Social housing demolition is destroying lives.
Labour councils are driving estate demolition plans to bolster regeneration proposals, and forgetting the social housing tenants who need them the most.

On 3rd July 2015, Jo Parkes was walking around Cressingham Gardens at the southern end of Lambeth’s Brockwell Parkin south London. The low-rise estate, part of which is a conservation area, was completed in 1978. Jo, a journalist and television researcher, has lived on the estate since 2004.
It was at a quarter to twelve that Jo’s phone buzzed. Opening Twitter, she learned in a single tweet that her home on the estate was to be demolished.

“When I learned via Twitter that Cllr Bennett wanted to demolish all 300 of Cressingham’s homes, including my own, I felt sick and angry,” she said.
Councillor Matthew Bennett, then Lambeth’s Cabinet Member for Housing, had sent the tweet just a short time before a cabinet meeting in which councillors were to vote on five options for the future of the council estate. Jo was still hopeful that the community would win the argument for refurbishment.

“I felt like his powerful cabal had been doing their best to run rings around residents, wasting years of our time with their veneer of ‘consultation’. It struck me as arrogant and smug of Bennett to disregard this official process, preferring a social media boast, to common decency. I was also sad that they felt they could get away with doing such harm to working people under the Labour banner.”
Cllr Bennett did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Jo and her fellow residents on Cressingham Gardens believe that the Labour Party, once the champion of social housing, is turning its back on council tenants who voted for them.
Demolition of council estates was originally a flagship policy of the then Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron. In an article in the Sunday Times in 2016, Mr Cameron pledged to “put the bulldozing of sink estates at the heart of turnaround Britain”. He wrote: “The mission here is nothing short of social turnaround, and with massive estate regeneration, tenants protected and land unlocked for new housing all over Britain, I believe that together we can tear down anything that stands in our way.”

The original policy has been adopted and pursued with passion by Labour in recent years. Lord Adonis, a Labour peer, argued in a 2015 report for the Institute for Public Policy Research that councils should demolish existing council housing on brownfield land to build new ‘city villages’.
Since then, 50 council estates containing over 30,000 homes in the UK have been targeted for regeneration, a London Assembly report reveals. This has resulted in a net loss of 8,000 socially rented homes according to the London Assembly Housing Committee.
Labour councils in London are driving these demolition programmes as part of ‘regeneration’ plans. In the wake of central government cuts to local authority support, councils are hard pressed to raise the funds necessary to meet the shortfall in social housing. As a result, they are increasingly turning to private models of home building to ride the wave of the house price boom, and make the returns they so desperately need to continue to provide essential services. In doing so, they are directly reducing the stock of social housing, and demolishing structurally sound housing.
By demolishing cherished social housing estates, and making way for new homes for private sale and rent, they are destroying those communities that rely on them most, and causing an unprecedented amount of misery for tenants with the threat of demolition hanging over their heads. To make matters worse, some tenants believe that the councillors in charge of making those decisions are doing so with relish. Many residents believe they have lost sight of the people and communities who rely on their councils for one of their most basic human needs, housing.
In South London, Lambeth council spans the area from Waterloo in Central London down to Streatham and Crystal Palace in the suburbs. The council’s actions typify the commitment to regeneration currently driving demolition of social housing estates occurring across London and several other major UK cities.
Six social housing estates are currently marked for regeneration in Lambeth.
Matt, whose name has been changed due to fears it might prejudice the council against him, has lived on the Fenwick Estate next to Clapham North tube station for four years. The estate was built in the 1960s, replacing a row of Victorian terraces. Spread over mainly four stories, it is home to 355 households.
A leaseholder, Matt is now faced with the demolition of the home he owns due to the proposals. He has lived in the area his entire adult life. He shares the leasehold of his flat with his partner, and was initially optimistic about regeneration.
