Top Trumps is a card game. Each card contains a list of numerical data, and the aim of the game is to compare these values in order to try to trump and win an opponent’s card. A wide variety of different packs of Top Trumps have been published. Enjoy our first eight cards. Keep ’em peeled!
* PS We encourage other parts of the world to prepare their own sets of Gentrification Top Trumps. Mail us here if you do!! Nice!
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Tagged art and gentrification, Elephant & Castle, Gentrification Top Trumps, O-Central, oakmayne, Printworks, Regeneration, south central west, South London, Tribeca Square, walworth
UPDATED: Nov 12th 2011: Regular readers of this website will know that we have a particular loathing for property developer Oakmayne who have been throwing up buildings in the local area for quite a while now (see Appendix below). Even though we have no love for LendLease, at least they try to pretend that it is interested in what local people say and want. Oakmayne’s history in the North Southwark area is really at the other end of the scale – arrogant, crass but omnipotent! Their large site on New Kent Rd and Elephant Rd has been subject to lots of delays over the years but now the plans are out there, the brochures are being emailed out to interested persons and the hype is on. Here we have two towers of flats, one tower of student housing, four restaurants, a Sainsbury, a digital cinema and a small market place outside.
Comprised of 243 student rooms, 146 one-bedroom flats, 190 two-bedroom flats and only 37 three-bedroom flats, the starting price is £299,990 for a one bedroom. There are no socially rented flats in the development. Even the annual service charge on a one-bedroom flat works out at about £57 per week! Simple question: Where you ever asked anything about this development?
Sales:
1 Bedroom Apartment from £299,900
2 Bedroom Apartment from £375,900
3 Bedroom Penthouse from £860,000
Projected Rental Return:
1 bed £355 – £425 pw
2 bed £435 – £535 pw
3 bed £720 – £950 pw
Estimated South Tower Service Charge
1 bed £2,040 – £3,000 pa
2 bed £2,550 – £3,270 pa
3 bed £3,610 – £4,500 pa
FROM OAKMAYNE PLAZA TO TRIBECA SQUARE
Oakmayne’s dimwitted rebranding of what had been called Oakmayne Plaza as ‘Tribeca Square, New London’ seems stupid on many counts. Tribeca is famous for being a posh district in New York, not London. Why would a part of London need to be called Tribeca? So if it’s New London, why is named after something in New York? If they want to have some of the cachet of Tribeca rub off on The Elephant then they should go and visit Tribeca and see that it is made up of ex-industrial and warehousing buildings from the period 1860 to 1920’s that are historically worthy of saving. But Tribeca Square is made up of three bland new build towers with some retail at the base and a piddly market at the side, all of which will probably be pulled down by the year 2040 and replaced by something equally as demolishable. But if you look at it from Oakmayne’s point of view than you realise that calling the development The New Elephant is not going to attract many buyers. So maybe it’s a crass but shrewd move?
HOUSING FOR LOCAL LONDONERS? WE DON’T THINK SO!
When you read the brochure for Tribeca Square, you see that it is primarily aimed at global investors who are looking for good returns on properties worldwide but especially in the UK where the pound is weak against other currencies. These are the investors who are flicking through the same kind of brochures and attending property launches in swanky hotels for new developments in Sydney, Vancouver, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro or any city where development is being given a free reign. You can see Tribeca Square being marketed in this way here for investors in Hong Kong. The article text is copied straight out of the Tribeca Sq brochure. The launch was at The Landmark Mandarin Oriental 5-star hotel from November 4- 6th, £500 pound a night for a single room. It was launched here in Singapore for investors on 28th, 29th & 30th October at The Hilton Hotel. You can see a Chinese newspaper blurb here too. Some pics from Singapore:
Oakmayne doesn’t even try to be candid about the fact that they are building over-expensive housing for investment and profit making rather than for Londoners who need homes . They don’t care who actually buys them, or even if anyone who buys one will actually live in them, as long as they are sold. It’s this openness on display when they write:
‘Recent research by CBRE has shown that above and beyond normal market growth, house prices in regeneration zones have been found to have an annualised 4.9% growth rate over the period of regeneration…Residential prices in central London have risen since March 2009, and residential property in the capital continues to be seen as a safe, stable and lucrative long term investment by investors from around the world. Whilst domestic buyers are happy to purchase a product that may need refurbishment, rental tenants and overseas buyers tend to want a high quality finished product. The lettings market remains buoyant (sic), helped by an influx of tenants from continental Europe…Elephant & Castle, with its Zone 1 location right in the heart of central London, currently remains undervalued in relation to the districts that surround it, an indication that an investment now will have benefits in the future. With its mixture of iconic new buildings, historic Victorian buildings, quiet side streets and local parks, Elephant & Castle has a cosmopolitan and city-centre ambience. The retail and leisure hub of Elephant & Castle is undergoing planned regeneration which, along with planned transport improvements, should help to further lift residential values…Elephant & Castle and the other inner London districts have always demonstrated sustained growth in prices and values over an extended period of several decades. With its high population density forecast to increase, London benefits from demand outstripping housing supply. Pricing should be further protected by restrictive planning procedures…Inner London will continue to remain a hotspot for international investment and the capital continues to lead the UK as the main centre for job creation, financial trading, legal advisory, consultancy businesses, inward investment and corporate expansion. All these factors will help to ensure that the local housing market remains sustainable and for the right high quality product there will continue to be an upward pressure on residential prices…There are many reasons why investors from abroad find the UK property market so attractive, but one of the most important is tax. UK regulations treat overseas landlords generously, and recent changes to the law have made the tax climate even more liberal’
Doesn’t really seem to say much about enjoying your new home but says a lot about global investors property portfolio’s. Recent housing activity in The Elephant area reported that ‘30% of flats in new development at corner of New Kent Road & Harper Road were sold in Singapore‘. Get the global picture yet?
These London property market reports prepared by global property consultancy King Sturge make fascinating reading especially if you like to read from the point of view of the rich and how the rich stay rich: ‘Several key themes are likely to mean that both sales and lettings markets in Prime Central London remain vibrant and active during 2011.The flight to quality, the safe-haven benefits, the immunity from austerity measures and the funding advantages of the rich and super-rich are all likely to mean that demand at the top end of the London residential sales market remains strong this year despite a more dour mood elsewhere in the country’.
Download some of their reports here, here and here! Enjoy, as we say!
Also this:‘ King Sturge has sold 1500 homes in London to buyers, mostly in Asia, on 28 developments in the year to March worth some £500 million. To put that into context, Knight Frank says the total sales to Asian buyers in the same period was £761 million…Simple arithmetic will tell you that King Sturge’s average sale price of £333,000 won’t buy you a broom cupboard on Bankside. But Tim Wright, who heads the sales teams based in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Singapore, says that the market has always been there for midpriced flats bought unseen and off-plan at roadshows in Asia…These markets, especially where there is a historic link to the UK, can be treated as subsidiary to the home market. London is a leader not only in commerce but also education. The city is seen as a safe haven for overseas buyers to purchase a pied-à-terre — or for their children to use whilst gaining higher education.’
NEW LONDON? SAME OLD SH*T
When Oakmayne trumpets New London the New London they are trumpeting is the very same London that has been trundling along with a few people doing alright and a load more people struggling. It’s not hard to see the inequalities of London these days. Everyday it gets more apparent. Southwark Notes noticed a few people camping out in Burgess Park the other day (before the hoardings went up). New York, as well as being similar to London in being a capital of the finance industries and crazed property speculation, has a similar trajectory of the wealthy being enticed back into the inner city once it had been made ‘safe’ with a brutal displacement of local working class communities and a State / Police policy of harassment of the homeless population that was so violent that thousands of the homeless people had no choice but to flee to outside the NYC area.
The history of Tribeca in New York is similar to places such as Hoxton and Spitalfields and Covent Garden in London. Once a ’gritty, light-industrial corner of Manhattan’s lower West Side’ its gentrification began in the 1970’s when the nearby rents in SoHo area went through the roof. The artists who had first opened up SoHo as a new hip quarter of town were soon priced out and moved to Tribeca which then underwent a similar cycle of eviction and displacement, the catchy new moniker TriBeCa (or, Triangle Below Canal Street) only being invented as a good sounding name for estate agents to pitch the area with. Since the 1980s, large scale development and conversion of the area has transformed it into a super-upscale residential area Tribeca now bring one of America’s most fashionable and desirable neighborhoods and known for its celebrity residents and its 10013 zip code being New York City’s most expensive. The unprecedented feeding real estate frenzy in Tribeca in the late 80’s and 90’s has been likened to “truffle pigs” following “the law of the market”. Why we could ask would The Elephant & Castle need something such as this?
EVERYTHING IS OKAY. GO BACK TO YOUR HOUSES!
“Homelessness exists not because the system is not working but because this is the way it works”
Peter Marcuse
You could just as well substitute the word ‘poverty’ for ‘homelessness’ and the equation would be just as sharp and precise. If we focus in on Southwark and look at the housing waiting lists we can see that there are 1000’s of people who need housing. These are people who need a place to live and are waiting to be housed in public housing. We can assume that most of these people are either working poor or unemployed and we can presume that many of these people work in low-wage jobs such as retail, security, delivery, cleaning, office work and so on. They will never be eligible for what is laughably known as ‘affordable’ housing or even the new buzzword ‘intermediate‘ housing. An estimated 866,000 households in Britain fall between public housing availability and private rented affordability. What they need is cheap and quality public housing. The question remains: why are houses not being provided for these members of our local society?
It’s simple really. In this present day and age, housing means big money for those in the housing industry from investors to developers to construction firms to insurance companies to estate agents. But housing is a social resource like our parks, libraries, health centres and so on. You could even say that decent cheap housing is a ‘social wealth’. Housing and house-building for all is not something that should be left solely in the hands of the private sector or free-market because money-making will always override the common sense that everyone needs a home and not just those who can afford expensive places outright or those who are fleeced by paying £300,000 for a single bedroom flat in a crappily built new development. The housing free market is never really a pure one anyhow but is heavily subsided with public money from taxpayers pockets and handbags through numerous Single Regeneration Budgets, Homes and Community Agency payments, tax breaks and incentives, regeneration zones, New Deal for Communities etc. All of these helping hand-outs have played a part in the destruction and loss of public homes in The Elephant and Walworth area.
THE BUILDING OF HOMELESSNESS
Have you ever thought that regeneration of an area increases the amount of local homelessness? With all those new developments in The Elephant, Bermondsey, The Borough and so on, that has to be good, no? Well, you might see new flats going up but the cost is an increase in homelessness through loss of public housing and public land where new housing could be built for poorer people, loss of local affordable rented flats, loss of vital family housing, loss of local networks of employment and advice and community wisdom all of which are how poorer people house themselves. Not only does displacement from an area displace the immediate folks and families from where they were living, it also has a knock on effect of displacing the future sons and daughters of those people.
If we look at the recent removal of Heygate tenants, those tenants did not disappear into thin air! Through the demolition of the estate 1000+ units of public housing were lost. That’s 1000+ less available flats for those on the waiting list. The decant process also means that tenants were taken out from existing council flats and moved into other already existing council flats. That’s a lot of households that needed to be found within the Southwark Council housing stock placing further pressure on availability for those on the waiting list. Worth noting again here that the LendLease plans for regeneration of The Heygate site are talking about only 13.5% of all the new flats being for social rent as opposed to 100% of the original Heygate Estate.
Peter Marcuse, the writer on housing who we quoted above, writes a lot of good stuff about displacement. He has analysed how homelessness is created and broken it down into three inter-related ways:
1) The Profit Structure of Housing which means homes are built for the profits of developers and not to satisfy desperate housing need. In London there is an absolute crisis in housing whereby thousands of people need cheap and secure and good quality homes but their needs are not being taken seriously. Instead the profits of developers or investors (and this includes those who buy Council Homes to let them out to private tenants at inflated prices) are first and foremost what seems important.
