Single Aspect Blog

Long before residents of council estates under threat stand any chance of being rehoused into the new part of phased redevelopments there is a significant danger of them becoming “the dispossessed” – those unfortunates scattered about a former estate in the midst of abandonment, vermin infestation, squatters and burned out flats.  If it were only a one off that would be worrying enough but there is clear evidence that carelessness and lack of consideration for the tenants by the councils is commonplace.

Fulham Court

“Between 1982 and 1986 the Tory/Liberal coalition council emptied most of the 400+  flats in Fulham Court with a view to selling it to a private developer for refurbishment as private flats. Tenants were re-housed by going to the top of the waiting list which meant the rest of the borough’s tenants had a lower priority.  A spirited campaign by tenants including marches and legal actions and the decision by a group of tenants to stick it out meant that by the time the Tories lost power in 1986 there were still residents in some blocks.  By that time some of the estate had been sold to the developer and the rest was dilapidated – empty flats were boarded up, only essential maintenance had been done and lack of care by the council meant there was squatting, fly tipping and infestation.  Labour cut a deal with the developer to buy back what was sold and refurbished the whole estate as council homes, as it has remained since.”

Andy Slaughter MP

That was then but now the estate is under threat again from the Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Stephen Greenhalgh and his plans to rid the borough of council tenants.

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I’ve been looking at the plans for 282 Goldhawk Road by Peter Barber architects and recently reading the Hansard transcript of the second reading of the 1909 Housing Act.  Despite the passage of just over 100 years, the English is clear and the reasoning beyond question.  Dear Mr Barber where do the children play?

“England is not so destitute of land upon which to house its poor that they should be housed in working class tenements without a backyard in which to chop the wood and put the coal, and in which the children can play whilst the mother is able to keep a friendly eye on them through the washhouse window, and at the same time continue to carry on her domestic duties.

All this is impossible in back-to-back houses, where the children have only got a stuffy room for a playground; and in the days of rapid traction you have no right to relegate children to play in a small front garden, or in the road or street, when the community is rich enough to provide the humblest garden in the majority of cases, and some measure of a backyard in which the youngsters can play whilst the domestic duties in the house are being carried out.

This can be done better in through ventilated houses with a backyard and a garden than is possible in the case of back-to-back houses.”

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1909/apr/05/housing-town-planning-etc-bill

Peter Barber architects have visited my blog:-

A visitor from office.peterbarberarchitects.com (81.149.180.109)
arrived from www.google.co.uk 282 goldhawk road cameron 1-10,
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/?cat=5
at 15:50:58 on Friday, June 4, 2010.
This visitor used Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB;
rv:1.9.0.19)Gecko/2010031422 Firefox/3.0.19.

That’s something to celebrate. They won’t change the design though, sadly.  They have already got planning permission the project has been stopped.

UPDATE: I went to look at it yesterday 23/6/2010 and things are looking up.  There are indications that the plans may be reviewed, for details please contact the Residents’ association at ashchurchresidents@hotmail.com

UPDATE: The residents’ association plans are moving on, I received this today 11/9/2010:-

Following Harry Phibb’s newsletter mentioning plans to include 292 and 280 Goldhawk Road in our favourite development, we have now met Nick Johnson, the council executive who Cllr Greenhalgh asked to review the 282 plans back in May.

He assured us the 282 development will not go ahead as planned, and that our many concerns have been taken on board. The development may include the 292 site (on the corner of Ashchurch Park Villas), which Mr Johnson thinks will enable them to deliver a better development which respects the local area. He said 280, the old surgery on the corner of Ashchurch Grove is not included in this development.

We expect another update before the meeting , so come and hear more and have your say.

Other business will include

• – election of officers – we are looking for someone to take on Neighbourhood Watch
• – agreeing a constitution and subscrpition for ARA
• – update on our FOI on the trees on the 282 site – we have a victory to report!
• – antisocial behaviour on 282 site
• – drugs, dangerous dogs etc
• -issues relating to Ravenscourt Park
• – developments in Askew Road

and the Starch Green event in July –  for more on that see below.