“Initially we read the documentation and it said we’d get some kind of compensation for the disturbance and we’d definitely be offered a place on the estate. And that sounded quite exciting,” he said.
“They gave us the appearance that we could have a vote so we wrote down our preference and then they selected one of the developers only to hear a few months later that the procurement process was found to be flawed.”

In 2017, Karakusevic Carson Architects based in Bermondsey lodged a High Court claim against Lambeth council, alleging that Lambeth had conducted a flawed procurement process for the bid. The firm alleged that conflicts of interest had predisposed the bid assessors to award Mace the tenure. Mace is a construction and consultancy company most famous for building The Shard in London Bridge. It has also been awarded the contract for the £15 million redevelopment of Central Hill estate in Crystal Palace.
Lambeth employed a firm called Inner Circle Consultants to carry out the procurement process for Fenwick. Two directors of Inner Circle are former Mace employees. One of them left Mace to join ICC while the bids were still being negotiated in January 2017. The other was a founding member of ICC when it was incorporated in 2009.
Lambeth’s Internal Audit and Counter Fraud unit found no conflict of interest. Sue Foster, Strategic Director for Neighbourhoods and Growth at Lambeth Council, said in a letter to KCA:
“There was no conflict of interest to consider, manage or take into account in the evaluation process.”
Lambeth did not respond to multiple requests to release the report.
In July 2017, Lambeth Council announced it would restart the bidding process in the wake of the case brought by KCA. KCA offered Lambeth the option to refrain for being obligated to pay their legal fees if they offered a full apology. Lambeth council paid KCA approximately £130,000.
An FOI request by volunteer campaign group, The People’s Audit, revealed that the cost of terminating the original bid cost an estimated £100,000, 84 per cent of which was spent on legal advice by the council. The bidding process for the Fenwick Estate will be run again and is set to reopen in the coming months.
Matt has been offered a home on the new estate, but is uncertain about his future there. “We’re often having conversations about should we just cut our losses. Some of the other leaseholders are a bit older. We are in the position where we could maybe extend our mortgage and that option isn’t open to other people,” he said.
On the Heygate Estate just 2.5 miles away in Southwark, former leaseholders who bought their homes under right to buy, were offered compensation for their homes far beneath market value of the homes in the new development at Elephant Park. As a result, Matt is nervous that a new home in the redeveloped Fenwick Estate will be beyond his reach.
“We haven’t made a firm decision, but I don’t want to live with this anxiety.”
Matt is not alone in feeling anxious and concerned for the future, but the impact of regeneration on mental health is poorly researched.
A report by UCL Urban Lab and Engineering Exchange for Just Space and the London Tenants Federation found that demolition of people’s homes can lead to stress, anxiety and depression linked to feelings of powerlessness during the process. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this was found to be more prevalent amongst older or disabled residents, and longstanding residents.
Joan Middleton has lived in her ground floor flat on the Fenwick Estate for 42 years. In her youth, Joan was the only female ever to be in charge of a military strong room, before moving on to work for the GLC. Now aged 80, Joan is visited by a carer four times a day following a stroke which deprived her of the use of her legs.
Joan is visited daily by her neighbour, William Giles, 66, a retired Post Office governor. He is concerned that if Joan loses her home, she will also lose the garden which provides her with a view.
“I’ve lived here my whole life. We don’t want to move,” he said. Bill has lived on the estate in various flats for 38 years. His children grew up on the estate where they now live as adults.
“They didn’t ask us, they told us,” he said, recalling the meeting held at the tenants’ hall in which the council announced the five to six year regeneration plan. Having been provided with a transfer form, Bill is now worried that he might not have the right to return to the refurbished estate.
“Imagine you’re a resident on an estate and the council is proposing to demolish your home. Usually this is quite a long drawn out process. It can go on for many years. Sometimes, 10 years or more,” said Richard Lee, co-ordinator at campaign group, Just Space.