2) Income inequality in society. The gap between poor income and rich income has never been greater.
3) Government policies on housing, work, finance etc. Politicians in the U.K (and elsewhere, of course) still believe that an economy run on the back of an unsustainable overpriced housing bubble and massive levels of personal debt is still a good way to run the country despite the crisis from 2007 to the present day in the housing sector.
WHAT CAN WE SAY ABOUT SOUTHWARK RIGHT NOW?
Let’s take the above three notions and dig into some statistics from Shelter, the housing charity who maintains its own databank that it sources from Government statistics.
PUBLIC HOUSING LOSSES: Locally, from 2000 to 2010, 6115 Council homes were bought through the Right To Buy scheme and removed from the public housing availability. In the same decade approx 1000 households per year joined the Southwark Housing Waiting list, the total number on the list reaching a current high point of almost 11,000. It’s worth pointing out that the figure of 11,000 households does not mean 11,000 people are waiting but means that 11,000 people and in many cases their family and dependents are also waiting for homes. See this article here for the figure of close to 20,000 people on the waiting list: ‘More than 19,000 applicants are on the current list, which has risen by more than 2,000 in 12 months…Southwark is the biggest local authority landlord in London but still has a desperate shortage of homes to let…The rise in the number of people on the list is thought to be due in part to the high cost of homes in the capital and increased rents in the private sector‘.
NEW BUILDS and WEALTH: In the same period 5470 ‘affordable’ homes were built across the Borough although this has not in anyway impacted on or diminished the massive Council waiting list suggesting that ‘affordable’ housing is not an option for most on the list. In the same period again house price to income ratio has nearly doubled in the Borough and the average selling price of a home in Southwark has quadrupled. Again from 2000 to 2010 average incomes on Southwark have rocketed as a result of the new middle class residentials in the area. It’s not that poor people are earning any more money that makes the statistics high, its that the new wealthy people in the area skew the stats upwards.
One final addition worth adding is that the figure for empty homes in Southwark now stands at 3367 dwellings.
PUBLIC HOUSING AGAIN
We will make the same point again as we have done so many times before on this website – that the term public housing has been subject to spin and demonisation as it presents too close a real picture to what it really is – Housing for all. Instead the term ‘Council Housing’ or ‘Social Housing’ has been used politically to replace the good term ‘Public Housing’. This change has been used to portray council tenancies and council tenants as the bottom of the housing pile. It’s been used as a stigma to undermine the value and sense of public housing for all with council estates being made to see like criminal wastelands that everybody can’t wait to escape from.
Some of us were living on an estate in Walworth Estate in the early 1990’s and we were cheek by jowl with council tenants who ranged from cleaners, doctors, musicians, bank clerks, electricians, therapists, delivery drivers, yoga teachers, unemployed people, gardeners, post men and women and so on. It was only as a result of attacks on the idea of public housing with the introduction of the Right To Buy that this was slowly eroded. Spurred on by the super discount available for long term tenants many people bought their own house and then either sold up at super profit (some of our neighbours bought for £23,000, sold for £169,000 and moved out to a new place) or people got second mortgages on the old place and then bought a new place, leaving the old place as a nice money earning Buy-To-Let (£150 per week!! or more). The old mixed community was then shattered as the Estate became and more about private housing – the TRA was taken over by middle class people whose main concern was their house prices, hence their main concerns were with rubbish, noise, crime, teenagers and getting the Council to enforce penalties on offenders. They weren’t at all interested in the stories or reasons why rubbish, noise, crime or teenagers might be issues or problems or even in how a local community might act to deal with these things themselves.
We have two stories that are becoming a bit like our party stories (you can see how fun we are at parties!) that seem to sum up the changes on this estate which by this time had become over 50% private flats. Our first anecdote concerns the last time we felt like we could attend and stomach a Tenants and Residents Association meeting. It was during the Heygate Estate decant and some new build ‘affordable’ housing was being built near the Estate. At the meeting one of the new private housing TRA people asked with some fear and loathing ‘If people form the Heygate would be offered some of the new HA flats across the road’. Aside from the disgusting ignorance, it is as if it had never struck them that they themselves were living on a council estate despite the fact that they had a leasehold property within it. It was and still is a Council Estate. Our other experience from the same TRA meeting was the hysteria around people putting rubbish out on the wrong days. Things like chairs, tables, lamps, rugs, TV’s and bags of rubbish were appearing on the estate but not on collection days. As long term tenants we knew that this had always been the case and also as folks who enjoyed taking or giving the old piece to the street on the wrong day, we knew that some people’s rubbish is another person’s free table and chairs or free collection of music magazines or free dvd player. We call this a Rubbish Economy although it’s different and better that the more general rubbish economy of the UK (Boom Boom)! Any how, our point is, some things more wealthy people just can’t understand. For them it’s all about the sanctity and value of their house, their investment, their asset, or their other rentable property.
Even though Southwark Notes is highly critical of Southwark Council and it’s dubious role in the disastrous regeneration and gentrification of the local area, we are still proud to be council tenants and know that on the incomes we earn we could never afford a good a place as our council flats. Not only that, we enjoy living on our estate as many people there seem more concerned with estate life as it is, how it works and how people live together and what can be done together. This is not to say that all housing should be public housing but to say that many more options exist to house people than overpriced and badly built new builds. We just seem to have entered an age where people have forgotten why decent homes for all is a worthwhile and common sense approach to housing.
So you could say that there is a certain obscenity to building a one bedroom flat in The Elephant and selling it for £299,000 when the area itself is one of the most deprived in London. That’s £540+ per sq foot for your one bedroom flat! It’s certain not taking seriously the underlying problems of the area. There is no real believable argument that increasing the tax base of the local area will advantage local people in the dim distant end as we know that trickle down economics do not shower the poor with cash and opportunity (especially when they have already been chucked out of the area).
Our favourite line from the Oakmayne Tribeca Square brochure is this one that underlines what we said above: ‘With its high population density forecast to increase, London benefits from demand outstripping housing supply’. Basically you can translate this as loads of people need housing but there isn’t enough so if you own some 1, 2 ,3 or penthouse flats you can charge a fortune. Benefits for the lucky few. What price housing? What price homelessness? The madness continues…
Appendix: Oakmayne developments in Southwark so far:
1993 Leathermarket Court, SE1 (91 housing units)
1997: 32-34 Borough High St, SE1 (10 housing units)
1998: Horseshoe Wharf, Bankside SE1 (?)
2002: Telephone Exchange, Liverpool Grove, SE17 (14 housing units)
2002: Winchester Wharf, Bankside (?)
2003: Victor Wharf, Borough
2004: Tennis Court, Bankside (12 housing units, one office)
2004: Winchester Stables , Bankside (7 housing units, one office)
2005: Disney Place, Borough (14 housing units, 3 offices)
2005: Wireworks, Borough (?)
2005: South Central East Walworth, (93 housing units 7 commercial)
2007: O-Central Walworth 2007 (188 housing units, 14 commercial)
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Tagged Council Housing, Elephant & Castle, Gentrification, Heygate, Homelessness, O-Central, oakmayne, Public Housing, Regeneration, south central west, Tribeca Square, walworth
As time passes, more and more comes to be written about Austin Osman Spare, a painter and occultist that Southwark can claim as its own. Some of us here have done a fair amount of legwork and scribbling about Spare. Not only is Chapter 8 from the pamphlet ‘NINE THINGS THAT AREN’T THERE: a manoeuvre around The Elephant & Castle’ all about Spare’s living, working and walking in Southwark but we also organised a pub crawl once around the three local pubs that Spare has exhibited in in his shortish lifetime. Not only was he an exceptional illustrator, controversial war artist and painter of occult laced pictures, Spare also painted hundreds of portraits of local people in the later part of his life as a local Walworth character.
Lest we forget, here is the list:
• The Temple Bar (Doctors), 286 Walworth Rd, 28 October – 29 November 1949
• The Mansion House Tavern, 12 June – 12 July 1952
• The White Bear, London, 19 November – 1 December 1953
Spare had previously exhibited in 1904 (or 05) in the Newington Library, still existing by the old Town Hall (One Stop Shop) and much later at his studio above Woolworths at 56a Walworth Rd in 1937 and 1938 before it was bombed in 1941. The destruction of his studio meant he made a short stay at a hostel then at 86 Walworth Rd. Spare eventually moved to Stockwell, still painting and living with his cats before passing away in 1956.
For more about Austin Osman Spare see the Internet or check out Phil Baker’s new biography. We haven’t read it yet but it looks good.
So, we mention all this merely to point up the passing away of The Temple Bar on Walworth as one more nail in Spare’s dusty spinning coffin. The Mansion House in Kennington has been closed far ages. It only leave The White Bear now. Tragic really! Does no one drink in pubs anymore? How come The Temple Bar can close overnight and become a Poundland?
Yes, the Horror! The Horror! arrives finally now that LendLease and partner architects DRMM unleash the nightmare on Balfour St that many have been expecting. We won’t spend too much time gnashing our teeth here. Better just to lay it out simply:
(1) Heygate Estate, the Rodney Rd site before demolition earlier this year.
– 105 homes of which 26% were family-sized dwellings, 30% were two bedroom, 36% were one bedroom and a further 8% were studio flats. Mostly these were public housing council tenancies.
– A series of streets and open spaces where you could walk however you wanted through the area.
– Lots of trees to enjoy
(2) Rodney Rd, Phase One of The Heygate redevelopment plan
– 250 new homes of which 0% will be four bedroom size, %10 will be family size, 55% will be two bedroom, 30% one bedroom and 5% studio flats.
– Five new developments: 4, 5, 6, 12 and 14 storeys tall.
– A private courtyard in between three of the new blocks.
– A new street through the site ‘Paragon Row’ that links to Henshaw St.
– Less public trees. The real retention of the trees is outlined below:
We ask now – what percentage of these new 250 flats will be in anyway affordable to local people? Not part-buy, part-rent as we know this is supremely unaffordable for most locals but socially rented secure homes. You could almost be forgiven in thinking that after all that ‘listening‘ they want to do to us, that their ears were sadly blocked up with tens or twenties. Oh excuse us, we mean
the pink elephant £50 notes!
What we have here is a dense mass of new housing for a very specific demographic – single people and couples. We said we wanted real affordable housing. We said we wanted family housing. We said we wanted to keep the trees and not have areas privatised under our noses. Their reply, finally, is the silent finger!
If you imagine that the Rodney Rd site is only a mere 10% of the whole Heygate site then you can imagine the horrors to come! A solid dumping ground of blocks and blocks of crappy apartment buildings, cascading in height to accord with Serpentine view and with some townhouses and some public through-routes. Also no doubt lots of what LendLease call ‘semi-private parks’ i.e not public at all times. It’s LendLease’s pile-em up and pack it in strategy from their Olympic Village in the East End. The image from the Village reminds us of the famous Pruitt-Igoe blocks, the giant public housing complex in St Louis, Missouri!
Does it have to be like this? Of course, not. Argument and pressure is what’s needed. Not more phony consultation and sweet sweet honeymoon with LendLease.
(*) of course!!
———————-
Sunday October 9th 2011:
The regeneration of the Elephant & Castle has been a long time coming. Some people can’t wait for it and other people hope it never happens. Various phases come and go from flurries of activity, glossy brochures and consultations that are soon then followed by delays, deceits and downright scandalous behaviour. Those of us who have lived through this long history maintain a long memory for these eternally returning negativitities in our area.