REMEMBER THE LOVE YOUR STREET EXHIBITION : AN INVITATION

If you were one of the 300 or so people who attended the very successful all day event at Starch Green on 26th June. The architects promised they would put together a summary of the many exciting ideas contributed by those that attended for improving the Starch Green area.

They now invite you to come  review the Exhibition and enjoy a glass of wine.
When : Tuesday 21st September 2010 from 6  8pm

Where : The Mayor’s Foyer at Hammersmith Town Hall (Courtesy of the Mayor)

Please email Melanie Whitlock (whitlockmelanie@hotmail.com)  if you’d like to come, they need numbers in advance.

Many thanks

Fiona Anderson

Chair, Ashchurch Residents Assocation

UPDATE: October 2016 Similar crap to the original Barber plans now going up in Kidbrooke, see Crap Flats for details on Urban Houses – spit.

UPDATE: 10/3/14 Work on site at Ashchurch Villas

UPDATE: 3/12/12

The two plots 282/292 were subsequently sold to First Base who short listed four practices of which two are known to be PTEa and MAE, the project was given to PTEa after each practice gave a presentation of their intended plans.

“25% of the apartment is stairs….”

Click the image for full site plan

Sometimes it feels like 1937 again. Allow me to explain. Within the last few years, following a conversation with my Father (an architect) about Quarry Hill in Leeds, which he had studied whilst training, I bought a second hand copy of Model Estates by Alison Ravetz and devoured it in order to continue the exchange.

More about Quarry Hill may be read here https://tinyurl.com/22wmmwg or here

Quarry Hill from Leodis

and should this ever change or be removed then you may read the same material here

Discovering Leeds – Poverty and Riches

Early on in the book the author points out that despite the 1909 Act outlawing the building of back to backs, they continued to be built in Leeds until 1937 because the authorisation for those had already been agreed prior to the act. Now more than 100 years after the act of 1909 we have plans such as the following being passed now “pending decision” (21/6/2010) with little or no comment, until just the other day.

Ravenscourt Park 282 – 288 Goldhawk Road London W12 9PF

Ref: 2009/02757/FUL

Going to:-

and typing the application numbers will enable you to look at the planning application in detail. The above was just an introduction to what I want to say.

If you view the “Associated Documents” for 2009/02757/FUL and select PROPOSED GA 1ST FLOOR PLAN you will see that the layout is that of “back to back” houses last built in Leeds in 1937 [citation Alison Ravetz Model Estate]. The flats are four stories high in some cases and have three party walls, and are single aspect.

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“Not for 70 years, since the Luftwaffe, has there been such a direct threat to the well being of council tenants and their homes”

Right to buy enabled all those council tenants who could afford to, to buy their homes. The most desirable properties went first, the three bedroom houses in the suburbs.  The flats on concrete estates last, if at all.  Some of those who bought their flats on the concrete estates moved out and let their flats, often to DSS unemployed tenants with the rent paid (at that time) directly to the landlord.  This had the effect of reducing the percentage of working people on the estate.  Those working people with what these days are known as aspirations and in those days was called  ambition moved away, either via right to buy as above or simply to better things.

Just to be clear, there were estates with a bad reputation before right to buy. I worked as a council employed carpenter in London for a while in the 1970s and visited estates that were less than glamorous then, so it’s not all Maggie’s fault.

This compounding effect was bad enough then, but has been exacerbated since by the allocations policy that preceded it in the Housing Act of 1977. [Link to Guardian letters – Ed.] This is an area of some concern because the 1977 Act was itself prompted by campaigners following on from the documentary Cathy Come Home first broadcast in 1967.

The results of this may be imagined and on some estates, can be seen. This situation is fast becoming a political football with complete disregard (on the right) for the people left behind.  Having said that, not all estates are the same and there are those that work.  Estates where there are a healthy mixture of people in different situations reflecting wider society and by no means in need of regeneration, the modern word for expelling council tenants and  selling flats to overseas investors.