“Imagine you’ve lived there for 20, 30 years or more, maybe you grew up there and you’re still living there and a lot of your community connections formed within that neighbourhood where you’re living now. And then you’ve got it hanging over you that you’re having to leave. It’s not just about leaving your home, it’s about leaving your community and neighbourhood.”
Residents of the now demolished Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle know this well. The bulldozing of almost 2000 homes on the estate by Southwark council between 2011 and 2014 displaced hundreds of families to other council stock in the borough. Plans for the replacement development drawn up by estate agents, Savills, contained just 74 council homes.
Every single home in the first phase of sales for the new development was sold to an overseas buyer according to a report by Transparency International. At the time, Land Registry data confirmed that all beneficiaries listed their address as care of Riseam Sharples, a self-confessed ‘niche’ property firm specialising in international property investments.
Current plans for the neighbouring Aylesbury estate will see almost 2,700 homes demolished and replaced by 4000 new homes. With a net loss of 700 socially rented units, social housing tenants are either forced into more expensive properties in the private rental sector, or jump the waiting list for existing social housing, displacing others.

The council is also planning to demolish the local shopping centre. The centre opened in 1965 and is also home to one of the country’s most popular bingo halls, The London Palace Bingo.
Della Roberts has lived in the local area for 33 years and works as a carer. She has been using the bingo hall for decades.
“I think it’s an absolute disgrace because they want to pull it down and replace it with expensive, luxury flats. These flats are for people to park their assets. They don’t want to be part of the community,” said Della.
“Older people come to places like this so they don’t feel lonely. For people who are sick, it helps them to get out whereas they can feel isolated at home,” she said.
Most of the users of the bingo hall are older members of the community, and are from Black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. These groups have protected characteristics.
Under the Equality Act 2010, government departments, service providers and providers of public functions are required to protect groups with designated ‘protected characteristics’. However, just as importantly, it also prohibits them from taking action that has a greater impact on persons with protected characteristics than those without them.
Campaign group, Elephant Amenity Network have objected to the proposals from the property developer, Delancey, and argue it raises questions about the Equalities Act.
“The proposals will displace the many Latino and BAME businesses at the Elephant, which is a social hub as much as anything else. The bingo hall has many BAME customers. Southwark Council and Delancey acknowledge this, but have not done enough to accommodate these communities, even under Delancey’s amended proposals, so we will continue to oppose the scheme,” said Jerry Flynn, spokesman for the 35% campaign which campaigns for affordable housing.

As part of the regeneration, developer Delancey is proposing more retail floorspace over 6 buildings, including 1000 new homes, a revamped tube station, and a new campus for the London College of Communication.
Delancey originally promised 33 socially rented homes out of a total of 979 homes in the development. This equates to just 3 per cent, far below Southwark’s threshold of 17.5 per cent. Following widespread local opposition, the proposal was not approved by the council in January.
“This is the first case that’s encountered opposition from the community, organised a disparate community and the local community succeeded if not in defeating, in delaying and getting developer to acknowledge, which is a victory,” said Jerry.
Delancey have made concessions. They are now promising a meagre 74 social rented homes, equating to 7.5 per cent of the total.
Delancey did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Cllr Mark Williams, Southwark’s former Cabinet Member for Regeneration and New Homes prior to stepping down in May this year, said that the council was carefully considering the proposals. “We welcome the new offer and we look forward to working together to find a solution that works for everyone,” he said.
Della Roberts’ 22 year old daughter still lives with her in her socially rented home, and she believes that flats in the new development aren’t aimed at her. It’s easy to see why, as flats in the Lendlease development, Elephant Park, start at £750,000 according to their website.
“There’s no way that she’ll ever move. She’ll be living at home with me forever. A lot of parents realise that in this area their children will be living at home with them as grown adults for years. They have no choice. There’s no housing.
“The next generation who are soon to be parents, I worry a lot [about] because it seems like they haven’t got a future here. They’re being elbowed out.”
