About South Bank Employers’ Group

South Bank is one of London’s great success stories – an internationally recognised destination that receives nearly 30 million annual visitors and generates over £4 billion of economic value each year. 

South Bank Employers’ Group (SBEG) is a not-for-profit membership organisation which represents the collective ambition of the area’s leading businesses, cultural and arts organisations, social enterprises, landowners, developers, public agencies and education providers. 

We work on behalf of employers and businesses, employees, residents, students and visitors: We set the agenda, facilitate co-operation and deliver programmes that bring improvement and change. 

We achieve this by acting as a catalyst, ensuring that South Bank is a desirable destination for culture, business and pleasure; a place that supports and encourages investment and business growth; has a flourishing, healthy and cohesive residential community; is welcoming to visitors and tourists; and is internationally renowned as a clean, safe, friendly, dynamic and diverse area of London. 

In the late 1980s, London’s South Bank was a bleak and unwelcoming place.  

Synonymous with urban decay, entrenched social problems – including the infamous “Cardboard City” under the Waterloo gyratory – with inadequate investment from local and central government, the area between Lambeth Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, and south to St George’s Circus, had an image problem that is scarcely credible today. 

SBEG was formed in 1991 by its founding members: Coin Street Community Builders, ITV, BFI, National Theatre, Southbank Centre and Shell UK. 

The area is unique in London due to the many different landowners, but this group had a far-reaching vision of a better South Bank and worked together to lobby for greater investment as well as helping to shape and deliver improvements. 

Over the years more organisations joined SBEG and now some of the nation’s greatest cultural institutions, global enterprises, and most recognisable brands are members including CO-RE, Ogilvy, Network Rail, Merlin Entertainments, Kings College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

You can see all of our current members here: https://sbeg.co.uk/members.

It’s fair to say we think big, and we make an impact. SBEG is a fascinating and complex organisation which has achieved an incredible amount over the last 32 years.

• We helped to create South Bank Partnership, publishing the South Bank Manifesto, a powerful statement of the shared priorities of the area, endorsed and supported by South Bank’s two Members of Parliament. 
• We coordinated the award winning Accessible South Bank project making detailed information available about visiting for those with accessibility needs.  
• We established South Bank Business Watch, which brings together security leads from the major organisations in the neighbourhood to collectively combat crime and our own South Bank Patrol provide a visible enforcement presence in the area. 

• We ran Waterloo Job Shop from 2002 until 2021 helping thousands of residents into employment. 
• We established the South Bank Construction Co-Ordination Group which brings together developers, community representatives and infrastructure providers to coordinate activity and minimise disruption caused by construction. 

You can find a timeline of notable SBEG and South Bank events on our website here: https://sbeg.co.uk/about .