Labour COuncil | >Re-PHOTO

Central Hill Estate – 2016

Central Hill Estate: Tuesday 2nd February 2016 was a bright winter day in London and i decided to go and take a look – and of course to photograph – the Central Hill Estate on the edge of Lambeth, which I had heard and read much about as Lambeth Coucil weree planning to demolish it.

You can read an excellent account of the building of the estate by architect Kate Macintosh on the Twentieth Century Society website, which records the care taken by lead architect Rosemary Stjernstedt (1912-1998) and her team, who had previuosly been head-hunted by Lambeth’s Chief Architect and Planner Ted Hollamby.

As well as planning to make the most of the steeply descending site with its extensive views across London the plans presevered as many as possible of the existing mature trees and included a Doctor’s group practice, a youth club, an old persons’ day centre and shops, open space, play areas, community buildings and a district heating system.

The Twentieth Century Society also supported the two applications for the listing of this site, turned down in 2016 and again in 2021, although the reasons for the refusal seem increasingly spurious and I think based on political pressure rather than architectural evidence.

I wrote about it at some length after my visit in February 2016 on My London Dairy and have visited it again on several occasions since, not lease to see the exhibition of alternative plans to meet Lambeth Council’s stated objectives for the demolition and rebuildling by careful and much lower cost development on the existing estate which would retain its essential excellent design.

Here I’ll quote a part of what I wrote then, beginning with my introduction.

“There is only one real problem with the Central Hill Estate in Upper Norwood. Which is that the estate, owned by Lambeth Council, was built in an age when architects and planners were proud to design the best they could and councils keen to house their tenants to the highest standards, but it has lasted into an age where government policy aims to get rid of all social housing and councils are out to join developers in profiting from redeveloping with lower standards and higher densities for private sale.”

“The whole is on a much more human scale than other large developments of the era, with a design that has proved successful in encouraging community. People like living on the estate and all I talked to when walking around taking pictures were very positive – except for the one council employee who came out from the upper Norwood Community Resource Centre to ask me what I was doing. “

“A survey answered by 150 residents recently found only two in favour of it being demolished. It has been a safe place to live, with below average crime levels – perhaps having the police station at its south-east corner has helped.”

“Like all social housing, the estate has suffered from neglect and poor maintenance, and the properties need refurbishment and bringing up to modern energy standards. Considering the age of the estate the cost per dwelling assessed by Lambeth Council is relatively moderate and only a fraction of that of new building.”

You can read the alternative proposals by Architects for Social Housing – Simon Elmer and Geraldine Dening – prepared for the residents of Central Hill estate between May 2015 and March 2017 in response to the threat of demolition of 456 homes on the estate by Lambeth Labour Council.

In the introduction to the ASH report they write “However, there is nothing, either in current government legislation or in the housing policies of the Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat parties, that will stop councils from following the same practices Lambeth council employed to push through their plans to demolish Central Hill estate against both the wishes of residents and the demonstrable social, financial and environmental benefits of the design alternatives.” Lambeth Council refused to seriously consider their alternative suggestions.

Little has changed since then although we are now much more aware of the environmental impacts of demolition and rebuilding, and some greater lip-service was been paid the the “wishes of residents“, but the changes in planning recently announced by Labour had they been in place back in 2016 would almost certainly have meant that Central Hill would not now still be standing.

The fight to save Central Hill continues, with the Facebook Group ‘Save Central Hill Estate‘.

You can read more and see many more pictures – it was an estate I found hard to stop photographing – at Central Hill Estate.

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Fight4Aylesbury Exhibition

Last Friday I went to the first day of the Fight4Aylesbury exhibition which continues until 23 April 2023. It’s an unusual exhibition and one that is worth visiting if you can get to south London before it ends,

The exibition celebrates the struggle by residents on the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark to stay in their homes since the estate was first threatened in 1999 and takes over the flat of one of those still remaining, Aysen who writes:

Welcome to my home.

I am opening the doors to my flat for a collective clelbration of 20+ years of housing struggles to defend our council homes against social cleansing and gentrification. Our fight is ongoing.