Della believes that the council is not representing the local community. “Instead of Labour councillors helping the local people who voted them in, they’re helping the property developers,” she said.
Southwark council reinforced its commitment to build 11,000 new council homes across the borough by 2043, with the first 1,500 by 2018.
However, in response to an FOI request, Southwark admitted it had only built 151 council homes with a secure tenancy under the last council between June 2014 and April 2018. It has purchased 239 properties with a secure tenancy. This is still significantly more than Lambeth and Haringey, who built just 17 each.
Southwark is also promising almost 1,700 affordable homes as part of the regeneration proposals in Elephant and Castle, funded through the sale of private homes built by developers. Affordable housing is currently defined as that which is rented at 80 per cent of market rent. The Mayor of London has backed a target of 35 per cent affordable housing for new developments.
Southwark Council has also been criticised for the number of councillors who go on to work in the property development industry in what has been termed the ‘revolving door’ between public office and private business.
One officer at Southwark Council who signed off on the Lendlease bid moved swiftly to the developer as a development manager. More frequently, communications companies employed to lobby for developers to get big deals are the preferred choice for councillors looking to move into the private sector. Jeremy Fraser, a former Southwark councillor, joined forces with fellow councillors Steve Lancashire and council leader, Jim Dickson, to found Four Communications in 2001. The communications company currently employs 10 current or former councillors as account managers, with several in directorial positions. Four Communications clients include property development and investment company, British Land, and developer, Berkeley Homes.
One councillor left the council in 2010, having implemented evictions of nearly 3000 residents on the Heygate Estate. He went on to establish Carvil Ventures, the firm advising Delancey on the shopping centre project.
“They know exactly how to do it,” said Jerry Flynn. “Nobody is accusing them of doing anything wrong, but that’s the problem. We’re not accusing them of taking backhanders, it’s much more insidious than that.
“The decision makers and our local councillors come to share the same outlook and ethos as developers and can end up representing their interests and not those of the local community.”
The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACoBA) scrutinises the public employment of former Ministers and civil servants. The Committee prevents them from capitalising on the ‘revolving door’ between the public and private sector. Local authority councillors are not restricted by these regulations.
Several London councils are creating Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) which is a type of company set up, controlled and owned by the council to fund the building of new homes. By avoiding borrowing restrictions, right to buy legislation, and being open to investment from external equity and debt providers, SPVs can provide private, ‘affordable housing’ and generate revenue to be funnelled back into the council without using the council’s housing budget.
However, SPVs have become a controversial topic. Critics of SPVs have argued that they allow councils to act as property developers. However, SPVs are unable to build traditional public housing, meaning that homes built by an SPV cannot offer secure tenancies.
Homes For Lambeth is the SPV established by Lambeth Council to deliver the regeneration programme in Lambeth.
On the one hand, this allows the council to provide much needed housing, but on the other it allows the transfer of public land to what is essentially a private body to prop up its own accounts. The new landlord, Homes for Lambeth, will be run by councillors and officers but will not be accountable to the public.

For Pam Douglas, a resident on Cressingham Gardens since 1999, this attitude results in the social and moral responsibility for public housing being negated.
“It’s commodifying social housing. Social housing is built for a social purpose to support people. It’s a public service,” she said.
Residents at Cressingham, as on many other estates, have complained of a council policy of managed decline by the council to justify demolition.
On the Fenwick Estate, faulty drains have led to Matt and his partner sleeping with earplugs when it rains due to the noise from leaking pipes. He said the council erected scaffolding to fix the problem in the wrong place, and accuses them of a failure to liaise properly with residents about maintenance issues.
“It seems to me they are quite happy to pay in practice without actually diagnosing the problem,” he said.
Matt now believes that regeneration is a revenue raising exercise for the council, defined by strategic incompetence and a policy of managed decline. The Fenwick estate is visibly more run down than other estates, and Matt believes it is less aesthetically appealing which makes it easier for council’s to push for demolition.