You might think that the answer to this problem would be obvious.  Build more council houses for (subsidised) rent thus slowly but surely allowing the allocation rules to be relaxed from people in desperate need back to the situation that existed before right to buy when anybody could apply for a council house or flat, including single men, and stand a good chance of getting one.

But no.  What the political right seek instead is the end of council housing as we know it.  They want to rid their immediate neighbourhoods of the “stigma” of council estates and their troubled tenants, and in their place invite owner occupiers.

Not for 70 years, since the Luftwaffe, has there been such a direct threat to the well being of council tenants and their homes.

Let’s give the last word to the woman who has it all at her fingertips, the woman whose grip on the subject in London is unparalleled and who was interviewed by Dave Hill for the Guardian.

Right click link and choose Save Target/Link As

Guardian Karen Buck interview mp3

A worthy champion for the council tenants of the London boroughs.

Postscript from the Guardian

msenthrop

06 Jul 09, 12:04pm (about 10 hours ago)

Here goes Polly: Which party will push for councils to build housing again and put an end to the pernicious evil that was wrought by the “right to buy” policy of the Margaret Thatcher era, branding those who lived in rented housing(in particular council housing) as second class citizens, thereafter known as “social housing”; whereby it becomes necessary to either have a social problem or to cultivate one in order to be allowed to register for it?
Regards

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/06/politics-political-parties

UPDATE: https://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/sep/21/right-to-buy-coalition-loggerheads

UPDATE: 9/5/11 Michael Collins has a different point of view.  He thinks that Labour caused the problem with the 1977 Housing Act which changed the criteria on which council housing was let, for the worse.  See his recent documentary The Rise and Fall of the Council House

===========================================================

Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977

2.  Priority need  for accommodation.

(1)  For  the  purposes  of  this  Act  a  homeless  person  or  a person  threatened  with  homelessness  has  a  priority  need  for accommodation  when  the  housing  authority  are  satisfied  that he  is within  one of  the  following  categories: —
(a)  he  has  dependent  children  who  are  residing  with  him or-who  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  reside  with him;
(b)  he  is  homeless  or  threatened  with  homelessness  as  a result  of  any  emergency  such  as  flood,  fire  or  any other disaster;
(c)  he  or  any  person  who  resides  or  might  reasonably  be expected  to  reside  with  him  is  vulnerable  as  a  result of  old  age,  mental  illness  or  handicap  or  physical disability  or  other  special  reason.

(2)  For the  purposes of  this Act a homeless person or a person threatened with homelessness who  is  a pregnant woman or resides or  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  reside  with  a  pregnant woman has  a  priority need  for accommodation.

(3)  The  Secretary  of  State  may  by  order,  made  after appropriate  consultations,—
(a)  specify  further  categories  of  persons, as  having a  priority need for  accommodation, and
(b)  amend  or  repeal  any  part of subsection  (1)  or  (2)  above.

(4)  No  order  under  subsection  (3)  above  shall  be made  unless a  draft  of  the  order  has  been  approved  by  resolution  of  each House of  Parliament.

(5)  Any  reference  in  this  Act  to  a  person  having  a  priority need  is  a  reference  to his  having  a  priority need  for accommodation within the meaning of  this  section  or any order  for  the  time being  in  force  under  subsection  (3)  above.

===========================================================

UPDATE: 16/6/11 Dave Hill has an interesting article today in the Guardian on the same theme, that needs based allocations are a disaster for council housing allocation:-

Newham-mayor-plans-olympic-regeneration

Charities condemn plans to let councils house locals before immigrants

US inspired plan to break up sink estates gets green light

UPDATE: Deborah Orr writing in today’s Guardian, a wonderful piece, beautifully written

