Latchmere is a long narrow stretch of central Battersea, running from the York Road roundabout in the west to the Kingsway College building in Battersea Park Road in the east.

The ward includes many of Battersea's council estates which thousands of commuters each day travel past on the mainline to and from Waterloo, interspersed by small terraced streets either side of Latchmere Road in the middle of the ward.

This is very much urban, inner-city Wandsworth, a million miles figuratively, if not literally from the quiet  avenues of Wandsworth Common or Putney Heath.

The reason why so much of Latchmere ward consists of relatively modern council estate housing is that it runs along the railway line, which was a focal point for German bombers during the blitz, as a major supply route in and out of London.  A lot of what survived the bombing was cleared as part of slum clearance in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In their place were built sprawling estates, like the Battersea fields blocks that line up along Dagnall Street, the St James' Grove estate off Culvert Road dominated by Castlenau - possibly the ugliest tower block in Battersea (although being renovated); and the four- estates that fill the area north of Clapham Junction station between Plough Road and Falcon Road: The Winstanley (home of the Jungle group So Solid Crew), the Kambala, York Gardens and the Falcons, which was notoriously emptied of its council tenants by the Tories in the 1980s, sold off and is now a gated, private estate.  Further to the west can be found the Maysoule estate which in parts is somewhat older, like Dungeness House and Petergate.

The Doddington & Rollo estates were also part of Latchmere ward until boundary changes in 2002; now in Queenstown as too was the Yelverton Road estate, now in St Mary's Park.

Latchmere is a diverse, multi-cultural ward but with some quite severe problems: almost 1 in 3 male adults is unemployed, and 1 in 4 is from a minority ethnic community (although unlike in Tooting, the main minority ethnic groups are african in Battersea). 

In the midst of the ward, wedged between two of the railway lines that dominate the north Battersea landscape can be found a small park; Falcon Park (or, due to its shape, Banana Park as it is sometimes known).  Either side of this can be found the remaining terraced parts of Latchmere: to the east Little India (so-called because is streets are named after parts of this region: Khyber Road, Afghan Road, Kabul Road and so forth).  And to the west the Burns estate, named after Battersea's first Labour MP John Burns - a cottage estate behind Battersea Park Road of tightly packed little terraces.

Facts & figures

Population: 12,593

Housing tenure:
Owner-occupied: 30.3%
Public sector renting: 51.8%
Private sector renting: 13.3%

Household type:
Detached/Semi detached: 3.5%
Terraced: 15.8%
Purpose-built flats: 69.3%
Multi-occupancy house: 9.8%

Employment:
Full-time employed: 45.4%
Self-employed: 6.8%
Unemployed: 5.5%
Retired: 8.7%
Students: 8.8%

Socio-economic bands:
Professional/Managerial: 34.4%
Skilled/unskilled manual: 32.1%

Ethnicity:
White: 63.8%
Black/Minority Ethnic: 36.2%

Source: 2001 Census