“It doesn’t have the architectural kudos that something like Cressingham Gardens has…this is easier to push through because I think there is an argument that it’s not of architectural merit,” he said.
Cressingham Gardens is widely appreciated as a feat of social housing design. The estate’s Rotunda was listed as an ‘Asset of Community Value’ in 2015 after a bid launched by residents. However, the rest of the estate has failed to gain listed status.

However, Deirdre Shaw, 68, did successfully launch a bid to gain listed status for her home in Macintosh Court in Streatham. The sheltered housing estate near Crystal Palace in South London was formerly known as 269 Leigham Court Road, but was renamed after its architect,
Kate Macintosh, following the successful campaign to save it from demolition. It contains 45 flats for over-60s.
“I have a reputation down at Lambeth because I am a bit like a bulldog,” said Deirdre.
“What do a bunch of old wrinklies matter? We’re passive, we don’t know anything because we’ve got no education and no experience. So we’ll just accept anything you tell us. Wrong!”
Deirdre launched an application for listed status on the day residents were told of the intention to demolish their homes following a consultation in 2014. Deirdre believes that the decision was already made at that point.
“We have various things that are scare words. Consultation means talking at a bunch of people for 40 minutes, then opening up to the floor, and saying, ‘that’s interesting’. Of the meetings I went to they didn’t act upon one thing any resident said.”
Many of those who work in the property industry believe this to be widespread. Architectural Workers is an anonymous collective of architects opposing current attitudes towards regeneration in the industry. The group campaign against the negative effects of some of the work they are employed as architects to carry out, but remain anonymous so as to protect their careers.
Part I architects are those studying a university undergraduate degree. One of the group’s members, a Part I working on an estate regeneration in east London, said:
“Significantly, the most energy and involvement of the Project Architect was spent on the option for full demolition — aka maximum redevelopment, maximum number of units, and maximum profit,” they said.
Working with a Part II architect, the anonymous whistleblower explained that infill options were never considered. “We presented a sketch of an infill option to the Project Architect — that we worked on in our spare time — lunch hours and after 6pm — and promptly got told off, that we should ‘stop bringing politics into this’.”
“Looking back on those options, they were never genuine alternatives — just partial versions of the intended choice, full demolition,” they said.
“The other two options are just there for us as architects to say we’ve ‘considered the alternatives’ — and for the client to be able to present demolition of people’s homes and lives to the residents with a straight face. Clean conscience.”
The architect also said that “dehumanising stereotypes’ about council estate residents were common. “Mocking people’s accents, making assumptions about what people would be like and what they would want instead of treating them with respect. It was a constant background,” they said.
While Deirdre’s application for listing was rejected on the grounds of non-urgency, a second application was successful. Macintosh Court was awarded a Grade II listing from Historic England in May 2015 on account of its application of Brutalism to a domestic setting.

Deirdre recalls that the process of waiting for a decision on the future of the estate was enormously stressful.
“People here have gone through hell. We’re trying to put brave faces on but it’s been enormously stressful. We always have people dying because we’re old but there was at least one tenant…I can remember at one meeting he said ‘I will not be moved out of this estate I’m going to die here and if you try and force me, this isn’t an idle threat, I will kill myself’. He didn’t have to because he actually died.”
Deirdre is pleased with the work Lambeth council are now doing to refurbish the estate which hadn’t had work done to it for forty years. However, she still worries about her future.
“It’s only when everything’s finished, we’ve gone down the line a couple of years and they’re not talking about all the things that I anticipated that I’ll really begin to relax. I’m a worrier. I’m very good at giving the appearance of confidence but inside… my health has deteriorated markedly over the past five years and that’s really since the decision was handed down to us.”
While there are examples where residents have succeeded in protecting their homes, there are many who believe the council has other priorities.