The most astounding thing about this mess is that there is still a widespread failure to understand that a flagship ideological experiment in self-regulation by the market is in tatters. The deregulation of banks and building societies, combined with draconian restrictions on the provision of new council housing, which could have replaced stock diminished by the right to buy, was supposed to transform “sink estates” into privately owned and lovingly cared-for communities. Instead, the social demographic of people living in council flats has narrowed massively. The people with the greatest problems are herded together, sometimes seeking a dark kind of identity in their blighted postcode, to the point at which the threat of eviction from council housing is seriously touted as a way of encouraging people to think twice before they take part in riots. God help us.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/31/tory-housing-idea-in-tatters

“Among Tory boroughs across London, there seems now to be a disease spreading ever wider that the land on which council tenants live is available for development”

[Tory struck out 7/11/12 owing to realisation that they’re all at it. Hello Southwark (Lab)! – Ed.]

On [Thursday] July 9th 2009 Paul Waugh of the London Evening Standard published an article on the planned demolition of all the council estates in Hammersmith and Fulham. I read this while returning home having been to a political meeting at the Methodist Hall in Westminster, and on arriving home got straight on the computer to find out more about it. I quickly discovered that there was already a blog for Queen Caroline and later on found out about the Ferrier Estate in Kidbrooke and Greenwich.

Later on in the year I subscribed to Roof magazine (now sadly no longer with us – April 2012) from Shelter, found myself speaking to Andy Slaughter on the telephone for 15 minutes about H&F and have subsequently continued to take a keen interest in council housing matters and the Tory intention to end it.

I have a personal interest in council housing because from 10/78 to 10/80 I lived at 93 Aragon Tower on the Pepys Estate (via the GLC hard-to-let scheme) which  “was sold by Lewisham Council to Berkeley Group, in 2002 for £11.5m” (£80k per flat), to fund a leisure centre in the borough for £7 million and provide some money for regeneration of the remaining estate. This was their best block, the jewel in the crown, and they displaced 144 families to do so. To me this was the start of the rot, although there may have been other examples I simply don’t know. The estate featured in a documentary called The Tower.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was at Progressive London 2010 on Saturday.  Got there just after the start at 10am it was bustling in the main foyer.  Being a Dave Hill follower I was keen to see the man in person and  having made it to the back of a crowded and stuffy room on the 2nd floor, standing room only, he was next to speak.  He said that Boris was a milder and more gentle version of what might have been expected, less contentious and more redistributive, that he had increased free access to travel for some groups unexpectedly.

He said that Boris was difficult to get hold of to answer difficult questions, that Ken used to let the Mayor’s question time run on until everybody had had their say but Boris just cut it off when time was up.  He said that it is possible to get answers out of Boris but that you have to follow him around London to his numerous “openings” and tackle him on the spot.  He added that Boris produced a large amount of written answers to questions to such an extent that Dave was encouraging bloggers to go through it all and saying that more bloggers were needed since stories often arose from their writings.  By the time Dave had finished speaking the room was even more crowded and stuffy so I left to get some air.

Downstairs in the foyer I met one of the HandsoffQC people and had a coffee and a chat about the goings on in Hammersmith and Fulham.

Back in Invision Suite 4 with the windows open it was time for the Housing session, less crowded than the earlier Boris do but slowly filled up.  Megan Dobney kicked off, Dave Hill turned up this time as an audience member, with his familiar long grey coat and notebook in hand.  Nicky Gavron had a lot to say about the London Plan which she had worked on with Ken back in the day, but more to say about the dismantling of it going on with the Boris version called the draft London Plan which was abandoning the aims of the Labour version by taking a borough by borough approach and reducing almost to zero those targets for affordable homes in Conservative boroughs while increasing those in Labour ones.  It would seem that under Ken the London plan took a city wide approach to affordable housing.

Read the rest of this entry »

A pleasant afternoon spent walking around an estate in North West London with the C20th Society, not far from the RAF Museum and the Met Police training centre.  An estate due to be largely (75%) demolished and rebuilt owing to problems of anti social behaviour.

We were shown the plans on an exhibition board in the library foyer.