Since 1999 the council has subjected us with privitisation, “re-generation” and now demolition. We, Aylesbury residents, other council tenant all over the country, and our supporters, have been resisting and are still resisting and defending our homes.

My home tells the story of this struggle.
Aysen

The Aylesbury estate, designed by Hans Peter “Felix” Trenton was one of the largest areas of council housing in Europe, built from 1963 to 1977 with 2,700 dwellings for around 10,000 residents in an area containing some earlier social housing a short distance south of the Elephant and Castle between East Street market and Burgess Park.

There are a number of large blocks of various heights, from 4 to 14 floors, all well designed and built to the high standards of the era, with rather larger rooms and more solid walls than current buildings. The estate also had a central boiler to supply heat more economically to the flats.

Southwark neglected the estate in the 1980s and 1990s, failing to carry out necessary maintenance and the estate and the estate environment became in poor conditions. The heating system in particular suffered. Southwark began to use this and the neighbouring Heygate Estate as ‘sink estates’, deliberately moving in families with various social problems and people with mental health issues. It was because the estate had become unpopular that Aysen, who had to leave Turkey after the 1980 coup, was able to get a flat here with her sister in 1993.

The estate came to get a reputation as “one of the most notorious estates in the United Kingdom“, reinforced by it becoming a popular area for TV crews filming “murder scenes, gun and drug storylines and gang-related crimes in soaps and gritty dramas.” In particular from 2004-15 Channel 4 used it in an “ident” for which they had added “washing lines, shopping trolley, rubbish bags and satellite dishes” to create what was described as “a desolate concrete dystopia.”

Its poor reputation led Tony Blair to hold his first speech to the press as Prime Minister in 1997 on the estate, promising that the government would care for the poorest in society. It was a promise that he and later prime ministers have spectacularly failed to keep.

Southwark Council’s response to the estate’s decay they had overseen was to try and wash their hands of it by trying to transfer it to a private housing association to be redeveloped. But a campaign by residents in 2001 led to this being soundly rejected – not surprisingly they voted against demolition, displacement, rising rents and smaller flat sizes.

Undeterred, Southwark decided to go ahead with the redevelopment themselves, producing new plans for demolition in 2005. This time they didn’t bother to ballot the residents.

*Solidarity collage which includes some of my images*

The plans were for a 20 year phased demolition, with rebuilding of modern blocks by a housing association. The generous public space of the estate would be reduced and the housing density almost doubled. The first phase was completed in 2013 and Phase 2 is currently underway. All four phases are due for completion around 2032, and the 12 storey Wendover block in which the exhibition is being held has already been largely emptied of residents and is expected to be demolished around the end of this year.

Residents have continued their fight to stop the redevelopment, with protests and in January 2015 housing activists and squatters occupied flats in one of the emptied blocks. Moving from block to block they were finally evicted 18 days later. The squatters occupied another building and again were evicted. Southwark spent £140,000 on a fence, completely destroyed all bathrooms, toilets, pipes and kitchens in empty properties and spent £705,000 on security guards to prevent further occupation.

Other protests took place, including one in which part of the fence was torn down, and various protests at council meetings. Aylesbury residents also joined with housing activists in Southwark and across London at various other protests. But although these brought the Aylesbury campaign and the scandals over housing to national attention, the demolition continues.

Part of the scandal has been the “well-oiled revolving door” between the council – councillors and officers – and developers. The toilet in the exhibition flat is devoted to Southwark Council, and in particular for its Leader for more than a decade Peter John, who stepped down in 2020. He described his years as a “decade of Delivery“; community; anti-gentrification collective Southwark Notes call it “a Wild West gold rush for developers.” A 2013 report showed that “20 percent of Southwark’s 63 councillors work as lobbyists” for developers in the planning industry.

Similar estates built with the same system elsewhere have been successfully refurbished at relatively low cost to bring insulation and other aspects up to current standards. These buildings will probably last into the next century and their demolition is expensive and incredibly wasteful of both the huge amount of energy that was embedded in them and and energy require to demolish and rebuild.

