New Council Homes for Waltham Forest

Great to see new Council Homes being built in Waltham Forest. The Council recently posted an update on a scheme in Wood Street, Walthamstow where a semi-derelict Victorian building is being replaced with 17 Council flats due for completion by the end of the year. It’s part of a plan to build a 1000 new council homes in the borough by 2022. The scheme is a partnership with Engie and NPS architects, who are also working on the regeneraton of the Marlowe Road Estate.

Marlowe Road Estate regeneration

The Marlowe Road Estate scheme will deliver 430 new homes for social rent and private sale, although the BBC reported that it will see an overall reduction of Council homes on the site where only 30% of the total new units will be for social rent. Waltham Forest Council has set itself a target of 50% ‘affordable’ housing on new schemes, which at up to 80% of market rates, ‘afforable’ homes are far more expensive than socially rented homes and not to be confused.

We’ve seen ‘estate regeneration’ used across London as a means to privatise public land and forcibly move residents out of the city. Waltham Forest Council state that all Marlow Road Estate Council tenants “affected by the regeneration have been given right to return. They will be given ‘decant status’ meaning they’ll get priority bidding if they want to move out of the estate. Leaseholders can now negotiate with the council to sell their properties back at the current market value.”

The Architects’ Journal has recently written about the move away from the developer-led model of estate regeneration previously favoured by some London boroughs which has seen enormous community backlash. The move by Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham Councils to call for a community-led approach to the hugely controversial Earls Court scheme, along with the pressure on Haringey Council to review its HDV project, and the Mayor’s initiatives to give residents a ballot on regeneration schemes, they say, “have the potential to fundamentally change how London’s housing estates are redeveloped.” It’s worth noting though that Green Party London Assembly Member Sian Berry, reported that Sadiq Khan quietly signed off 34 new estate regeneration schemes to avoid them being caught by the new rules. “At Mayor’s Question Time this week, the Mayor gave me a firm promise not to sign off any new funding for estate demolition while his new policy to require a ballot of residents was out for consultation. But he was concealing the fact he has recently rushed through funding for dozens of controversial schemes, allowing councils and housing associations to dodge his new policy.”

walthamstow town square development

So there are some positive moves in London on the housing front, but also many many challenges still to face. Waltham Forest’s plan to build more council houses is welcome news, while their inability to enforce the 50% ‘affordable’ housing target on new developments is lamentable – as evidenced recently with the council’s support for the Walthamstow Town Square development which contains a mere 20% ‘affordable’ housing and no socially rented homes.

Russell Brand and the Sweets Way Revolution

I was back in the Rotten Borough of Barnet on Tuesday night as Russell Brand staged a sleepover at the Sweets Way Estate in protest at the planned demolition of the houses by Barnet Council and Annington Homes to make way for … yes you guessed it … luxury flats.

The brutality of the eviction process, which has been going on for weeks, has been shocking as families have literally been thrown out onto the streets. Residents who have been Council tenants for years have had their homes taken from them and offered emergency accommodation elsewhere out of the Borough. Barnet are clearly embarking on a large scale privatisation of their housing stock and a thorough, psychopathic social cleansing project.

The Sleepover was a way of using Russell’s profile to draw large scale attention to the cause which has oddly had little attention in the mainstream press. And it seems to have worked gauging by the number of camera crews and dictaphone toting journos that followed him around like a cluster of ducklings everywhere he went.

And he turned up with an ice cream van dispensing free ice cream of course.

The atmosphere was fun, jocular, playful. They were loads of excited kids running around. One fella had come all the way from Plymouth, others came from Bristol, and Coventry … and there I was thinking about the long journey back to Leytonstone from Totteridge and Whetstone.

Now the fun night has finished we have to keep the pressure on Annington Homes and Barnet Council to end their social cleansing plans for the Sweets Way estate and let the families return to their homes.