In the first failed round of regeneration up to 2002, the then Council Director of Regeneration Fred Manson famously upset local residents with his idea that the large number of poor people in The Elephant meant that ‘the middle classes stay away’. He then added that the problem of the area was that it ‘was full of the wrong sort of residents’. If we fling ourselves forward again to the year 2011, we can hear Rob Deck, LendLease Project Director of The Elephant regeneration say to a Liaison Group meeting that ‘The Elephant & Castle has no soul..there is no community here’. This is the same statement as Fred Manson’s above but cast in a less feral way. What Rob is saying is that LendLease cannot detect a heart and soul amongst us poor types because the area is not full of new build private housing and chain stores and destination shops (i.e shops that pull people into the area). What this fails to understand and regeneration developers will always either fail to see this or not really care in the first place is that poor local areas such as The Elephant are rich in micro-communities that live side by side with each other in a mostly harmonious and common-sensical way. If you walk around the area you will see a wide range people doing things that are what most people in this area do. They live in local houses and flats, they shop in local shops, they hang out in local streets and parks and they eat, drink and amuse themselves in local caffs, pubs, takeaways and restaurants – The Red Lion, The Tankard, Wetherspoons, Café Time, Café House, Ranya, The Noodle Bar, Dragon Castle, Best Kebab, the Ivory Arch, La Bodeguita, Mamoya and so on. The area is not ‘vibrant’, ‘exotic’ or ‘cool’. It is what it is and has been for a long time – a sustained organic fabric of different communities that grow up alongside each other and exist within the mostly affordable services and amenities that the area offers. That these shops and other places exist is because of the population in the first place here and now and not any other external reason. This is the heart and soul of the area – those million tiny daily interactions that are invisible to developers because otherwise the developers could not then pretend that the area was a blank slate to fill with some kind of artificial heart.
It is not chain stores or fancy shops, hotels and coffee shops, bars and hip places, or maybe conference facilities and hotels that will bring a heart and soul to the area. The attraction of people to the area on a temporary basis and the influx of commercial activity to cater for those people will not be something organic and livable. It will be a recreation of every other badly planned and badly developed parts of London pretending that such development whose soul is based on making money will provide a missing heartbeat here too.
It’s what is already here that is the community. At Southwark Notes, we don’t need to even walk the streets to detect what this heartbeat might mean economically and culturally for the area. We can write up a list from the top of our heads: the African guys hanging at night outside at Malata mini-market and going absolutely crazy during the World Cup; Domino players outside the Elephant market’s Caribbean food kiosk with the slap, slap, slap of the pieces; Karaoke at The Tankard Friday Nights to hurt your eardrums and musical sensibilities, maybe?; Kids and mums and dads at St Mary Newington in the new playground spinning round; Caff culture and all the conversations and the food from egg roll and chips to hot pepper soup to kebab and salad / time-tested East St market, never-changing, ever changing; Baldwins on Walworth Rd in the Herbal side where conversations between customers on ancient remedies for ancient ailments abound; Football on the big screen and Irish music in The Red Lion, Brazilian music in the newish Banana bar; Drunken people gathering outside Morrisons on the public chairs cheek by jowl next to the occasional God botherers of all varieties…
What we have here locally covers all the bases for what you need. If you want something fancy then the West End is a bus ride away. It’s somewhat amazing to think that developers and The Council can imagine that branches of Tescos, Gap, H+M, Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Wagamama, Giraffe Café, Pizza Express or whatever could constitute a desirable ‘cultural identity’ over what we already have here.
REVITALISATION’s KISS of DEATH
You may have noticed the big mauve signs The Council have been sticking up everywhere that say ‘REVITALISE’ and end in a postcode such as REVITALISE17. This is the same notion that we are talking about above. If we decode the ‘Revitalisation’ motto we see that they are talking about bringing life back to an area as if all live had already been lost here. It’s no coincidence that we can see this motto at work across the world from Baton Rouge in the USA to Rio De Janeiro in Brazil to Walworth Rd in London for this is the accepted planning and developer speak for getting rid of the poor people because they don’t spend much on shopping and housing. Developers call this revitalization ‘adjusting the mix’ or ‘balancing the local’ but what they mean is getting rid of the ‘wrong sort of residents’.
“THIS COULD PROVIDE THE BASIS FOR A NEW VIBRANT CULTURAL IDENTITY FOR THE ELEPHANT & CASTLE” – LendLease
What would bringing Walworth Rd a little revitalising kiss of life mean? We outline some of our nightmares here.
It’s Bye Bye to the Shell Garage at the top end of Walworth Rd. It’s lease is up in November and so it will be saying goodnight and bon nuit! LendLease, the re-developers of The Elephant area are looking at the site for a Box Park-style temporary arty / foodie market (click the link if you have a strong (organic) stomach). Such a notion was expressed at a recent Lend Lease Liaison Meeting at The Hub on Walworth Rd. You can see some of LendLease’s ideas from their recent Interim Uses document:
BoxPark, as an inspiration, describes itself as “BoxPark is radical stuff. it’s not some run-of-the-mall shopping centre. It’s a living, fertile community of brands packed with talent, innovation and attitude that puts creativity and fashion back where they belong: on the street. BoxPark isn’t just where you shop. it’s an inspiring and enjoyable place to drop in and hang out. It’s what a real brand experience should be all about.” Etc ad nauseam. So it’s basically more niche shopping and the creation of a funky fun entertainment ‘creative’ zone for an area that has been pretty much free of such banal spectacles. ‘Creative’ must be the most overused word to disguise the imposed gentrification of formerly unfunky areas. It’s as if we must be either heathens or purely miserablists if we don’t support those ‘creatives types’ but we have our own funk in the area, as described above in our list, thank you. Always have and that’s what makes the area worth not filling with acres of hip shopping and cool bars like Brick Lane or Shoreditch.
It’s also about recognising that the area is incredibly mixed in terms of ages and what shopping, services and amenities all those ages can access. Areas which have been subject to the explosion of hipster shopping and foodie lifestylism are reduced down to one particular range of ages and incomes whereby the sainted 21 – 35 year old demographic get to enjoy their new playgrounds of artbars, coffee shops, clubs and boutiques and everyone else is pushed to the margins. Just walk down Shoreditch High St on the weekend and you’ll see this age range running free. It certainly isn’t very pleasant, considerate or inviting. Not cool, I’m afraid. Is this really what local people want for the Elephant area?
We added our own brand to this one…
THE USUAL GENTRIFICATION CYCLE FROM LOCAL STORES TO DESIGNER STORES TO CHAIN STORES
The usual cycle runs to a traditional pattern:
(1) the first wave of more pioneer types respond to the pseudo-ambience created by the creative types who start with temporary and more marginal activity in the area, this itself often being at the hest of developers who fund the hip things.
(2) the second wave is the opening of estate agents and more bars and boutiques that attract more people. More new build residential one and two bedroom flats arrive for people who like the ‘buzz’ but don’t produce it. They only consume it. An interesting article from a recent Evening Standard on ’16 Reasons to Visit SE16′ can be read exactly as the above idea. It’s function is really to act as a puff piece for property for sale and rent in the area where the supposed ‘Lifestyle’ to be had by moving there is all important in attracting buyers. Am sure you will be digging Manzes pie and mash too a day after an opening at White Cube, baby!
(3) the last third wave is that the chain stores, attracted by all the new residential properties use their money muscle to open stores in the area. Then the area becomes just another high street of chain stores with a few independent trendy stores surviving. You can look at Borough Market and follow some of this cycle. Count how many chains are opening up there now as traders move out to other areas. In Spitalfields, the old and popular market was renovated and contains a small market surrounded by massive offices, chain coffee shops and restaurants no different from The South Bank or Covent Garden now.
24 HOUR HOUSE AND GARAGE PARTY
In some ways, things like bringing a BoxPark-style market on a temporary basis to The Elephant is a bit of a sop towards the now fabled ‘Interim Uses’ which are just written into development plans the same as toothless consultations and listening sessions have no real consequence unlike the dumping of hundreds of new units of private housing in an area still dominated by socially provided homes. We wonder if the traditional cycle of gentrification as outlined above is an outdated model for this area. It seems more likely now that there will be some of the urban funky flavas brought to the area by consciously by LendLease and unconsciously by those who think it’s a good idea to run your temporary arty boutique in a ‘incubation unit’ as these things are called. But we doubt there will be so much of this. What we will really get from LendLease and other developers is the meat of the issue – lots and lots of densely packed and massed new private homes and flats in a central located area close to the Tube. Why? Because this is where the wonga is made. In property. The wonga is not made in mini-parks, open-spaces, street markets, new libraries or community facilities such as leisure centres. We haven’t been writing so much about the scanty details of what LendLease plan for the Heygate site but you can read a response here by some local people to the ideas for the Rodney Rd Heygate Site – basically a mass of housing in a small area. Another response here!
Such a ‘Third Wave’ gentrification strategy, as it has been dubbed, one that does not conform to the earlier model outlined above, is described better by geographer Neil Smith (full text here):
“Retaking the city for the middle classes involves a lot more than simply providing gentrified housing. Third-wave gentrification has evolved into a vehicle for transforming whole areas into new landscape complexes that pioneer a comprehensive class-inflected urban remake. These new landscape complexes now integrate housing with shopping, restaurants, cultural facilities, open space, employment opportunities – whole new complexes of recreation, consumption, production and pleasure, as well as residence. Just as important, gentrification as urban strategy weaves global financial markets together with large and medium-size real estate developers, local merchants, and property agents with brand-name retailers, all lubricated by city and local governments for whom social outcomes are now assumed to derive from the market rather than its regulation. Most crucially real-estate development becomes a centrepiece of the city’s productive economy, an end in itself, justified by appeals to jobs, taxes and tourism. In ways that could hardly have been envisaged in the 1960’s, the construction of new gentrification complexes in central cities across the world has become an increasingly unassailable capital accumulation strategy for competing urban economies.”
As we said before, from NYC to Rio to SE17, you might see something new and local – an apartment building for example but what you are also looking at is the zipping of wonga round the globe looking for investment and profits. Then the profits are re-invested in similar schemes be they SE1 or Sydney or Buenos Aires etc. Hand in hand with global profit is the need for new parts of cities to become available for such schemes. If you look at Heygate from a business point of view, you don’t see houses and families, you see prime land that you can arrange a whole group of agencies from the council to investors to architects to builders to accountants to retailers to implement the great money making scheme upon. The result is always a C.R.E.A.M landscape! Cash Ruling Everything Around Me!! £££…and so on!
DOES IT HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS? PAST, NOW and FUTURE.
One of the difficulties of writing up all this gentrification and regeneration business as we have been doing over the past few years, is how often we simply write in the negative about all that comes to pass in the way of new builds, changes to shops and grander developments plans. This has been something that has been troubling us a lot recently as the pace of gentrification speeds up in The Elephant and top end of Walworth Rd area. Each new post is about some new student flats, hotel, troubles with LendLease, criticisms of The Council and so on. It becomes a shrill list of Don’t Likes even if we stand by our desires not to see the area change into some utterly sterile shiny consumer-driven wasteland. We also believe that we are not the only ones in the area who maintain a certain level of cynicism but also hostility about the notion that there is only one way to invest in an area and that is to let free market economics set the pace and depth of the regeneration processes. It has not always been this way and neither should it now remain so.
We have been adding to our new Archive Page over the last few weeks some of the more significant challenges that had been made to the free market paradigm in the late 70’s and early 80’s around Hays and Butlers Wharf, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. We also put up information on the sometimes strong community campaigns around the Elephant regeneration that ended in 2002. We feel that there is so much to learn from these campaigns. Some of those people are still involved now via Elephant Amenity Network and other local community coalitions and we should be asking them to share their knowledge and hard won experience so that we can learn from victories and mistakes. In those times they were working hard in difficult circumstances to bring community values, wisdom and desires to the table. It could be said that local people at least had a place at the table then even if it was tense and fraught with difficulty. Nowadays the table and its discontents has been taken away altogether replaced by touchy-feely PowerPoint show ‘n’ Tells and repeated expressions how of how the developers want to really ‘Listen to you’ although doing nothing with what they’ve asked to hear is standard practice.
Bob Colenutt in his talk “Community action, Docklands, and Future Prospects‘ from June 2011 outlines 4 solid points for successful alternative community-led investment and regeneration:
• Community planning and peoples plans
• Community-led regeneration as in Community Development Trusts
• Capturing land values for the community through community and public ownership as in Letchworth and the New Towns
• Unlocking the potential of local people to lead, and do regeneration themselves.