Lambeth has been criticised by residents told the council cannot afford to refurbish their estates, despite spending millions on refurbishing the Town Hall to accomodate its council workers. When it was first proposed in 2008, it was estimated to cost £25 million. However, when the new Civic Centre opened on 10 April, the total development cost had risen to £104 million.
The Your New Town Hall (YNTH) project will reduce Lambeth Council’s core office buildings from 14 to two. It involves the refurbishment of the Lambeth Town Hall opposite Windrush Square, and the development of a new Civic Centre on Brixton Hill.
The Cabinet approved the project in November 2013 when the bid made by the developer was £55.5 million. The original construction cost of the work on the offices and Civic Centre was given as £50 million. The construction cost currently forecast for these buildings is £68 million.
“The budget for the Town Hall was allowed by the Council to spiral from its original £50bn,” said Jonathan Bartley, co-leader of the Green Party and opposition leader at Lambeth Council.
“As with so much financial mismanagement and waste by the Labour-led council it has been hard to cut through the smoke and mirrors to find out what has really been going on. But the simple fact that the council has made £89.6m from destroying housing co-ops and selling the housing to developers while simultaneously spending a similar amount on it’s own home, highlights the obscenity of council policy. It has turned its back on the very people it is supposed to standing up for, while prioritising it’s own interests.”
The most detailed budget available from Lambeth council was made available in response to an FOI request. The budget breakdown is made up ofjust17 words, and eight figures, itemised as follows:
“Construction costs — £32.3M
Professional fees — £5.3M
S106 & CIL — £0.6M
Public realm — £0.8M
Development management fee — £2.0M
Fixtures, fittings and equipment — £8.0M
ICT — £4.5M
Contingency — £2.0M”
Section 106 agreements are a type of agreement between the Local Planning Authority and the developer, used to make acceptable a development that might otherwise be refused. The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is a means of charging developers to raise funds for new developments.
Cllr Paul McGlone, deputy council leader, said: “YNTH is a perfect example of how the council can make best financial use of assets when money is tight. We will save £4.5 million a year with better use of office space, free up land for new affordable — and I mean genuinely affordable — housing and create a building that has a host of community uses.”
The Town Hall project will also include a total of 219 new homes for rent and sale, of which 47 per cent are classed as affordable.
One of these new housing projects is Wynne Road, completed by Pocket Living in March 2017. It offered 25 one bedroom homes with prices starting from £248,500, a 48 per cent discount on local market rate today. Pocket were backed by a grant from the Mayor in 2013. They only sell homes to first time buyers who live or work locally, and offer a discount of at least 20 per cent on the surrounding market rate.
However, the council’s critics have questioned whether the housing delivered as part of the Town Hall project will benefit existing Lambeth residents.
Lambeth has set a target of 40 per cent affordable housing in all new projects. However, the council accepted a tender from Muse Developments that promised just 20 per cent affordable housing. In response to a report by The People’s Audit, Lambeth said they have paid Muse an additional £5 million to achieve this target.
Brook and Ivor House are two of the developments being delivered by Muse as part of the Town Hall project. They are being marketed via ‘Brixton Centric’. The website promotes the flats as ‘luxurious’, and boasts the easy reach of Canary Wharf and London Bridge, where City salaries are frequently higher than the London average, as well as cafe culture and nightlife. The people shown in the promotional video are largely white millennials, suggesting the developments are hoping to lure young, urban professionals rather than local residents.
Prices at Ivor House start at £485,000, with flats in Brook House starting at £470,000.
“Councilsshould be ashamed of themselves for getting into bed with the developers,” said Della Roberts. “Labour have abandoned us. They’ve abandoned the people they’re supposed to serve.”
“They must think the working class people are very stupid. That we don’t know what’s going on, but we do we can see it. And it’s happening at the expense of poor people, it’s a crime.
“They think we’re stupid, but we all have eyes. We see. You talk to the people who have been here all their lives, they can see what’s going on with their eyes.”