Sign the Petition here

More info:

https://sweetswayresists.wordpress.com/

‘We’re building slums of the future’

save earl's court

Throughout the filming of the Drift Reports/Trews Reports I have done on housing in London one of the features that has stood out has been the role of foreign investment driving property development in London.

Property Week have published an excellent article examining the boom in overseas buyers purchasing London property off-plan and the resultant feedback loop of developments aimed squarely at that market.

I recently heard Boris Johnson claim that less than 10% of property in London was sold to overseas investors – which is patently false according to Hannah Brenton’s article, placing the figure at 70% some sectors of the London property market.
Here are some selected extracts from the article:


“The surge of overseas money flooding into the market is supported by figures from Savills, which show that 70% of all new-build properties in the £1,000-£2,000/sq ft bracket were sold to foreign investors in 2013/14, with Chinese and Pacific Asian buyers accounting for more than 30%. However, the number of foreign buyers drops to 50% in the more affordable £450-£1,000/sq ft section of the capital’s new-build housing market. And across all sales and resales in prime London it stands at 39%.”

70% of all new-build properties in the £1,000-£2,000/sq ft bracket were sold to foreign investors in 2013/14

“This pipeline of new stock comes at a point where price growth in the prime market is cooling, with most forecasts predicting minimal growth or even a decline. Nina Skero of the Centre for Economics Business Research, is predicting a 3.35% drop in London prices this year, which she says will be partly due to the knock-on effect of prime residential on the rest of the market.”

“It’s all about a moment in time,” Farmer argues. “What was perceived as good for Vauxhall and Battersea four or five years ago has now got to a point where it’s so much driven by speculation that it’s created a lack of affordability – and there’s always a risk that you’ll get that feeding frenzy spreading out across London.”

“But on top of the risks of speculation, Farmer argues there is a “perfect storm” looming for developers as construction prices spiral upwards, which could see schemes stall in the next year.”

St. George Wharf, Vauxhall

St. George Wharf, Vauxhall

“Peter Rees, former City planning chief and now professor of places and city planning at UCL Bartlett, is despondent about the wave of foreign capital buying London housing, but does not think there is a risk of a bubble or a slowdown in sales because of the almost infinite amount of demand.
“The amount of money trying to escape from Russia, the Far East and the Middle East is just so great and there are so few top-notch targets like London that unless we do something to stem the flow it won’t stop of its own accord,” says Rees.

We’re building the slums of the future

He argues that there is a need for more high-density low-rise buildings in place of the glitzy towers springing up along the South Bank. “We’re building a product that is unsuitable for our market and suitable only for investment. We’re building the slums of the future. Derelict land is better than what’s happening at Battersea because derelict land has potential. Those developments have no potential because they’re locked in for 100-year leases to multiple owners.”

“Back at the Earls Court protest, Liberal Democrat councillor Linda Wade, who has been fighting against the scheme, says developers are now playing havoc with the planning system and that the huge number of high-end schemes risk creating “theme-park London”.
“The problem is we’ve got to a point where development has got out of hand, where urban planning is being dictated by developers rather than by local need.”
Gary Yardley, investment director at Capital & Counties, disagrees: “Schemes such as the Earls Court Masterplan deliver much-needed investment which provides more homes for our growing population and supports London’s continued success as a global city. We have also signed up to the Mayor’s concordat to prioritise offering homes to Londoners first.”
Capital & Counties has already announced that 95% of the flats in Lillie Square at Earls Court have been sold off-plan, with prices hitting up to £1,885/sq ft. This may be excellent for the developer’s cash flow, but it will do little to dispel protestor fears that the new flats will stand apart from the local community and from London itself.”

Read the whole article here

Save Soho and the Battle for Tin Pan Alley

It was when I was walking round Soho with Geoff Lloyd recording for his Absolute Radio show that I noticed the closure of Madame JoJo’s, that great icon of Soho nightlife to the extent that closing it could be as catastrophic as releasing the ravens from the Tower of London.