We’ve put Bob’s talk in our Archive section. Well worth reading!
Regeneration does not have to throw it’s lots in with the creation of samey retail streets and scrabble around for crumbs of social housing and green spaces because all the best land has been given over to the development of private homes because that’s where the profits come from. Such a notion that a local community has an interest in and a right to developing their own part of the city should not be seen as some utopian and long gone heyday. It should be seen as relevant, desirable and entirely possible. It has to be seen that we can argue, plan and do this.
We hope to write more on this at some point soon. We ask you to check out the Archive page here on Southwark Notes and get involved with the Elephant Amenity Network to present challenging and positive local visions of another regeneration of our local area.
Remember folks, when property developers ‘consult’ you, it’s a like a mugger asking you how much they should rob you for. The end result will not be pretty!
Anyone who likes to check the olde Southwark Notes for our ramblings and musings and goings-on in the North Southwark area will have been struck by our lengthy absence. Well, we are very sorry about that. No need for details but we just haven’t had time. It’s also true that so much has been going on in the last few months that we have been struggling to keep up in all our busyness.
Luckily, a few amazing folks and groups of people have been hammering away at things and writing this all up so we will make this post heavy with web links! We are also feeling a bit ranty today, so enjoy yourselves…
FORUM or AGAINST THEM?!
Probably one of the most important things has been the Lend Lease initiated Regeneration Forum that seeks to listen to the views of local people around a range of issues. These local chats come hot on the heels of the LendLease exhibition held at the old empty estate agents site in Chatelaine House (opp The Tankard). An empty estate agents, you say! Couldn’t be more symbolic, we say! Anyhow, that exhibition was a mass of printed displays with all sorts of charts, statistics, arrows going hither and thither and not a lot of real detail. Questions could be asked but no real solid information was really given out by Lend Lease and the various consultants at hand. You can access the displays here.
There are three liaison groups: Employment, Business and Retail, Community and a Residents Group. From the off it seemed like Housing, Transport, an Environmental policy, the Shopping Centre and Interim uses of the Heygate site were absent from the agenda. It seems that a few people have pointed this out in the Forum meetings and so Interim use and a commitment to get a person from St Modwen’s (owner of the Shopping Centre) to come along seem to have been achieved. So far, nothing on housing has been seriously discussed. It’s fair to say that Interim Use is something currently in vogue with developments and this is a mixed bag. It’s also something that is fairly easy to make happen with lots of cred and kudos going to the developers as pop-up galleries, temporary orchards and all sorts of fairly questionable community endeavours land on the site. What we want is permanent open spaces and parks and not temporary ones. Southwark Notes takes a dim view of the bastard child of art and regeneration. I AM HERE by two artists on the Haggerston & Kingsland Estate in Hackney features photos of former residents stuck onto the flats they used to occupy!
We are not arguing that human creativity and imagination is a bad thing. We are just saying that we know from numerous examples how the regeneration industry likes to use art (and artists) as tool to create an ambience around an area they seek to market and sell to people who have not lived in the area but are considering it. This was exactly the same phenomena we wrote about at Strata Tower whereby images of local people are used in art projects to add creative value to new developments even though these new builds are changing the very area where those in the pictures live.
Which property-minded person 10 years ago would have loudly proclaimed that they were ‘moving to The Elephant & Castle‘. We still remember the time when someone we met at a party asked us where we lived. ‘The Elephant‘, we replied. ‘Oh!‘, he said and pulled that kind of face. ‘But I hear it’s getting better there now, no? There are a few galleries opening up...’. We smiled, applied more pressure to our beer can and left to bang our collective heads on any available local wall. We suspect that similar conversations have happened all through the 2000’s with long term inhabitants of Hoxton, Dalston, Bermondsey, Deptford, Brick Lane, Peckham and so on.
Anyway, if you dare, you can read something a bit more detailed on why we should be suspicious of the collision of art and regeneration here.
SOUND THE ALARM!
As you know, all this activity – consultation and that – runs alongside the final creation of a Planning Application for the whole Lend Lease site and it has been here where the battlefield has been. The consultancy agency who are overseeing this version of community involvement and consultation is called Soundings who they say ‘develop finely tuned consultation and engagement strategies‘. They are tasked to provide a final Statement of Community Involvement that is a necessary component part of any Masterplan Planning Application. It basically signs off the Application with some sort of promise that local people have been thoroughly engaged. We did have a laugh when we read their 10 principles that underpin their work. The first principle reads ‘Work bottom-up and top-down‘. Now that’s having your cake and eating it. It really is a nonsense.
It’s early days yet in this Forum process although Soundings intention was always to only run two sessions for each Group. Two of these have now been held and the final four meetings run through the rest of September. After that, we are not sure of any continuity or whether it really is just a tick-box exercise. Developing ideas, listening to local people, coming up with plans for the area takes more than 6 two hour meetings if they are serious about ‘achieving the development of a strategy, which ensures the masterplanning / project development / design process is fully informed by community engagement.’
We take off our collective hats to all those people who have been attending the meetings, writing letters to folks, pushing a local agenda and seeing what kind of process and debate is being offered by Soundings for Lend Lease. Sterling work has been done by the Elephant Amenity Network to muster people with something to say to get along to these meetings and in sticking to its founding principles of Open Masterplanning, Benefits for All and Housing that is really affordable. As we say all the time, get involved with Elephant Amenity Network! It’s been doing amazing things – check their site and come to the meetings – every third Tuesday of the month without fail. Respect!
We have not been able to attend the Regeneration Forum but we recommend the detailed and analytical reports of how the meetings have been going posted on the People’s Republic of Southwark here and here and here and now here too!. And here as well..blimey!
OPENING UP THE AREA BY CLOSING IT OFF
Us Southwark Notes oldies do get a bit confused by all the back and forths, going-on and total contradictory words and deeds that come from The Council. On the one hand there has been a lot of heavy talk of supporting temporary uses such as gardening and social activities on the empty-ish site of the Heygate but then on the other hand, they keep closing off access to the site itself despite the wealth of autonomous and free events, talks, walks, films, sports, allotments and other wonderful endeavours local people have been putting on there. Picture below is the sealing up of the popular scenic cut-through from New Kent Rd to Walworth Rd. Boo! ‘Estate Closed Off’ says the new sign. No it isn’t!!
Recent use of the site by Brad Pitt’s filming of his new Zombie film saw all sorts of hassle for those using the estate for their own pleasures not the least to say trying to visit remaining leaseholders still living on the estate. ‘We’ve rented the estate‘, the security guys said, as if that gave them control of the local streets within it.
Could this be due to the nearby Oakmayne Plaza development at New Kent Rd? As you know, Oakmayne have always been those who must be obeyed. If they want it, they get it – see the stealing of the community football spaces, pavements and bike paths on Elephant Rd / New Kent Rd. Now Oakmayne wants to make use of Deacon Way, the road which runs around the inside perimeter of Heygate, for a route for all their big lorries to follow to clear the Plaza site of earth, rubble and whatever else.
Worth reading the following Heygate Urban Forest pages on the details of the above arguments around access and support for temporary uses and also of the commonwealth of activities folks are holding now on The Heygate and not waiting for permission or answers. Here and here and also here.
This beautiful map by local artist Rebecca Davies has been produced too. Download it here.
THE REGENERATION INDUSTRY – I’m Regenerating! Are You?
As you can see from our little reports, there is a whole team of players that make up the newly landed Regeneration Industry – local development agencies, community engagement consultants, architects, multidisciplinary teams, local Councils, creative partnerships plus Regen wizards, Development gurus, Green champions and so on etc etc etc. It’s a dizzying spin of new management jobs for the boys and girls with an accompanying language of pure babble: ‘Positive public perception of process’, ‘establishing a benchmark for Place Making’, ‘ fully integrated property solutions provision’, ‘signature developments and destination shopping‘. Phew!
We wholeheartedly recommend watching the TV programme ‘Abroad Again’ by arch, wry and amusing commentator Jonathan Meades. It’s a 50 minute roughing up of the above-described recently invented industry of urban regeneration. Very precise in it’s criticism and bile and very funny! You can see it all on YouTube here. There is an excellent parody of the type of regeneration advert you might see. It starts at 5.50min in the first episode – ‘potentialising potential, incentivising incentive, an opportunity gateway...’. Might make you view the non-spinning, non-power producing wind turbines atop the eco-gentrifiying Strata Tower in a new light.
SOUTHWARK WARDENS GO ALL S.W.A.T ON YOU!!
Spotted at a recent protest outside the Council to do with potential evictions of families whose offspring were alleged to have been involved in the recent looting spree in some parts of Southwark:
We found it strange the these Community Wardens now seem to be dressed up for a military intervention instead of sporting their previous jaunty red uniforms. Maybe the new uniforms were necessary for the new powers they were given in 2009 – power to fine you, confiscate alcohol and cigarettes if you’re under 16. What is going on at The Council? From our experience around The Elephant and Burgess Park these wardens are already jumpy, prone to rudeness and personal insults and usually ignorant of the laws at hand. Does anyone think having them dressed up like a US SWAT team is really going to help this situation? More from the school of Do Nothing But Let It Seen To Be Done.
Funny TV news video here of the seriousness with which this should not be taken. Best bit is the incident they respond to: a woman driver throws some litter out the car window. Not the greatest behaviour in the world but hardly a job for the SWAT team. The world gets more weird the longer we live in it. Can anyone make it stop please!
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Back in December 2010, we noticed some red and black posters appearing on the hoardings of new developments around The Elephant for a week or two. We mentioned them in our Art and Regeneration page (see old posters below)! They had a picture of a mechanical demolisher knocking down the old London Park Hotel.
Today, on a quick walk around the place when we were looking at the newly erected metal fences blocking the way from the footbridge over New Kent Rd into Heygate, we saw a lot of new ones all over the place. Obviously part of the same series, these ones featuring the demolition of the Heygate Estate and the notion of a ‘Blitz’ and the ‘exile’ forced upon the local tenants, now removed! Nice one, you arty types!
It’s all go at the Elephant and Castle again. It’s like the credit crunch never happened. Oakmayne Plaza site at Elephant Rd / New Kent Rd has seen the works spill over onto the football pitches which have now been sealed off behind a new Oakmayne works compound. We spotted quite a nice sticker attached to the new blue fence in various places.
The expectations around the demolition of the Shopping Centre have been dashed on the rocks around HMS Regeneration. Instead of knocking it down, it will now be refurbished and, surprise surprise, it will be also have an additional component of new apartments in one or two new tall blocks. A vision of the newly refurbed Centre appears below:
On the other side of the Rd, the Leisure Centre redevelopment has seen a new twist. The Council is going to be asked next month to approve the sale of part of the leisure centre site to Lend Lease for the development of a 30 story block of flats. The new Leisure Centre will be built but will now not contain any of the popular squash courts as there, er, wont be any space available after the Lend Lease idea! See here! As we have said time and time again, there seems to be no stopping the rampant giveaway to developers. The Elephant Rip-Off continues a pace!
Good news has been the hive of thoughtfulness and activity in the empty-ish green spaces of the Heygate Estate. Some allotments have been in place for a few months seeing regulars come and go to make the site a wonderful and communal local hang out for all. Check out Adrian’s report from the allotments and community garden here!You can see some photos of how the Heygate green spaces used to look before the gardening began here!
An interesting blog called Elephant Urban Forest has been set up with all sorts of details, photos, good ideas and the news that an Elephant Amenity Network and friends community survey of all the trees on the Heygate Site using the Foresty Commission’s CAVAT method values the ‘public welfare’ of the trees at figure of 18 million pounds – substantially more than the Council’s earlier value of only 700,000 pounds. There is a lot more info on the also new website Urban Forest.
The only critical note we might make is that a lot of attention has been recently put on the trees on the Heygate site and this is great. We’d like to see some more agitation and determination around the equally as important question of replacing the social housing content of the Heygate Estate as well as looking at the effects of any regeneration on retail, jobs and local amenities.