There is more to the exhibition – and you can see some hints of it in the pictures. After visiting the show I walked up four floors to the top of Wendover for the view. The windows were rather dirty and most fixed shut but I did find a few places where they were open slightly to let me take photographs of the views across London.

You can see a different set of pictures in my album Fight4Aylesbury Exhibition.

Croydon Snouts in Trough Protest – 2016

Unless you were a reader of Private Eye, one of the last bastions of investigative journalism in the UK, or a reader of Inside Croydon, which has been casting its critical on-line eye of the dubious activities of the local council since 2010 you would probably have been unaware of what was happening in the Borough when Class War held this protest in 2016.

Things came into more general light a few years later, particularly after the council collapsed into bankruptcy in 2018, largely due to attempting to become a major housing developer with poor governance and few financial controls , as well as some risky investments to become a property developer. These led eventually in September 2020 to chief executive Jo Negrini leaving with a golden handshake allegedly worth £440,000 for her failures and to council leader Tony Newman resigning after 6 years in charge of this Labour run council.

Inside Croydon quotes Private Eye that “… thanks to the wonder of revolving doors, ‘Negreedy’ has resurfaced as a ‘cities and development consultant’ on the books of Arup, the giant engineering and planning specialists”. This was one of the firms that “she favoured so lavishly when she was frittering tax-payers’ money“, and a textbook example of the careers of may who have left well-paid council employment to move into the private sector.

And as they say, her Brainchild Brick by Brick, and its £200million borrowings produced precious few new homes. Negrini also oversaw the “£70million Fairfield Halls refurbishment, which delivered rich profits for a handful of consultants but little in the way of the long-promised improvements to the much-loved arts centre.” In 2022 Croydon Council’s report on possible fraud linked to Fairfield Halls and council-owned developer Brick by Brick was passed to the Metropolitan Police, despite determined efforts by some councillors to keep it private. Croydon Council then took Inside Croydon to the High Court for having published documents and information about the report. The case was thrown out, with Private Eye describing it making the council “a national laughing stock.”

*Ian Bone & Jane Nicholl shelter from the rain*

Class War has strong links with the London Borough of Croydon, and with the South Norwood Tourist Board who on 21st December 2020 organised a Solstice ceremony “sacrificing Croydon Council to the Gods, so that the sun may once again rise on our benighted borough.” Unfortunately I was unable to attend that event bacause of Covid restrictions but there is an impressive short video on their web site, also available on YouTube. Apparently two Conservative Councillors objected to the video and had it removed from the Facebook page of the Save South Norwood Library campaign. Previously held by Labour the council now has no party with an overall majority, 34 Labour councillors, 32 Conservative councillors, two Green councillors and one Liberal Democrat councillor.

Class War came to the recently set up Croydon Boxpark on Tuesday 22nd November 2016 to protest against property developers and council leaders who were attending the Develop Croydon Conference, aimed at transforming Croydon into a desirable metropolitan hub with luxury apartments, prestige offices and the capital’s latest Westfield.

The lunchtime protest demanded that Croydon be developed to meet the needs of the inhabitants rather than to line the pockets of developers and become a piggy bank of largely empty flats and offices owned by overseas investors. Their protest led conference organisers to cancel a scheduled walking tour of Croydon and few of the attendees came to the boxpark where they had been scheduled to lunch, probably finding plusher restaurants in the town centre. The few councillors and property developers who did arriave and walked past the protest to enter the site and were greeted with shouts of ‘Scum!’ and ‘Snouts in the trough!’

Class War had no issues with the boxpark, though some considered it a rather hipster venue, but it is clearly a leisure facility for the people of Croydon. Box Park owner Roger Wade came to talk with the protesters and invited them to come and talk with him at a later date as he felt they had views in common about the future of the town.