I later connected with Soho resident and musician, Tim Arnold, one of the co-ordinators of the Save Soho campaign that includes local residents, small businesses and luminaries such as Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch. Tim offered to take me round some of the venues under threat and also the ones needing to be preserved if the Spirit of Soho was to survive.

Although not actually in Soho we decided to start outside the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street and were there the day it closed. Almost immediately afterwards it was squatted and occupied by the Soho Bohemians so again I went along with a camera to capture the moment.

Denmark Street (known as Tin Pan Alley) is the historic heart of the music industry in London (and indeed Britain). It was where the early sheet music publishers were based, the music press, management companies – it gave us rock’n’roll and pop music, the Top 40 and the Sex Pistols. It’s probably more famous now for the guitar shops. Many of the buildings date from the 18th Century with the street plan being older still.

But this all now risks being swept away by development, driven by the destructive force of Crossrail and that fact that it sits in the heart of a parcel of land worth around £980million.

If action isn’t taken now a precious ancient district of London will be erased from the map and replaced with a characterless complex of steel and glass blocks. The soul of Central London is being squeezed in the talons of rapacious development.

Sign the petition to Save Tin Pan Alley

 

There is something rotten in the London Borough of Barnet

My latest Trews Report is on a situation at West Hendon in the London Borough of Barnet that is so scandalous it is difficult to comprehend. There appears to be a confiscation of public assets that are then gifted to private companies on such a scale that it felt like the train I’d taken from Farringdon had transported me to Pinochet’s Chile rather than North-west London.

The Council estate on the edge of the Welsh Harp Reservoir is being demolished to make way for a series of private apartment blocks currently being punted to investors as buy-to-let opportunities. The Council residents are being shunted off to a purpose built block away from the Waterside to the carpark. Leaseholders who purchased their homes under Right-To-Buy are being given less than half their value and offered a 50% stake in one of the new homes. And non-secure tenants are either being moved to another regeneration estate or discharged into the private sector. The SSSI rating of the Reservoir is being removed to allow for more construction around the lakeside.

It is a theft of public assets on an epic scale that would even make Berlusconi blush.

There is clearly something rotten in the Borough of Barnet – where the Mayor is a private landlord who receives large amounts of housing benefit from his own authority

Where at least half the councilors are private landlords.

Where the Tory Councillor responsible for housing, Tom Davey, refers to “benefit claiming scum”

Sign the petition to help Save West Hendon

The Book Genie

I like to imagine there is a spirit that guides my fugues at times – that rewards me for surrendering to its lure. The rewards come in the shape of stumbling into unexpected corners of the city at the end of unpromising schleps. But sometimes they come in the form of books. Today I succumbed to the fugue and found these four books virtually side by side on the same charity shop shelf.

15082619-books2

Rising in the East (1996) unlocked the door. A book of essays on East End regeneration written in a pre-Cool Britannia London – when to talk of a renaissance of the East may still have sounded optimistic or opportunistic. The first eager read turned up an essay on the importance of the North London Line Overground train at a time when it was fighting for its life. I skimmed the first few pages of this thesis as I glided eastwards from Haringey to Leyton on one of the brand new trains running on the 160- year old line. ‘Traversing the Great Divide: The North London Line and East London’ the essay is grandly titled, by Bruce Jerram and Richard Wells, and such is their passion apparent for the NLL that they produced this brilliant diagram demonstrating how it arcs West – East across the capital, or as it was viewed at the time from “a rich desirable west to a poor, dull, possibly dangerous east”. With the stations being upgraded, gleaming pre-graffiti trains and the East London Olympics at the end of the North London Line, it looks like they won their argument.

15082652-books1

The Romance of London from 1910. The first pages pouring cold water of talk of the myth of King Lud but all the same acknowledging Tacitus’s observations that in AD61 he finds London “celebrated for the gathering of dealers and commodities”. A Roman refuting the idea that the Romans founded our city.
A guide to Camden written at the height of Britpop and an archeological examination of the relationship between town and country in Roman Britain (wonder whether urban sprawl was an issue back then?)