FULL LIST OF WORKSHOPS NOW RELEASED – Click here!
More Heygate Slurs As Demolition Begins…
APRIL 16th 2011: Recent media items on the Heygate have once again been painting the community that lived there until very recently in a very poor light. As the demolition begins, the spin about ‘estates from hell’ and ‘ criminals paradise’ is played out again and again. We know this all serves as a smokescreen and miserable excuse to hide the real story of the Estate and the scandal of the non-existent homes built for those decanted from their tenancies.
Jerry Flynn, ex-Heygate tenants writes:
“There appears to be a concerted PR push by Southwark Council to portray the Heygate estate in the worst possible light, thus justifying its demolition before the 1200 replacement homes have been built. Yesterday was been deemed the start of the Heygate demolition (despite the fact it actually begun several weeks ago); LBC, BBC news and tv all ran items whose tenor has been – ‘it was a terrible place; it had to go’. The idea that council estates are dreadful places to live is so engrained that it is a difficult myth to debunk, but we must try. Some facts that might help;
1.
The Heygate was fully inhabited with 1200 households, half 3/4 bed families, for 30 years, including, off the top of my head; teachers, taxi drivers, building workers, ambulance drivers, housing officers (!), health workers, admin assistants, office cleaners, train drivers, bus drivers, shop-workers, care assistants, youth workers – in short all the people that keep London working (but are finding it increasingly difficult to actually afford to live here).
2.
132 households, over 10% of the total, bought their homes on the Heygate.
3.
When the regeneration process began in 1999, a MORI poll of the estate showed that 55% were satisfied living on the estate, 29% dissatisfied – 70% wanted to continue living there, given the opportunity.
This does not paint a picture of an estate people could not wait to escape. On the other hand Southwark’s efforts to rehouse the people shoved off the estate has been pitiful; some more facts:
1.
The Heygate is being demolished, not redeveloped. Not many who lived on the Heygate are likely to return there, for several reasons – only secure tenants were entitled ‘to return’ and Southwark stopped issuing secure tenancies Jan 2001, leaving 300 households without the option of a new home when decant began in 2007; only 250 or so of the remaining secure tenants have actually exercised the option to return, which entails moving to housing association properties and most prefer to remain council tenants; the so-called ‘right-to-return’ for tenants who exercise it only applies to the specified early housing sites, which excludes anything built on the Heygate footprint; the ‘right-to-return’ itself ends on 30 Septmber 2015 and demolition will only be completed by that date (limited housing may have been completed on Rodney Rd & early Heygate phase if no slippage): last, but not least, central government now proposes that all new social rented housing be let at 80% market rates – about £280pw for a 1 bed flat at the Elephant at current rates. As for leaseholders, they simply won’t be able to afford it – typical compensation has have been £170K for a 3 bedroom maisonette.
2.
Only 300 social rented units are being built on the footprint; the remaining 900 units that are needed to fulfil Southwark’s promise that they will replace the 1200 units of the Heygate are supposed to be built on the 16 ‘early housing sites’ – about 300 units (on 8 sites) should be completed this year, but the remaining sites have either been dropped or are doubtful. At most 725 social rented units will be built to replace the 1080 social rented units lost by the Heygate demolition (132 were leasehold).
Please use any opportunity that presents itself inject some sense into this ‘debate’ – the truth of the Heygate is that it was just a pretty ordinary South London estate.“
Photos of Heygate tenants by J_Ymmit
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APRIL 11th 2011: Ex-Heygate resident Jerry Flynn was recently able to summarise very succinctly the latest news from The Elephant regeneration rip-off concerning the idea to now refurbish the Shopping Centre and not to demolish it:
“If the gains of the regeneration can be achieved by retaining the shopping centre and the benefits of keeping it are so clear, why was it ever decided to knock it down? Should the shopping centre be kept it will be because it’s the least risky option for Lendlease and St Modwens – the ‘regeneration objectives’ won’t come into it.
I also doubt whether the eight businesses who occupy the arches Cllr Colley wants to ‘punch..through’ will be quite as excited as she is by the prospect. Nor is the Market Square ‘currently under construction by Oakmayne’; this is ‘currently’ half- a-building site that will be a compound for the construction of Oakmayne Plaza (373 private homes, 243 student rooms, zero affordable houses) – the local Latin American football league was summarily displaced from Elephant Rd park to make way for this shameful development.
Nearly every benefit proclaimed for the Elephant regeneration masterplan has been thrown overboard – little replacement housing for the Heygate (only 3 out 16 sites built), no ‘healthy living/leisure centre’ to speak of, no ‘Energy Centre’, no ‘Town Park’, no ‘new library/life long learning centre’, no ‘new secondary school’, no ‘extended Walworth High St’ – all listed in the 2004 Masterplan and all dumped. What exactly are people who live in Southwark – in Camberwell, in Peckham – gaining from this? Given the net loss of affordable housing it’s actually making life worse for many“.
The ‘news’ was only brought into the public domain when Cllr Fiona Colley wrote a response to Jamesup who posts on the well-regarded InSe1 forum and he chose to post it up for all to read. She says in part:
“The big benefits of retaining the core of the building would be that this is a far more cost effective solution (and therefore actually a financially viable option, unlike wholesale demolition and rebuild), it could be delivered far quicker (and given how long people have waited this is important too…)”
The irony seems to escape her on both counts. Firstly that the success 0f the much-trumpeted billion pound regeneration now seems to rest on ‘financial viability’ and ‘cost effectiveness’ which seems to suggest a developer-speak for downgrading the dream somewhat and a lack of will for LendLease and St Modwens to invest very much in anything other than profitable private housing. It should be noted here that the refurb of the shopping centre now includes an additional portion of new housing.
Secondly, somewhat cheekily we think, Cllr Colley says that the refurb would mean less of a wait for all those who have been waiting so long for something to happen. Well, whose fault is that but successive administrations!
Luke, a member of Elephant Amenity Network wrote a great response to the posting of Cllr Colley’s ‘news’ and the lack of any consultative mechanism:
“Jamesup, thank you for finding this out and posting the details. It is incredible to me that all this is coming out through individual posts on the SE1 website and not through formal information and consultation – though I am grateful it is coming out somewhere!
The council appear to have given the Elephant and Castle.org website, which was their previous communications focus, to Lend Lease, but have abdicated completely from their own communications responsibilities.
We have still not been given the promised reference group, apparently the way to involve the public in these decisions, which promised in 2007 as a key part of the implementation of the regeneration programme and a quid pro quo for some very unpopular decisions about land use changes.
And yet here we are with the key decisions – which are massive changes from the previous concept – being presented as a fait accompli.
The next step must be to document all the objectives and community benefits of the regeneration as stated in the last time any documents were consulted on (2007 I think) and see which if any are left.
Whatever you think of the shopping centre, remember that the entire regeneration in 2007 was founded on the principle – which was trumpeted loudly by council officers – of not having a shopping centre, but having a town centre with an extended Walworth Road shopping street. This was (presumably) the outcome of public consultation at that point. So why did the council not anticipate that negotiating with St Modwen would inevitably be difficult – the own the shopping centre – and instead promised something that could not be delivered to voters.“
Our advice if you want to know the latest developments about your area is to consult the InSE1 forum! The Council and Lend Lease have not yet provided the community with any means to find out what is really going on.
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APRIL 10th 2011: Thinking of moving to the area? The more cynical wing of Southwark Notes has furnished us with this handy cut out ‘n’ keep translation of developer and estate agent brochure-speak.
‘VILLAGE’ – You’re surrounded by council estates on all sides.
‘NEW BUILD’ – The walls are paper thin.
‘BUZZY’ – There’s three lanes of traffic below your windowsill.
‘DIVERSE’ – People who aren’t middle-class and white live there.
CREATIVE – The artists who attracted you to the area are about to be priced out – by you.
‘EXCITING’ – Someone’s gonna have your iPhone in five minutes.
‘DYNAMIC‘ – There’s a small nightclub and two Chicken Cottages.
‘UNIQUE’ – It’s just like the other posh rabbit hutch over the road.
‘CONTEMPORARY’ – A kid with some Lego could have designed it.
‘REAL’ – There’s a big white working-class population.
‘VIBRANT’ – There’s a big Carribean population.
‘EXOTIC’ – There’s a big African population.
‘CULTURAL’ – The Imperial War Museum is up the road.
‘ICONIC’ – The buidling is lop-sided or shaped like a vegetable.
‘SUSTAINABLE’ – The architect has some put some wood on the front.
‘STUNNING’ – Expensive.
‘OASIS’ – You’re living behind huge security gates.
‘URBAN’ – It’s in London, duh!
‘EXCLUSIVE’ – You will drive to and from home so don’t have to interact locally.
‘QUARTER‘ – Basically, you’re living in a yuppiedrome.
*-) As humourists we won’t be giving up our day jobs just quite yet. We do welcome contributions to our handy guide. Pass on ’em.
Coming Soon from us: Something more serious again as the Council, Oakmayne, LendLease and St Modwen’s really start to rip into the area.
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APRIL 9thth 2011: Newly incorporated Heygate Plaza has been exciting those with investments smarts to put their cheese into the savvy opportunity area of the old Heygate Estate, a formerly crime ridden and totally labyrinthine den of thieves and poor people™.
An exciting guerrilla marketing campaign for the Heygate Plaza has been underway in the last few months. Passersby, train and bus commuters and others have been enjoying the D.I.Y style banners hung from high on the (almost) empty estate.
Screen shot from the Heygate Plaza website:
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MARCH 24th 2011: As we were on the subject, Lend Lease has now taken over the formerly Council-run ElephantandCastle.org.uk website. It was up for a while earlier in the year, then went off. Now it’s back again. It’s a pretty shoddy site for a multi-million pound company with all the links opening up as PDF-format documents. We await await their final consultation strategy with baited ears (!). We hope it’s a bit more developed and committed to actually paying attention to what people say to them than the document they’ve published on the site. Their consultation outline doesn’t seem like a serious attempt to listen to the experience, desires and needs of local people. It doesn’t even mention social housing as a key consultation issue even though they will be building new homes on the shadow of Heygate’s 1100 public housing flats. Click on the image to enlarge:
MARCH 21st 2011: Spotted flyposted around the Shopping Centre this week – three or four different large posters that feature quotes from learned type people of the past and the caption He Had His/Her Say – “Have your say!”. It then gives the contact detail for LendLease, the upcoming caring-sharing developer of the Elephant and Castle area.
Actually us art lovers at the Southwark Notes doubt these are the real deal. Guess it’s someone making a liberal point about consultation. Still it’s nice to see the art of popular enquiry still alive. We’ll be looking hard for more in the series or any other contributions to the debate.
If it was LendLease, we will eat our already well-chewed hat!!
JANUARY 21st 2011 – At Southwark Notes, we wonder how many times have you read this phrase in the newspaper property pages – ‘the £1.5 billion regeneration of the The Elephant and Castle‘? We must have read this about a thousand times and with the recent arrival of Strata Tower, we’ve been reading it more and more often. Seeing as The Elephant has been declared a property ‘ultra-hotspot‘ by website Property Investing, it’s no wonder that this tired phrase is always attached to any article, developer’s blurb or estate agent’s ad. All the changes and the fortunes to be made are all being sold on the much fabled multi-million pound ‘regeneration‘. Here it comes. A bit slow and slightly grey at the edges but whoopee!
If you were to look for a symbol of what ‘regeneration‘ might mean in The Elephant area, there would be no better clash than the literal face-off between Heygate Estate and Strata Tower. On the one hand, you have a massive Council estate and the on the other a massive shiny and new Tower with turbines on top. Heygate is written about in the past tense now and Strata is the future. Heygate is now neatly packaged up as as series of myths about what a crime-ridden, sink estate labyrinth it was and this tale enables the scandalous decant that happened there to be wiped away. Strata, on the other hand, is ‘the most dashing new development to date in the 170 acre Elephant and Castle regeneration zone’ or it’s ‘the high life in Elephant & Castle‘.