A short thunderstorm brought a temporary halt to the protest, with some of us sheltering in a bus shelter before returning to picket. Some used a banner as an umbrella and marched to the East Croydon Station entrance to the Boxpark for a brief protest there, while others continued opposite the conference. Mark Eaton, seen as the BBC developers’ apologist got a noisy welcome as he walked back into the venue for the afternoon session. A security office came out to harass Class War as the area in front of the offices is private land – and told me I could not take picture. I continued to do so. Police soon moved the protesters back to the opposite side of the road where they had been protesting earlier. Soon after the protesters decided that everyone would now be inside the conference and ended the protest. I walked with them to the Dog and Duck before leaving for home.

More at Class War Croydon ‘Snouts in the trough’.

Focus E15 Occupy Police Station for Newham Show

*Jasmin Stone speaks at rally outside Newham Police station*

Focus E15 Occupy Police Station for Newham Show – Sunday 10th July 2016

*At the street stall outside Newham Town Hall*

It says something about Newham’s elected Mayor from 2012 to 2018 that the major public event in the borough was called The Mayor’s Newham Show. It should of course have been the People’s Newham Show or even just the Newham Show. But Newham was a monolithic Labour fiefdom, ruled by Sir Robin Wales, and the event, paid for by the people, was very much a PR exercise for the Mayor.

*A worker for street homeless in Newham speaks*

Housing action group Focus E15 were ejected from the Mayor’s Newham Show in 2014 when they approached the Mayor with protesting the borough’s housing policies – and Robin Wales was found guilty of a breach of the code of conduct by Newham Standards Committee.

The following year the council ordered private security to stop campaigners handing out leaflets at the show and members of the Focus E15 campaign were very forcibly thrown to the ground and evicted from the park in East Ham where the show is held.

*They march the few yards to the police station*

So in 2016, instead of trying to leaflet inside the Newham Show, the Focus E15 Campaign set up a stall outside Newham Town Hall on Barking Road close to the park and spoke and handed out leaflets to people walking to the show in Central Park. Their campaign began when they faced eviction from the Focus 15 hostel in central Stratford when Newham Council axed the grant and the council attempted to disperse them to private rented properties in cities including Liverpool and Manchester and to Wales.

They refused, demanding to be rehoused within reach of families, friends and facilities they were familiar with, protesting the council’s policy of social cleansing, though various marches, high profile protests and occupations of empty council properties. Their campaign, which included a weekly street stall on Stratford Broadway widened from being a personal campaign into a ‘Housing for All’ campaign against Newham and other councils who are failing in their duty to provide housing for ordinary people across London.

*A woman on her way to Newham Show says everyone should kick the Mayor*

Focus E15 continue to speak out and defend tenants from evictions and get suitable rehousing for those made homeless in Newham, while continuing to attack the council’s failure to provide adequate housing in Newham for long-term residents while hundreds of council homes have been empty for over ten years and the council encourages the building of huge areas of luxury flats for overseas investors and rich newcomers.

*‘Room for Everyone – No Room for Racism’*

Among the many empty properties in Newham was the former police station on the corner of Barking Road opposite the Town Hall on High Street South leading to Central Park. After an hour or so of campaigning from the street stall they moved the short distance to this and four people climbed onto the two balconies with banners while the others held a rally in front of the building.

Police came to look at the protest, and tried to persuade the four on the balconies to come down, telling them they were worried that these were unsafe. There was nothing to suggest there was any risk at all as the building was still in good condition despite being unused. Police who want photographers to move also always lie to us and tell us that it is for our safety – and it almost never is, and sometimes actually results us moving into greater danger.

Almost certainly the people on the balconies were safe for the next twenty years or more – or until the building was demolished, and after they told police they would come down in a short time when the rally ended, the police gave up the pretence and simply watched from the opposite side of the road.

Support for the Focus E15 protest came from the Revolutionary Communist Group, Feminist Library, Boleyn Dev 100, Tower Hamlets Renters and Newham Green Party. Among the speakers at the rally was a woman from East End Sisters Uncut who talked about their occupation of an empty property in Hackney as a community resource in protest against Hackney Council’s housing failures.

