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 surgeries9 practices within 1.6 km; nearest Falmouth Road Group Practice290 m
Pharmacies26 pharmacies within 1.6 km; nearest Chana Chemist250 m
NHS dentists25 practices within 1.6 km; nearest Dental Surgery130 m
HospitalGuy's Hospital1.1 km
Police stationSouthwark Police Station470 m
Cash machines4 machines within 800 m; nearest Payzone250 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 garden19 within 800 m; nearest Newington Gardens 1.3 ha160 m
Largest park within 800 mGeraldine Mary Harmsworth Park 6.4 ha640 m
Play area36 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 1,770 m²130 m
Playing field1 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 3,160 m²640 m
Allotments2 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 590 m²510 m

Within 800 m: 19 parks and gardens, 19 hectares in all.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is Obelisk at the Centre of St George's Circus, a listed building (Grade II*), 650 m north-west. 177 listed buildings are within 1.0 km, 3 of them Grade II*.

Historic places
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Obelisk at the Centre of St George's CircusListed building, Grade II*650 m north-west
Church of St George the MartyrListed building, Grade II*720 m north-east
Number 142 and Attached RailingsListed building, Grade II*830 m north-east
Roman riverboat, 136m west of Greenwood TheatreScheduled monument1.0 km north-east
Abbey buildings, BermondseyScheduled monument1.2 km east
Romano-British bath house and medieval remains at 11-15 Borough High StreetScheduled monument1.3 km north-east
Lambeth PalaceRegistered park or garden, Grade II1.5 km west
Kennington ParkRegistered park or garden, Grade II1.6 km south-west
Tower of LondonWorld Heritage Site2.0 km north-east
Natural landmarks within 5.0 km
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Upper PoolTidal water1.9 km north-east
King's ReachTidal water1.9 km north-west
St Katharine Docks BasinLake or reservoir2.2 km north-east
Holly Grove ShrubberyWood3.3 km south-east
RedriffWetland3.9 km east
Stave HillHill4.0 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: 300 residents in 137 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 1515%17%
Aged 65 and over8%18%

Homes

Around this postcodeEngland
Owned (outright or with a mortgage)12%61%
Owned outright2%33%
Shared ownership2%1%
Social rented63%17%
Private rented23%21%

Work and commuting

Around this postcodeEngland
Adults (16 and over) in work68%57%
Unemployment (of those working or looking for work)7%6%
Retired (of adults)8%22%
Long-term sick or disabled (of adults)4%4%
Work mainly from home (of those in work)40%32%
Travel to work by car or van4%48%
By train, Underground, metro or tram14%4%
By any public transport, including bus40%8%
On foot or by bicycle14%10%
Work within 10 km of home (of those who travel to work)81%65%
Work 30 km or more away1%8%

Education and languages

Around this postcodeEngland
Degree or other higher qualification, Level 4+ (of adults)50%34%
No qualifications15%18%
Apprenticeship as highest qualification3%5%
Main language English (aged 3 and over)78%91%
Cannot speak English well or at all5%2%

Deprivation

The neighbourhood around this postcode is in decile 3 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 Meadow Row.