Photos on Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/singleaspect/sets/72157627588975782/

Plans here

https://www.barnet.gov.uk/regeneration-grahame-park

Transcript of this interview on YouTube between Peter John and ABC

SC: Did Southwark council get a bad deal from Lend Lease, were you hoodwinked?

PJ: No I don’t think so I think we got a good deal at the time if you go back to July 2010 the property market in London had collapsed the government had withdrawn £6bn of affordable housing subsidy so we were negotiating a deal to get affordable housing across a site, Elephant & Castle. Twenty-five percent compared incredibly favorably to other deals being done around London.

SC: So how much will the council end up making from this deal?

PJ: It’s impossible to say but it I’m confident it will be north of a hundred million.

SC: Ok and how will they make that money?

PJ: There’s an overage agreement between the council and Lend Lease so that you know when the costs of development have been returned and a certain amount of level of profit to Lend Lease, the developer that we share the profit on a fifty-fifty basis and I think that that’s a reasonable expectation for the council. I can’t be absolutely precise but that’s what I would expect.

SC: So who decides when you hit that overage point that surplus point?

PJ: It’s set out in the contract the terms for which you know that the costs are recovered by the developer the profit is recovered the permissive profit level is recovered and then we go into kind of shared profit and that’s similar to deals that we’ve done with other developers on land that we’ve owned or had an interest in around Southwark.

SC: So at this point how much is the redevelopment costs of the council and I’m talking about things like relocation costs compensation like how much have you had to outlay?

PJ: I don’t know that off the top of my head I mean I’ve seen figures that we we’ve paid out something like £47m pounds and I’m not in a position to argue against that but a lot of these sums you know come back to us and more than that in due course I mean there have been land payments and estate land payments that come back to us.

But you know I think it’s important to understand Elephant and Castle for us as a council was not about simply profit although we will make a profit for the people of Southwark which we’ll invest back into public services this was about fundamentally changing a part of London which was crying out for change. Zone One central London which had 1200 poor quality council houses and you know whatever anybody says now 20 years ago 10 years ago people did not want to live there.

They were hard to let properties and the right approach was to end you know the days of this sink estate and to build high quality housing and that’s what’s being built now at the Elephant & Castle right now.

SC: Ok so the first phase of the redevelopment Trafalgar Place has been completed and people already moved in and Lend Lease has already profited from this development. Has any share of the profits come back to the council yet?

PJ: I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know the answer they’ve been staged payments as …

SC: Because I’ve been told you haven’t got any profits back there’s been no share of the profits returned.

PJ: I don’t know Steve I’d have to look into that and come back to you with an answer on that you know the land payments have been made there is various triggers as there is in any big contract of his nature land payments that are triggered once we handover bits of land to Lend Lease so we have certainly been paid for land has been transferred to Lend Lease

SC: Okay I’m talking more about the profits though because there are reports that I’ve seen that say the council won’t see any of the profits till at least 2025 is that right?

PJ: It depends when the project you know reaches profit and reaches kind of the agreed profit lines so you know you could say it won’t be until 2025 it could be 2021 it could be 2019 it depends how quickly the costs are recovered and that slightly depends on where the property market moves during that period.

SC: Yet Lend Lease is already making profits out of it and if that is the case if the profits are delayed by up to 15 years doesn’t that mean you have been hoodwinked?

PJ: Well I don’t know that they are making profits in terms of you know the scheme in general this is a scheme where Lend Lease have to put and have had to put hundreds of millions of pounds into the development before seeing real profit coming out at the end.

You might look at a single plot and say okay you know that the potentially in isolation you know that that property must have returned a profit I’m not sure that’s the case I think that the grand scheme of things the money that Lend Lease have had to invest into the scheme doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve seen a profit.

SC: But in the last financial year they’ve boasted that their profits had gone up and in part they pointed to sales at Elephant and Castle.