Ourselves, we are uninterested in poking a sharp stick at the Strata turbines or whether some architects awarded it the Carbuncle Cup. This is of no use to use here in The Elephant. What we are interested in is pointing out that fancy-pants towers with million pound penthouses on the top is not a serious part of a local ‘regeneration scheme‘ if at the same time, the removal of housing, open spaces and amenities previously enjoyed by a more settled population is what it costs to encourage developers to build here. Having looked into the increasingly useless LendLease’s proposals we can see that already affordable housing, the promised Town Square park, the Musco (Multi Utility Service Company) and local shops are all either seriously forgotten about or have just been more and more squeezed out the regeneration plans. Former Council leader Nick Stanton trumpeted in May 2009 – “We have now, set up MUSCo, a multi-utility services company which will deliver a low carbon infrastructure to over 6,000 new homes and businesses across the entire Elephant & Castle regeneration area. Carbon neutral heating, electricity, water and IT will all be delivered to homes as the regeneration rolls out, and design development and the first stages of implementation have already begun. The MUSCo will help the council achieve significant carbon positive targets as the infrastructure is extended to other estates“. One of the local estates would have been the Aylesbury, now reeling as a result of losing all public funding for their own slightly sketchy regeneration / gentrification programme. The irony now is how former US President Bill Clinton Climate Iniative recognises the E+C regeneration as ‘one of 16 founding projects of the Climate Positive Development Program that will support the development of large-scale urban projects that demonstrate cities can grow in ways that are “climate positive.”’
LendLease’s idea of consultation is pretty clueless so far. They seem intent on ‘listening to stakeholders‘ but does that mean that stakeholders will actually have some say in what lands in the LendLease development masterplan? It’s easy to listen. Whether you then take into account what you’ve heard is another thing altogether! They don’t really have to do much more than show, as a legal requirement, that they have done some consultation when they offer up their E+C Masterplan application at the end of 2011.
It’s also worth reminder people that the LendLease core area of the Heygate and Shopping Centre site is only the middle ring of the target. Outside that footprint is the wider Elephant and Castle ‘Opportunity Area’, basically a large part of The Elephant and Walworth that is promoted by The Council as up for grabs (i.e by more private developers such as those who built Strata).
We have already gone on at length about the decade long series of lies, manipulations and shoddy dealings that has characterised the slow decant of Heygate tenants to other parts of the Borough. We won’t labour the point again here. Only 6 former residents of the Heygate decided to move into the ‘affordable‘ housing portion of Strata despite the Council’s trumpeting that homes were were being provided for and taken up by ex-Heygate tenants. When the idea that ‘affordable’ housing means a part-buy, part-rent shared ownership scheme in a new private development we know we have come a long way from the reasonable rents and secure tenancies enjoyed by Heygate tenants.
For Heygate leaseholders, many have complained that spitefully low valuations made on their places by the Council mean they are unable to move to a similar property locally that’s up to the standard and space of the houses they had purchased on Heygate. This is why a few leaseholders there are refusing to be intimidated out of the homes for the sake of freeing up the land for more private and expensive housing to be built in The Elephant. Good luck to them, we say. Hold your ground.
In a move to hassle them out, the new Labour administration in power in Southwark continue the previous Lib-Dem’s bullying of these leaseholders. They have no heating, hot water, postal delivery and minimal security.
We read that when the Strata flats were being sold off-plan (before they were finished being built), 75% of the sales were to private investors. That means people who want to make some money from the property as opposed to actually wanting to live in it. With the credit crisis, an approximate 50% of investors who had bought there were expected to live there. With the average selling price for a 2 bedroom Strata flat being £450,000, it’s not too difficult to see that a better off class of person is moving in. It’s hard to write about this process because it sounds like we are being very vindictive against individuals who choose to move here. That is not our intention. Our motivation is to point out that the tendency to increasing gentrification is obviously the result of those new arrivals and the demand for Zone 1/2 Georgian or Victorian terraces in Walworth or luxury flats like Strata, Printworks, South Central West etc. This is not some hidden secret process revealed from our consultation at the Southwark Notes crystal ball. You can read this in the papers – ‘Strata’s ideal resident is an altogether wealthier breed of pioneering urbanaut in this windswept corner of SE1‘.
Or this – ‘As the vanguard for gentrification in the area, Strata tower wears its social conscience well: 25% of 408 apartments are earmarked for sustainable housing and 20 of those will be taken by residents of Heygate estate‘. We wonder what ‘sustainable‘ housing is? A house that doesn’t fall down? Aside from the overestimation of how many Heygate folks moved to Strata, the fact that Strata was given planning permission by the Council with zero socially rented apartments is hardly a glowing social conscience.
Here is another report – ‘For ages, it looked as though gritty ‘Sarf’ inner-city neighbourhoods such as Walworth…were going nowhere…however things are shifting as these locations start to benefit from the overspill of gentrified areas and more new homes are built…having rented in Notting Hill, Tom, a financial research editor and Lucy who works in corporate communications decamped to Walworth‘.
Welcome Tom and Lucy to Southwark – the 26th most deprived borough in England (of 354), ranked as the 18th most deprived borough in England on the income scale – Index of Multiple Deprivation, 2007
Finally for this rant, here is the story of Nathan, a new arrival to the area and a Strata resident. For some reason, Nathan was able to feature in The Standard with a picture of himself in colour, complaining that his new flat was ‘too hot’ – ‘Resident Nathan Wheelhouse said: “When I left my house the other morning it was 28C at 7.30am — it’s tropical in there. The cold and hot water pipes flow next to each other. I feel like I’m in an eco experiment that has gone wrong at the design stage. I only moved in two weeks ago and I am not enjoying it.”’.
Nathan, Southwark Notes heart bleeds for you as I suspect do the hearts of Heygate leaseholder living with no heating and hot water. Welcome to The Elephant!
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The protest will then continue throughout the Council meeting which starts at 4 pm.We need hundreds of people outside to tell the Council: ‘No Cuts!’. Spread the word! Called by Southwark Save Our Services, a great group of folks who us Southwark Notes bods support wholeheartedly in this time of crisis!! As we said last November: ‘We probably don’t need to point out the disastrous effect the millions of pounds worth of cuts is going to make locally to folks. If it’s not a recipe for more public-land sell-offs for a quick buck, more rent increases and evictions from both Council and Housing Association homes, more displacement of claimants and the working poor through Housing Benefit cuts, then we don’t know what is.”
—————————————————————————————————————–ANOTHER LOCAL PUB FACES CONVERSION TO FLATS
16th December 2010
In the past, we have written quite a bit about the number of local Elephant and Walworth pubs that have dropped like flies to be later reborn as expensive but cheaply converted flats – see our Walworth page for the grisly details! Well, here we go again as The Crown pub in Brandon St, Walworth – the one with all the fancy old green tiles – is another local under threat from closure and conversion. Southwark Council Officers and East Walworth Ward councillors rejected developer’s Terramek’s application to demolish and replace with 9 flats on 8th Sept 2010, citing the character of the pub and the impact of the proposals on Nursery Row Park but local users and supporters of the pub fear that a new plan will be submitted to the Council.
The Crown in 1977 and today
The Save The Crown Campaign has been organising and gathering support. Read more about it here!
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MAN IN CLOTH CAP SPOTTED INSIDE STRATA
30th November 2010
Recently the ground floor retail unit at the bottom of Strata Tower played host to an exhibition of photographs of local people. This is part of the Strata Towers commitment to ‘the Arts‘, as they call it. You can read about it here, if you dare!
‘To celebrate the official opening of Strata SE1 in July‘, photographer Hannah Maule-ffinch provided twenty or so ‘Faces of Elephant & Castle’, some of which we reproduce here. Alongside the faces were notes reading, for example, ‘Fred, 36 years in the community‘ making it all sound a bit like trying for parole! Anyhow no surprises that the portraits were stereotypes of The Elephant characters including a police warden, a Muslim girl, an African woman, Fred in his cloth cap and a local youth. Of course, all these people live here and that’s great but it looks more like a Council social inclusion programme than getting to grip with what makes The Elephant great. Somewhat amusingly appearing on the windows inside the empty retail unit is about as near as any of these people will realistically get to residing in Strata.
When we heard that Strata was getting all arty on us, we did fear the worse as ‘art’ these days when it’s applied to the public does tend to deal in the easiest and most simple of messages. The message here is that it’s all good at The Elephant. No-one is unhappy! No need for the past. No need for criticism. Everything has to be positive.
It’s no surprise also that works of art by students of Camberwell College of Art have been featuring on the side of Strata too: ‘Working with the College, Brookfield set their artists the open challenge of creating a piece of public art which best depicts community and sustainable living in the Elephant & Castle. From a swathe of entries submitted by students twelve were shortlisted by a panel of judges…The winning submission is already in place on the two large glass panels enclosing the building’s foyer‘.
Here are some of the students ideas:
‘This artwork takes the form of a stylised flow of panels that ruminate upon the technical and social aspects of the building, offering glimpses into Elephant and Castle’s bright future. Community solidarity, environmentalism, cutting-edge technology and a glance back to the base function of the home are intertwined together in his attempt to envision the new lives of the dwellers of Strata SE1 and those that live around them’.
‘The concept behind this artwork is to give the building a more humanistic feel and inspire a sense of community. The typographic design is intended to be organic; relating to sustainable living, and the photo mirrors the views people living there will see. Home is where the art is; welcome to the Strata building.’
‘This complex biomorphic sculpture depicts organic biomasses with a strong reference to mutation that is expressed through a combination of “pop” and “baroque” touches. The “Alternative Transformation Gold Evolution” in an alchemical metaphoric meaning, symbolises glory and ambition as the internal motives of the Strata SE1 pioneers, who lead in the evolutionary construction of this significant building with its aim to contribute to ‘community’ and ‘sustainable living’.*-)
Just to show that we at Southwark Notes are not philistines, we found a public artwork that we liked which had been proposed for the Spitalfield market regeneration area:
Alberto Duman, Giant Steps (2009) – rejected entry for the Spitalfields Sculpture prize. Not a single reference to ‘Cultural richness and community diversity’ but to social cleansing, possibly?!
We await with trepidation the proposed £100,000 of Section 6 planning gain money that Strata has promised ‘for an art installation (made predominately of glass) within entrance area‘.
For us fogies here at Southwark Notes, we are saddened by the loss of the little clock monument outside Draper House where the sunken terrace was. It was just one of many little things we liked about the area because it looked nice and because it referred to Clock Place, a very old street nearby that’s very nearly lost and also to the old Clock Tower that used to stand in St Mary Newington open-space. Now it’s gone the way of all things: destroyed and renovated with some Strata planning gain money. That’s money the developer chucks into the community for certain local projects. The cost of the renovation around the base of Strata and outside the Draper House shops was £900,000.
Instead of getting something equally as full of character, we now have two dull slabs of grass instead. Is this really what a regenerated area should look like? Is this really what Strata residents want their area to look like? It looks like a shiny but soul-less architect’s drawing for the public spaces in new developments. Regular readers will know how much we like the daft public spaces at Empire Square in The Boro or on Webber Row by the new Vergel restaurant!!
You can read about the mysterious Clock Place, clock monument and other weird and wonderful local history in ‘9 Things That Aren’t There’ here.
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WALWORTH RD’s ONLY GARDEN SPACE – WORTH SAVING!
8th November 2010
17th November Update: Planning decision deferred at Community Council Meeting. See here.
‘The space in front of Carter Place Police Station on the Walworth Road has been a garden ever since the land was enclosed. It is unique in being the only green space along the Walworth Rd that has never been developed…When the local police moved from the site, the garden was bought by a developer and they have been trying to build on it ever since. Local people and Councillors have successfully fought this so far, but we are now coming to the showdown to try to stop our garden being obliterated under a massive and completely inappropriate development of shops and flats (see image below)…We have an alternative. Help us to get the site protected so that it remains as a garden for the people of Walworth and Southwark to enjoy once again’.