In 2015 Newham sent 244 families families out of London, claiming it had no space or money to house them here. The borough then had the largest number of empty properties of any London borough – around 1,318 with a total value of around £470 million. Although Sir Robin Wales has now been replaced as Mayor, Newham’s housing policies are still failing the people, and the police station, last in use around 8 years ago, is still empty and firmly sealed against occupation. The Focus E15 campaign continues.

More at Focus E15 Occupy Police Station.

Haringey Residents protest housing sell-off

*Angry residentshold up placards and posterson the glass wall of the Civic Centre*

Haringey Residents protest housing sell-off – Wood Green, London. Monday 3 July 2017.

One of the London Labour councils whose housing policies were causing much local distress was Haringey, where the council was in process of setting up the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), Britain’s biggest collaboration yet between a local authority and a property developer, which will demolish a third of Haringey’s social housing, handing over half of an estimated £2 billion worth of publicly owned housing estates, schools, public facilities and private housing acquired through compulsory purchase orders to developer Lendlease.

Many feel that the cabinet system for local government is anti-democratic, removing decisions from the elected councillors as a whole to small highly selected groups for the convenience of administration. It means that ideas such as the HDV are not properly debated, and in this case it was about to be imposed without any real public consultation, and to many its only real purpose appeared to be to hand huge profits to the developer.

*Marching through Wood Green shopping centre*

The scheme to build 6,400 new homes would result in the demolition of many existing properties, and would have the consequence of driving many existing tenants and leaseholders out of the area as they would be unable to afford to buy the new properties or afford the rents. It would mean a massive wave of social cleansing.

*Police & security stop all but a few entering*

The formation of the HDV was opposed by many in the borough’s Labour Parties, trade unionists, Greens, tenants, small businesses and community groups and well over 500 of them came to make their opposition clear.

*A large crowd at the front of the CIvic Centre*

They had met at Ducketts Common and then marched through the centre of Wood Green, stopping briefly to block traffic on a road junction before moving on to the front of the Haringey Civic Centre where the council was meeting later to approve the HDV. They soon pushed aside the barriers which had been set up in front of the building to continue their noisy protest, with a row of police standing across the entrance.

*But others went around to protest in front of the large glass windows at the back*

After an angry and noisy protest outside some made a rush to get into the building though a side entrance. I decided not to try and enter with them, and security and police managed to stop all but a few and then locked the building, leaving even some of the councillors coming to attend the meeting unable to enter.

Many of the protesters moved the to the rear of the building and banged noisily on doors and large glass windows, and at one point the large glass panes began to flex by almost half an inch as people pushed against them and I moved back fearing they might shatter.

*Eventually police came and pushed the people away from the glass*

It looks from some of the pictures I took as if the protesters were actually inside, but they were on the outside of these large glass panels which gave a good view of the interior. Eventually police arrived and pushed the people back, forming a line in front of the glass.

*A rally continued in front of the building entrance*

I moved back to the front of the building where a rally was taking place with a number of mainly local speakers. This was still continuing as I left and the noise would have been very noticeable to councillors inside who were voting to go ahead with the scheme to give away around £2 billion to the Australian developers Lendlease.

Although this battle was lost, the war was at least partly won. The HDV was a major issue in the next set of council elections in the following May, with the many councillors from the left of the Labour Party strongly opposed to it getting elected, and the new council quickly voted to scrap the scheme to redevelop the Northumberland Park council estate with Lendlease. Instead Haringey set up its own housing company, Haringey Homes, and will carry out developments – including some with private developers such as Lendlease – in a way that avoids some of the social cleansing and retains more affordable and social rented properties. It has met some of the issues raised by the campaigners but by no means all.

The council’s new approach was in part made possible by a government decision to remove the cap on councils’ borrowing in their Housing Revenue Accounts (HRA) and also by a funding grant from the Mayor of London. But they still need to build some properties for market sale, though they state they are committed only to do this so they can deliver the “greatest possible number of council-rented homes.”

More at Haringey Residents protest housing sell-off.