PJ: Well that’s across the company as a whole I don’t know whether you know I can’t say that I don’t know Lend Lease’s figures it pointless for me to speculate precisely. What I can tell you is that we did a good deal with Lend Lease back in 2010 what we’re delivering and seeing delivered at the Elephant and Castle is really high quality housing up for the Stirling Prize for goodness sake you know this is good news this is tenure blind housing which I think is a real success story.

SC: Jerry Flynn told me that due to the contract that you signed you may never get any of those promised shares of the profits is that right?

PJ: Well I don’t know how on earth Jerry Flynn can say that you know that. There’s a clear contractual agreement and expectation that profit will be shared once Lend Lease have reached the agreed level of profit they’re allowed to take out of the scheme. In my dealings when I can tell you with Lend Lease they have been utterly frank honest and I’ve never believed that I’m being hoodwinked or being told a lie.

They have reached agreements with me in terms of the rents paid for affordable housing the quantity of affordable housing delivered to that site which suggests to me the people I’m dealing with Lend Lease are utterly honest.

SC: Isn’t it the case though under section 3.7 of the regeneration agreement that says that if Lend Lease disposes of any interest in the land to a wholly owned group company it disallows any profit sharing with the council?

PJ: Well you have read the agreement more recently than I have Steve. I read this in 2010 I go on the basis of advice that I receive advice from them you know legal team and I’ve no reason to doubt the council will not get profit out of this at the end of the day.

Why would tell me why would Lend Lease that wants to do more work in London come into London and deliberately hoodwink a council and then welch on a deal. That is not the kind of company that is serious about staying in London. Now if you’re saying is a fly by night company, it will be here today and gone tomorrow you might well have justification for what you’re putting to me. I don’t see any justification.

SC: Okay but isn’t that what they’ve done they’ve purchased the land and then they sold the finished product to Lend Lease residential companies and therefore under section 3.7 they could avoid any obligation to share profits with the council

PJ: I’m not expecting that, see all I can tell you every element of agreement that we reached with Lend Lease has been honored by them. We’ve seen them payments coming forward to us from One The Elephant which is part of the scheme which will pay for an entirely new leisure centre down at the Elephant and Castle.

You know you can pick agreements like this apart and put individual clauses to me which I’m not going to be able to comment on because I didn’t know you’re gonna go clause by clause through the agreement today. What I can tell you is this is a major regeneration scheme one which is good for London which is good for Southwark and which is going to provide it be providing much needed housing for Londoners.

SC: Ok Jerry Flynn picked out that, that piece of a contract and he published it on his website and he seemed to be saying this is the point where Lend Lease is going to avoid having to share their profits with Southwark Council. Did that section of the contract set off alarm bells for you at the time when you signed it?

PJ: Look I think there are a handful of people in Soutwark, in London who were opposed to seeing massive regeneration schemes happen Jerry Flynn is one of them and you know you can paw through any agreement, any contract your mobile phone operator your power provider and find clauses which you say my God if they invoke that clause I’ll be really up the creek without a paddle but it doesn’t happen. It’s not gonna happen in this situation.

SC: What if Lend Lease does to that what would you do?

PJ: Well, if they do that we look for whatever remedies we can, I’d be amazed though if that were the case I say I have no basis to believe that that would be the case. This is a company which in dealing with me have operated on the basis of good faith and honesty.

SC: Alright Southwark has set a minimum of thirty five percent of affordable housing stock on new developments why didn’t you get 35% on this deal why let this big Australian developer negotiate you down to twenty-five percent?

PJ: Because at the time that we did the deal in July 2010 the property market in London had collapsed the government had withdrawn £6bn pounds of subsidy from affordable housing which meant that rather than a subsidy of between £120,000 and £150,000 pounds per property for affordable housing you were getting something like £20,000 pounds.

It fundamentally changed the economics of the scheme and so we had to – we could have left it to the planning process and seen what came out in each, at each stage of the planning process but we wanted a guaranteed minimum level of affordable housing and that is what we’ve got twenty-five percent as I say.