The local campaign to preserve Carter Place Gardens ask all those who support the fight to do two things:
1. Sign The Petition.
Please sign our petition at: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/40056.html
2. Fight The Planning Application.
If you can find an extra few moments then you can really make a difference to this campaign by emailing the Council at planning.applications@southwark.gov.uk and telling them you would like to see the garden preserved and not developed. Don’t forget to quote the planning application number 10-AP-2796 in your email.
More historical details and reasons why Walworth Rd needs to preserve it’s only garden space can be found here: SAVE CARTER PLACE GARDENS
It would be great to return Carter Place Gardens to its former splendour as seen here in a postcard from 1957.
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‘Heygate residents have lost out to a series of cancellations and delays
A flagship housing scheme intended to transform the lives of some of London’s most deprived families by tapping into the skills of up-and-coming architects has “failed” in its key objective, it was claimed this week.‘
Read this story here. Surely this justifies our every use of the word ‘scandal‘ that we have used to describe the decant of Heygate and the ever decreasing ‘early day housing sites’. So much for the promise that Heygate tenants would be offered a place to return too.
We probably don’t need to point out the disastrous effect the millions of pounds worth of cuts is going to make locally to folks. If it’s not a recipe for more public-land sell-offs for a quick buck, more rent increases and evictions from both Council and Housing Association homes, more displacement of claimants and the working poor through Housing Benefit cuts, then we don’t know what is.
Could be worth heading down to the Southwark Save Our Services public meeting and discussion on Thursday 4th 7pm at Salvation Army Hall, 1 Princess Street SE1 6HH (Elephant & Castle Tube).
They have a website here with some good facts and figures on it. The site says that Southwark SOS is ‘comprised of community organisations, local trade unionists, students and user groups‘. Check it out!
Whilst the local politicians from Labour and Lib-Dems squabble over the extent of the Great Elephant Rip-Off – see here – it’s galling to see here that ‘Southwark Labour’s cabinet member for regeneration, Cllr Fiona Colley, said: “We’re proud we were able to secure a minimum of 25 per cent affordable homes as part of the Elephant regeneration‘. According to an answer received in Parliament by MP Karen Buck in March earlier this year to this question – To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the target is for the provision of affordable housing in each London local authority – Southwark Council’s target is ‘50 per cent. (35 per cent. or 40 per cent. in Central Activities Zone, central London)‘. We wonder why Fiona Colley would be proud to secure exactly half the Council’s own target for provision of affordable housing?
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Folks at the Elephant Amenity Network have begun to create an archive on their website of interesting and relevant documents relating to the long and grueling saga of the Elephant regeneration. So far there is a timeline of events full of different plans, guides, documents and so forth. Very useful to see how the promises made to local people were slowly ditched.
Also good is the small archive of newspaper cuttings that talk about the area as if it’s one big block of concrete with criminals lurking behind every tower block. Our favourite total myth about the area comes from Ravneet Ahluwalia’s article for The London paper from 2006. Does this ring true to you? – “The area is characterised by its council estates and high- rise blocks…negotiating the subways frequented by meths-drinking weirdos can be scary.” Have you ever seen a meths-drinking weirdo in the subways?
What about this vile slur: ‘Heygate was only built in 1968-69 and quickly became a sort of human dustbin. It exemplified the notion that if you give people sties to live in, they will live like pigs.‘ From this article.
Have you got any great newspaper reports of myths about The Elephant you can send our way! We hope so!
Check out the Amenity Network archive here!
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THE BLOODY GREAT BIG ELEPHANT RIP-OFF! Part 3
SEPTEMBER 11th 2010
Here is the ‘simplified’ new plan of the rip-off in progress and how it might run over the course of the next few years.
What is a ‘Simplified Indicative Programme to Unconditionality‘? You can download the entire Elephant and Castle – Regeneration Agreement and Disposal of Associated Land agenda here. It’s actually fascinating and useful reading. Enjoy!
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– The whole scheme’s 25% “affordable” housing is the minimum level in the agreement and well below the 35% previously standard on all new developments in London.
– The Shopping Centre and Fusion Leisure Centre are not included in the agreement. It seems likely the Council will Compulsorily Purchase the Shopping Centre forcing the hand of St Modwen’s, the owner. The plan for the Elephant Leisure Centre appears to be to refurbish the Fusion site rather than provide a new facility as previously announced.
– The Financial structure will see three 999 year leases (site divided into three plots to be sold off to developer) for public land. The profit is 20% of total cost (i.e. will rise in line with cost increases, no loss to Lend Lease), up from 16%-ish before.
Planning procedures and local accountability:
– Management board to oversee the regeneration and no longer a steering group. Southwark and Lend Lease will have two representatives on the board. This group will sign off on planning applications. (The Terms and Conditions of steering group will come to one of the local community councils in October 2010). The Consultation strategy for the regeneration is to be defined over next three months. What chance is there of local people being included in the decision making structures?
– The MUSCo is now in doubt. The Council will “seek to” provide it as a “preferred approach” but it is not Lend Lease’s responsibility. MUSCo is Multi Utility Service Company, aimed to provide a single source of (partly) sustainable energy for the new development.
– Master Regeneration Plan – there is no reference to number of homes (2500?), or trees, or new amenities such as schools. London Plan increased requirement from 4000 net/5300 total to 6000, though 2500 figure is not clear/needs confirming it is for whole site
– Transport for London issues have not yet been agreed. Yet another TfL appraisal is on the cards and there is an expectation that Section 106 money could be used to underwrite the transport infrastructure needs. (Section 106 is planning gain money from the developers usually used to provide facilities and development work of some sort of benefit to the local community)
– Lend Lease have an “opt out” clause if the development is found to be not viable. Lend Lease’s finance director is leading a ”transfer of land viability assessment’ – i.e whether it can be done with a profit.
The above is based on a quick analysis of the deal made at the last Elephant Amenity Network meeting in July. Thanks to them for the info.
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SOUTHWARK NOTES has been following events from afar having been lucky enough to go on holiday to sunny climes but we haven’t let the sun go to our head that much to miss the news of the biggest public housing rip-off for many a year. After years of promises, negotiations, fake and dodgy ‘consultations’, insults and out and out toss about a regeneration for all from the Lib-Dems, it took only 8 weeks for the new Labour administration to sign away the publically-owned land where Heygate Estates sits for 999 years to a mega-private developer. In return, we get a wodge of hard cash and a promise for 25% affordable housing on the site. There’s not even a promise of much socially rented housing for poor people, the people who make up most of the population of The Elephant! It’s basically a deal for the development on the site of more private housing! It doesn’t even stick to the conventional 35% figure for a mix of public housing mixed in with the private that is in the Council’s own Southwark Plan!
The new Council bureaucrats have not even had time for the ink to dry on their election promises. They attacked the record of the LibDems saying: ‘The heads of terms which were signed in November with Lend Lease didn’t include a leisure centre, they didn’t include a library, and they didn’t include any of the community facilities we would have expected to have seen. It was an agreement to build houses — and private houses at that. That’s simply not good enough’. But what they have signed on the dotted line with Lend Lease is even worse than anything we feared the Lib Dems might try and pull. It’s a total bloody rip-off of the homes and land and amenity sites of our local community, and worse, one that spits in the faces of the Heygate tenants who for years and years trusted that the Council would look after them as indeed it is charged to do.
Southwark Notes has been writing about the reality behind the ‘regeneration’ of The Elephant for a long time now. We said this in 2003 at the very beginning of the project and we (sadly) can’t say we were wrong:
(There are) slow moving plans seek to knock down the shopping centre and the Heygate Estate and replace it with a mega complex of hotels, retail developments and hundreds of new expensive private houses and blocks. Along the way, a required percentage of social housing will be factored in. The theory is that the commercial developments make enough profits out of the Elephant Area to kick back some down to the local community in the form of social housing and paying for a few parks or leisure facilities. What private companies want is access to the high land values and property prices that can be found in North Southwark because of it’s close proximty to The City and West End. They also want to build expensive flats for richer people who now are happy to live South for precisely the above reason…Essentially, what is planned for The Elephant then is to change the local character of the area from one of poor people and the type of shops and services poor people use and rely on to a landscape and culture of more well-off people and the mega shops and service industries they require. It’s obvious to us that without this change in the local population, no big business will want to invest their money in big shops, hotels and private leisure facilities in The Elephant because poor people won’t be spending any money in them.
Read the full page here: WHOSE REGENERATION?
Do the maths!! Before the clearance of the Heygate tenants from the estate, there were aprox 1200 council homes for local people. These homes were spacious and well-loved and of course the rent was affordable. The Lend Lease deal offers just over a measly 300 socially rented flats and these being managed by Housing Associations with notorious higher service charges, less landlord accountability, less secure tenancies and less sympathy and goodwill for those suffering hardship and getting into arrears. What are the Councils excuses to the 15,000 people on the Southwark Housing waiting list?
It’s clear that despite all the talk of ‘mixed community’ and private house building bringing new wealth and jobs to the area, the story of the Heygate Rip-Off is clearly one of chucking out the poor people from the area and selling it to the better-off (either in the form of developers or in the form of private homeowners in luxury flats). We don’t have a problem with homeowners. Of course, we don’t! Just as many local mortgage payers are no better off than local council tenants. But when you see penthouses and luxury flats going up in the skyline of The Elephant, you have to wonder what the fate of the rest of us who live in the area is? Is it going to be like parts of Docklands or Covent Garden where the local council housing population was either chucked out or priced out? We can look to the the recently gentrified areas like Hoxton and Brick Lane to see what could happen here? What is in store for us? We can only learn the lesson again from the scandal of The Heygate rip-off and this time wise up a bit and be prepared to stand up for where we live – 0ur homes, our parks and services, the places we enjoy and the community we have.
Southwark Notes has been slowly getting involved with the local Elephant Amenity Network, a group who a couple of years back got together some local tenants associations, parks and playgrounds groups, concerned residents and so on to produce a Community Charter to demand the hearing and inclusion of our voices in any regeneration planning. Recently, the group has taken off again with new people getting involved in all sorts of different ways from making leaflets, doing a nice website but also challenging the Council at every step. They have also been active (alongside Peoples Republic of Southwark) in trying to safeguard our community and making a stand for it when it comes to the negotiations over the new Council Core Strategy document. This is a massive brick-like document that sets out the future of what the Council intends to do in the borough and how it does it. It’s tough job wading through Council double-speak and bullshit but they have been making a valiant and exhausting effort.
If what we say strikes some sort of chord with you, then we urge you to contact the Elephant Amenity Network and get involved. Visit the website and see what’s up with them. The link to the site is in our LINKS section. They are meeting once a month in Walworth and are open to all. They are also 100% independent of political parties something we wholeheartedly approve of *-)
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It’s not just the Heygate tenants who have been treated poorly by the Council. It’s worth reading Adrian’s story written up in a recent Southwark News: ‘Adam Glasspool lives in increasing isolation in the Cuddington block, and claims the money the council is offering for his three bedroom maisonette is forcing him not just out of the Elephant but London altogether.
An independent surveyor commissioned by Mr Glasspool valued the property at £240,000, but the council is offering him far less to up sticks from the dilapidated estate.
Mr Glasspool told the ‘News’: “The council’s surveyors disagreed with this and valued the property at £160,000 claiming that this is what similar properties on the Heygate and the soon to be demolished Aylesbury Estate had been selling for. Clearly, it is ridiculous to compare values with other properties that were earmarked for demolition.” Full story here!
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From This Is London: Peter John, the new Labour leader of Southwark Council will meet the developers Lend Lease next week. This is what he said before the election: “The heads of terms which were signed in November with Lend Lease didn’t include a leisure centre, they didn’t include a library, and they didn’t include any of the community facilities we would have expected to have seen. It was an agreement to build houses — and private houses at that. That’s simply not good enough.”
