Greenwich Council has been accused of "pushing poor people out" after allowing plans for a "polarised community" on the peninsula and repeatedly missing its own affordable housing targets over the past year.

The peninsula is undergoing a £5bn redevelopment with around 10,000 new homes - but the City Peninsula Residents Association say the number of properties for poorer people have been slashed, and those that are left will be hidden away from view.

This year, Greenwich Council agreed an application from developer Knight Dragon to reduce affordable homes on the peninsula from 38 per cent to just 21 per cent, concentrated on three of the 11 plots - with four plots completely empty of low-cost properties.

Association secretary Shane Brownie, 46, said: "They're reducing the proportion overall and creating a polarised community.

"I'm concerned about the need to deliver mixed and balanced communities. What the council has done is a deal with a developer undermines that. 

“We had a fantastic opportunity here to build an all new, mixed, sustainable community. It's a wasted opportunity."

Meanwhile, records show the council's planning board waived its 35 per cent target for affordable housing - defined as socially rented or intermediate priced homes - for almost every other big development it approved in the past 12 months.

The decisions included huge schemes like Cross Quarter in Abbey Wood - where just 11 per cent of homes will be affordable - and the redevelopment of the Alcatel-Lucent factory in Greenwich, where only 15 per cent are for the less well off.

Aside from the peninsula plots, the only exception was outline permission given to redevelopment of four Woolwich estates - though even their proportion of affordable housing is drastically reduced from the schemes they are replacing.

In many cases, developers used viability reports - documents which are not made public - to show the housing mix was necessary to make their schemes work financially.

Mr Brownie will now go to a tribunal in a bid to force the peninsula viability report's publication

Branch secretary of Unite Onay Kasab said the lack of affordable housing was a major concern for his members.

He said: “It’s similar to what’s happened at the old Ferrier estate in Kidbrooke where they gentrified the area and have pushed poorer people out.

“We thought with a change in leadership we'd see something different.”

He went on: “You do wonder how these big companies manage to have such a hold over the politicians where what developers want is considered more important than the people they represent.”

A spokeswoman for Greenwich Council said: “The Royal Borough of Greenwich seeks to secure 35 per cent affordable housing on all developments of 10 or more residential units.

“In the past this level has been achieved as developers have accessed funding from the government’s affordable housing programme – meaning they can provide more homes sold at an affordable rate and still have financially viable schemes.

“This government has introduced ‘a viability test’, which is independently assessed and if a scheme is unviable with a particular percentage then The Royal Borough of Greenwich has to accept that.

 “Furthermore the government has greatly reduced this funding in recent years, meaning many developers - in all parts of the country - can simply no longer afford to provide as many affordable homes in new developments.

 “It has meant that more recently, in order to see affordable housing – and much needed new homes - built at all, that developers are having to present schemes to planning boards with a reduced level of affordable housing.  This is the case particularly in London and the Royal Borough of Greenwich is no exception.

“The Royal Borough continues to seek to secure the highest possible levels of affordable housing that are financially viable in individual new developments.”