Stands pretty well in comparison to other schemes across London which were negotiated at that time, and for a scheme of this duration and of this size I think it was important to have that guaranteed minimum rather than leaving it to what the property market was doing which would have delivered probably less than ten percent affordable housing in the first phase which have been disastrous for the people of Southwark and might well have fallen back again. We’re already seeing property market turning in London again.

SC: But the viability assessment showed Lend Lease would make a profit of around twenty five percent that’s about ten percent higher than normal doesn’t that suggest that they could afford to put more affordable housing in and meet that thirty five percent target?

PJ: Well the profit level which companies get out ranges around about the twenty to twenty-five percent I don’t think that’s particularly unusual figure for this scheme. I don’t think we could because I think if you look at the – what the viability was showing even with that twenty-five percent profit was much less than twenty-five percent affordable housing being delivered across the scheme it was something like fifteen percent sixteen percent it would have delivered so twenty-five percent in that context is good.

SC: Ok a former resident forced to leave the estate spent three years trying to access the the viability assessment that explain why the council accepted that figure at less than thirty five percent and it cost you £50,000 in legal fees to fight that over three years. Why did you find it so hard for so long? Were you embarrassed about that document getting out in public?

PJ: No I wasn’t embarrassed and we weren’t embarrassed. There was an agreement a confidentiality agreement that was in the contractor as to the viability assessment and that was the basis on which the viability assessment was produced in common with every other planning application at that time that Southwark dealt with.

SC: But don’t people in Southwark have a right to know?

PJ: They do they and they do now and we have the most open and transparent process with regard to viability assessments of any council.

SC: Is that open and transparent though not allowing a document to be published for three years and fighting in the courts to suppress it?

PJ: Well we did oppose I say because we had a contractual obligation effectively to say this is information which has been given to us on this basis so

SC: Why sign a contract if you believe in transparency?

PJ: If you gave me a bit of information is I’m giving it to you this information on the basis of confidentiality and expect that confidentiality to be observed it would be I think remiss of me to say I’m going to go ahead and spread that bit of information. That was the basis on which information was exchanged at that time that was not unusual that was the same as is done with many planning applications at that time not just in Southwark but across London every planning application.

We’re moving into an era of greater transparency and that’s what we’re doing and now I’m more than happy to turn that information over and I think its people have now looked through the deal and actually nobody has come back nobody’s come back and said you could deliver 35% affordable housing nobody.

SC: Ok affordable housing means eighty percent of the market rate doesn’t it? Now in reality there’s very few homes in these new developments for working-class people what what used to be 1,200 homes of social housing will in reality be around 80 now when it comes to social rent won’t it?

PJ: There’s going to be well twenty five percent of the housing across the development is affordable housing that falls into a number of categories, part of it is affordable to buy so shared ownership and half of it is for rent.

The rented housing one and two-bed properties are at fifty percent of market rent and anything above that is at social rents which is about thirty to thirty-five percent of market rent so there are no properties which are being rented at the Elephant & Castle at eighty percent of market rent. Look. The point is nobody wanted to live on the Heygate estate, it was hard to let, it was sink estate housing there is a reason.

SC: A lot of people wanted to come back didn’t they?

PJ: And they can come back and people are coming back and there is a reason that there is a reason why World War Z a zombie movie, was filmed on the Heygate estate, there is a reason why Harry Brown a vigilante movie starring Michael Caine was filmed on the Heygate estate because it was, it’s unpleasant and unwelcoming and didn’t work for the people who lived there. People can come back and they are asked do you want to move back when properties become available and why

SC: For example how many have moved back into the first phase Trafalgar?

PJ: It’s a handful of people have moved back here.

SC: So that is not many is it?

PJ: No but many people are very happy. If you look across. The vision behind the regeneration of the Elephant & Castle was not simply to replace 1200 failing social housing units with 1200 failing social housing units that would be a completely pointless exercise. What we’ve done is built one [pause] or will have built 1750 affordable housing units across a slightly wider area.