Post-election, the rhetoric has been modified. “I am very much looking forward to meeting with Lend Lease and moving towards an agreement on Elephant & Castle,” said John. Does that mean he will sign an agreement that runs along the lines of that agreed by his Lib-Dem predecessor, Nick Stanton? “It certainly is a possibility,” said his spokesman.
We at Southwark Notes are not holding our breath for the outcome of the Council / LendLease meeting.
3rd May: BBC Radio 4 ‘The World Tonight‘ – Short radio feature of the Elephant ‘regeneration’ featuring opponents from Aylesbury and ex-Heygate and the same old nonsense about Strata tower buyers trickling their wealth into the local community! Listen here
Walking down the street, three large empty buildings stick out. Two of them are the rather ornate legacy of Georgian Walworth. There’s formerly-owned by the Council and listed John Smith House at 144-152 Walworth Rd (for sale for £5m), and opposite the Cuming Museum, the old Confederation Of Shipbuilding & Engineering Unions at 140-142 (for sale for approx £695,000). The final one is the ex-Council-owned Chatelaine House at 186 and in the slow early planning stages of redevelopment.
All display the sign “Protected by Occupation”: John Smith and Chatelaine Hse are taken care of by Ad Hoc, and the other by Ambika. Both companies employ ‘guardians‘ as temporary live-in security for vacant properties, a strategy pioneered in the United Kingdom by the Dutch company Camelot
Legally, these companies operate as commercial middle-men between the property owner and the guardian, who signs a temporary licence agreement and becomes a licensee. This means that although living in the property, s/he has no right to tenancy, as the licence is a commercial agreement. The result is that under normal circumstances the company can terminate the agreement with only a two-week notice, and there is no possible legal appeal to it, unless the guardian is prepared to risk being charged with trespassing.
On top of offering their services as 24/7 caretakers, the guardians are expected to pay council taxes, keep the place tidy and pay a weekly rent (apparently not with Ambika) which is below market value for the property, yet above any reasonable expectation for a temporary, non-residential accommodation.
Live-in guardians are recruited through a vetting system and need to comply with a series of stringent regulations. From the Ad Hoc’s website, applicants must prove to have a regular source of income, and must be “flexible, ready to move at short notice, without dependents and without pets”. The images of the ideal caretaker leave no room for doubt: flexible young professionals whose job does not impinge upon the choice of home, as for freelancers or other types of precarious workers.
With the welded-up Heygate Estate at a stone’s throw away, and the Southwark council’s housing waiting list estimated at 1,200 households (February 2010, National Housing Federation) these companies speculate on the housing crisis without offering any respite to the hundreds of individuals on the waiting list that do not correspond to the desirable pedigree of the live-in guardians.
You could think that the super flexible and precarious freelancer without a partner or dependents is the perfect resident of the increasingly privatised and regulated modern London, a city in constant re/development – Ready to leave at short notice and to abdicate his/her rights to tenancy, these are the desired urban inhabitants of city that demands ever more extreme forms of adaptability, whilst withdrawing all legal safety nets.
See also: North Walworth SDP which includes some of the buildings mentioned above. Also worth reading is Matthew Hyland’s entertaining article that has some analysis of Cameloot: Embedded Adventurism:
‘If Camelot, a squatting-substitution agency, is targeting key workers, it goes to show that the emergency that makes squatting necessary, i.e. the reasonable expectation that finding even barely adequate housing by conventional means may simply be impossible, has spread so far as to engulf securely waged professionals enjoying special state protection. (In London officially ‘affordable’ housing is set aside for those with paltry incomes of under £50,000 per year [Mayor of London’s free newspaper]. Average annual income of council tenants in the officially fashionable borough of Islington is under £5,000′.
UPDATE: September 2010
Seems like the Ad-Hoc property guardians at Chatelaine House have been given the ‘short notice’ boot. The place is now rented to Bishop Climate Irungu’s Kingdom Church, a church that claims ‘God has confirmed Bishop Climate’s with a worldwide Ministry Through powerful Signs and wonders. This include the restoration of Hearing and sight, disappearance of cancerous growth, recovery of Mental wholeness, instant healing of people diagnosed with diseases such as Aids, TB, thousands of people have been set free from bondage of marriage Failure, financial Failure, demonic attacks, which include witchcraft demonic attack..‘ So no longer will the owners Durkan, a property development group, be paying money to have people live in an empty building but will be accepting money from god-botherers who make highly dubious claims for themselves, to put it mildly!
John Smith House, not long ago bought by Safeland Plc, has just been given planning permission for conversion into a 75 bedroom budget hotel and restaurant for ‘likely customer group of younger people visiting the capital’.
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There could be no better day to mark the start of the regeneration of the Heygate Estate than April Fool’s day. On this day 11 years ago of the day Heygate residents received a MORI poll questionnaire, asking for their opinions on the future of the estate.
571 householders out of a 1194 total returned the questionnaires and the responses make instructive reading, both for what people thought about the estate, what was hoped for, and for what has actually happened.
55% were satisfied with living on the estate, 58% with living in the area. Opinion on the four options for redevelopment was evenly divided between 3 variations of demolition or repair, all including a rebuild on the Heygate footprint – the fourth option, demolition and no new homes had little support, 5% as a first preference.
Other responses of note were the desire to remain a tenant on the Heygate Estate (70%) and the desire to remain on the estate, no matter what improvements might be made there – 52%.
All-in-all the picture you might expect of any ordinary South London estate, where people have made lives for themselves, some more happily than others but most just getting on with it. Why then is the Heygate now the ‘infamous’ Heygate estate (The Independent, 29 March 2010), a place where no sensible person would want to live? How has it acquired its notorious reputation?
One of the consequences to the MORI poll was that Southwark felt able to claim that ‘70% of Heygate tenants expressed a wish to move to a new home’, an interpretation of the figures that opens up new vistas for mathematics. It also started to describe the homes as ‘unpopular’ and ‘poor quality’, but without claiming that they had to be demolished because of dilapidation – they would simply be replaced by something better.
From January 2001 Southwark also stopped giving new tenants secure tenancies – new tenants would get temporary, insecure, tenancies (or licences), which did not have the same rights and crucially would not place any obligation on Southwark to rehouse them in new homes. (These insecure tenancies numbered 299 by Nov 2007, when decanting began). The estate was being turned into a transitory place of abode, rather than a place people could settle down and live. The lucky ones would move on to a better place, the not-so-lucky (who included 106 leaseholders now in a negative equity trap) would have to take what they could get.
While all this was going on the estate begun playing host to an increasing number of film and television crews – ‘The Bill’, ‘Ghost Squad’, something with Joanna Lumley in it, something with Timothy Spall in it, an advert for Levis, pop videos for Madonna and David Guetta. The Heygate (and the Aylesbury) was the place to come if you wanted a gritty estate and a local authority that would look after you.
In 2002/3 the whole regeneration plan collapsed. Southwark fell out with the developers, Southwark Land Regeneration, at about the same time as the council itself changed political hands – a new Liberal administration took over from Labour. This made the critical decision to yoke the regeneration of the estate to the wider regeneration of the Elephant, including the shopping centre. Now, according to Southwark, retaining the estate would make the wider aims of the regeneration unachievable (Executive Report, 17 June 2003). The Council would draft its own development plan and find a private partner later. The Heygate residents would be rehoused elsewhere – the Early Housing sites, scattered around the borough, although usually described as being ‘at or about the Elephant’. They would be built before anything else in the regeneration and completed by 2010 (New Homes for Heygate, residents rehousing pack, Spring 2003).
There was no meaningful resistance to this change of course; the Tenants and Residents Association had been effectively co-opted by Southwark from the start and continued to support its plans. On the estate there were big problems with the heating system and Southwark was eventually forced to undertake a major repair to keep it going, but life continued pretty much in its usual anonymous round.
In 2006 Southwark got a Lib Dem/Tory administration, a new housing supremo, Tory councillor Kim Humphreys and, not long after, a new chief executive, Annie Shepherd. In 2007 nearly 2 years of ominous silence on the 16 Early Housing sites ended and a new plan emerged, the Heygate Action Plan (Executive Report, 19 June 2007). This gave up on building the early housing sites before demolishing the estate; instead tenants were to move into current housing stock according to a plan drawn up with the assistance of PricewaterhouseCooper. Tenants would find and bid for their own replacement homes using the weekly ‘Homesearch Magazine’, each would be assigned a case officer to help them and a time-limit was set to encourage the reluctant, about 6 months – after this notices to seek possession and to quit would be issued. Those tenants who wanted it would be given a so-called ‘right-to-return’ to the early housing sites (about 250 have taken up the offer). The TRA rebelled, but it was too late. The target date for delivering vacant possession to the new development partners, Lendlease, would be Sept 2009.
Over 900 households, at least a couple of thousand of people, have now been removed from the Heygate Estate. No Early Housing Sites have been completed and only 286 of the promised 1200 replacement units have planning permission.
In the meantime the Heygate’s reputation as the film set of choice for urban dramas has burgeoned. Sir Michael Caine (‘Harry Brown’) has exacted revenge and disorientated youths have searched for manhood in its mean streets (or walkways); even Clint Eastwood has chanced his arm. The undeserved popular image of the Heygate as a crime ridden hellhole fostered by these films leads naturally to the conclusion that social problems are the reason the estate is being demolished. The real reasons, the whole thread of decisions taken by Southwark Council, each one a betrayal and a step away from the initial promise, ‘New Homes for Heygate’, is forgotten.
The Heygate’s journey from being a humdrum council estate that no-one had ever heard of to becoming a byword for urban depravity suits Southwark very well. Its critical role in reducing a community of some thousands to a blank spot on the map is buried under the image of a well-meaning council, wrestling with intractable problems in the face of the great global credit crunch. It also suits developers Lendlease, who don’t want a council estate sitting on their profit opportunity, and will be in no hurry to build anything that smacks of council housing, such as ‘affordable’, or, heaven forbid, ‘social rented’.
A Contribution to Southwark Notes blog by Jerry Flynn
1st April 2010
MARCH 22nd: Council issues eviction notices to the last remaining tenants on Heygate estate. Doreen Gee, who was the chair of the Tenants and Residents Association during the first failed regeneration attempt in the early 2000’s, was one the people issued with a notice to seek possession with possible court dates in early April. Southwark News reports ‘Doreen Gee, 71, suffers from arthritis and has been unable to secure a new home, despite bidding for close to 30 properties through the council’s Homesearch system. She received her notice to quit her property last week‘. Whole story here.
Stickers spotted today on the hoardings around the vacant Oakmayne Plaza site at New Kent Rd. Obviously some else thinks it’s a rip-off too!
See why here’ Where We Are Coming From‘!!
OR CLICK this page for doing something!!
We’ve been looking at the changes in our local area for 10 years or more. We have also been writing about and photographing the changes as an aid to understanding and acting upon what’s currently going on. The question we asking is ‘whose regeneration?’. Is the by now infamous regeneration of the Elephant + Castle area going to benefit those of us who already live here?
What follows are different pages covering specific areas such as Walworth, The Heygate, Borough etc and some other more thematic pages where we ask questions about specific topics and subject that come up as part of the ‘regeneration’ schemes. We won’t waffle on here, so check out the local pages listed above.
And keep in touch!
Elephant Editors
These are all the pages we are updating> You can click these links or the same links at the top of this page!
You can also email us your thoughts, gossip, news, error corrections, dead web links, leaked documents, moans, support and criticism:
elephantnotes@yahoo.co.uk
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Tagged Ad Hoc, Ambika, art and gentrification, Aylesbury Estate, bankside, bermondsey, Camelot, Carter Place, Elephant and Castle, empire square, Gentrification, Heygate, Lend Lease, London, Nursery Row, O-Central, oakmayne, Printworks, Regeneration, south central west, South London, Southwark, St Modwen, the borough, tribeca square cheap, walworth
Southwark Notes - whose regeneration? 