A lot of people who lived on the former Heygate estate have moved to those properties which are very close to the Heygate estate and very happy there. Others moved have moved further within the borough but if you were a tenant on the Heygate estate you had the absolute choice of where you moved to and you do have a right to return. Now not everybody’s going to want to come back but those who do can exercise that right and they are.

SC: But many of them can’t afford to move back in and they’ve moved to the fringes of London and many of these people were.

PJ: No, no, no, if you were a tenant there you you stay within Southwark if that’s what you wanted to do.

SC: If they could find a place that they could afford it?

PJ: No, no, no, absolutely not no you moved as a council tenant to another council property. Now there’s a difference with the leaseholders. If you’re a leaseholder, if you exercised your right to buy then it might be that you found that what we paid in terms of compensation wasn’t enough to rehouse you in Southwark and some people did move outside London.

SC: So bearing that in mind can you understand why why people in those working-class communities can feel like they’ve been driven out?

PJ: No because they’ve not been driven out. You know that.

SC: If they were leasing and the compensation is not enough for them to afford to lease another place they are driven out aren’t they?

PJ: Well people who people have moved some people have moved out of London I have to acknowledge that [pause] but you know that that the point is this is about this was about creating a really vibrant and viable mixed tenure community and that is what we’re achieving there and you know I’m really sorry if people had to move away from London if you’re a leaseholder something like a hundred and fifty leaseholders at the Heygate estate and in subsequent regeneration schemes I think we’d made better offers than we did at the Heygate if I’m honest so a lot of people were bought out before we became the administration in 2010 there were only a handful of people left when we became the administration.

So we’ve improved things. I accept that that’s slightly problematic and we learn lessons from it, but was the overall vision right for Southwark right for London, absolutely? I mean one thing to bear in mind over the last six years in Southwark we’ve seen an increase in employment of those aged 16-64 over ten percent over ten percent in contrast to a borough North or the river like Camden one percent increase so we’re getting people into work because we’re seeing investment coming into the borough.

We set up a construction skills centre that Lend Lease are sponsoring down at the Elephant and Castle which will be getting hundreds of local people into work in the booming construction industry in our city now that’s got to be good news. Ultimately that’s got to be good news because without you know if creating work for people means they’re healthier they’re more economically independent you know it’s good news all around for them.

SC: There’s a criticism that you’ve got too close to Lend Lease that you accepted free tickets to the London Olympics opening ceremony that they flew you to the South of France have you got too close to Lend Lease?

PJ: No absolutely not.

SC: So why accept those freebies from them?

PJ: I was offered the opportunity to go to the Olympic opening ceremony and to meet the worldwide board who were going to be there and I did and discussed issues with them about the Elephant & Castle and I think until that point I’m not sure the whole board was convinced the Elephant & Castle should be their number one priority in London so it’s about making the case as well.

In terms of going to the South of France to talk to others about what we’re doing at the Elephant & Castle at a seminar you know I think that was a worthwhile thing as well you know you’re damned if you do damned if you don’t I mean at the same time as I was there I talked to the Mayor of London secured the extension of the Bakerloo Line tube line through Southwark.

SC: You could’ve spoken to the Mayor of London in a coffee shop couldn’t you?

PJ: Well trying to get hold of Boris Johnson to have a meaningful conversation with him at that time was virtually impossible when he wasn’t surrounded by advisors and actually getting his commitment was very worthwhile. So you know I you can you can throw these things ah you know you shouldn’t do this you shouldn’t do that but we’re a borough that is open for business is determined to get the very best quality housing for our residents, determined to get our residents into work and anything that promotes that and promote the interests of the residents I represent I will do.

SC: There are other council former council employees who have gone on to work for Lend Lease you know is there a perception that that’s a problem as well?

PJ: I don’t I don’t think so. I mean you know what you know why why? The perception but reality, no.

SC: Okay I’m happy with that is there any other points you think it’s important to make?

PJ: No I don’t think so I think I’ve made those points. fantastic thank you Steve.

SC: Alright thanks so much for doing that I appreciate it.

PJ: My pleasure.