Single Aspect Blog

I think it needs to be known how Lambeth Council behave when confronted with alternative proposals to their demolition plans to the estates in the borough over which they presently have political control.

If you don’t follow ASH on Twitter or are not a member of the Facebook group or read their blog you will probably not be aware of the hostility they are up against on a day to day basis in putting forward an alternative method of dealing with the housing situation in Lambeth.

Once again therefore, rightly or wrongly, I feel it necessary to publish what happened the night ASH tried to present their alternative proposals for Central Hill to Lambeth Council.

You can read about the presentation itself on their blog here:-

https://architectsforsocialhousing.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/ash-presentation-to-central-hill-estate-residents-engagement-panel/

What you’re less likely to read is what follows, as published on the Facebook page. Once again I don’t know if I ought to be doing this but I think you are entitled to know, if you have any interest in the housing situation in London.

ASH PRESENTATION TO CENTRAL HILL REP

Last night we presented our design proposals for Central Hill Estate to the Resident Engagement Panel (REP). As some of you may know, the meeting was moved at last minute from the Goodliffe hall in Christ Church, which has excellent projection facilities, to the Day Centre on Central Hill Estate, which doesn’t have any. Fiona Cliffe, part of Lambeth’s Estate Regeneration Team who was responsible for organising the meeting, suggested – and I shit you not – that we project our architectural designs onto two pieces of butcher’s paper stuck to the brightly-painted wall, and began, with great incompetence, to try to put them up with Sellotape. I’d expected something like this from Lambeth Council. However, thanks to the quick thinking of Andreuccio SustainaBotti, we pulled down one of the roller blinds, whose white reverse made an excellent screen, and slung it over a partition. Throughout this fiasco I was pursued around the room by Fiona Cliffe telling me what I could and couldn’t do. I politely told her I didn’t give a damn what she wanted.

Once we set up these makeshift projection facilities, we established that in addition to Fiona Cliffe herself, a grand total of ONE council member of the Resident Engagement Panel had turned up. This was Mr. Regenerator himself, Neil Vokes, who with Sue Foster OBE has been brought down from Hackney on a salary in excess of £100 thousand to oversee the demolition of the six Lambeth estates. Matthew Bennett, the Cabinet Member for Housing and Labour councillor for the Gipsy Hill ward who lives just around the corner from the estate didn’t bother to turn up. Nor did Jennifer Brathwaite, the other Labour Councillor for the Gipsy Hill ward. Nor did the Chair of the REP, Revd. Jonathan Croucher. Lambeth Council have consistently told anyone willing to listen that they would consider ASH’s proposals ‘like any other’, and when I asked Fiona Cliffe whether PRP Architects presented their designs to two Council officers projected on the back of a blind hung over a partition, she told me (and I quote) ‘never to speak to her like that again!’

Our presentation was in two parts, an introduction by myself and the presentation of the designs by Geraldine. Throughout my presentation Fiona Cliffe kept walking in and out of the room, back and forth, ten, maybe twenty, times. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but she was wearing large clumpy shoes, and every time she crossed the room I had to stop speaking so that everyone could hear me over the sound. It was a little like having a misbehaving child in the room that all the adults had to tolerate. Strange behaviour in a Capital Program Manager responsible for Business Growth and Regeneration Delivery, but in truth nothing about the behaviour of Lambeth employees surprises me now.

During my presentation Neil Vokes tried on several occasions to interrupt me, something Lambeth Council does not tolerate in their own meetings; but a quick democratic vote from the floor established that the resident members of the REP wished to hear what I had to say. At which point Mr. Vokes, whose job title is Assistant Director of Housing Regeneration, walked out the room. So, despite his position on Lambeth’s self-titled ‘co-operative council’, he listened to maybe half my presentation, and never got to see any of Geraldine’s presentation of ASH’s designs.

In the discussions that followed ASH’s presentation, Fiona Cliffe several times told us that (and I quote) ‘all she wanted to do was go home.’ Finally, she got up and turned on some sort of very loud fan that drowned out the closing comments by Jasmin Stone.

Despite the behaviour of Lambeth’s Council officers – those who bothered to turn up – the presentations, and particularly ASH’s designs, were very well received. I’d like particularly to acknowledge the hard work of Geraldine Dening and Alex Engel, who were up to 2am the night before finalising the designs, and of Toby O’Connor, who has worked with them over the past few months. Gill Slater, a planner, was particularly positive about the lack of negative impact of ASH’s proposal on the health of residents and the environment of Crystal Palace, compared to the Council’s plans to bulldoze 456 homes and decant their residents to temporary accommodation.

Line Nikita Woolfe, whose recent work with ASH has been of such importance to what we’re doing, filmed the meeting for later presentation at what we anticipate will be a judicial review into the extent to which Lambeth Council actually engaged with our proposals at the request of residents. But although the meeting, with this regard, achieved its aims, the residents of Central Hill Estate were conspicuously missing from the meeting.

While several ASH members were present, and were supported by members of this page, as well as, as always, from the RCG and Class War, who had travelled from as far afield as Croydon, Clapham, Kennington and Stoke Newington, the 1000 or so residents who live a hundred yards from the hall didn’t make the effort to turn up, and what should have been a presentation to a hall of a hundred and more people was instead delivered to an audience of two dozen.

Given the tiny number of Central Hill residents that turned up, my feeling is that the REP didn’t publicise ASH’s presentation. They certainly didn’t announce it on their Facebook page, possibly because, under the directions of Lambeth Council, they regarded this as a private meeting to which other residents were not invited. Despite our advice to the contrary, the residents whose homes are threatened continue to obey the rules laid down to them by the same people that are threatening their homes. This form of Stockholm syndrome, in which victims express empathy and sympathy toward those who threaten them, is perhaps understandable in residents terrified of what is going to happen to them, but it must be overcome if they are to present a united front against the attack on their homes. I can assure them that the empathy and sympathy is not returned by Lambeth Council, as we hope last night clearly demonstrated.

ASH can only do so much to support residents and present designs that, if supported by them, could save their homes from demolition. But if the fight and support is not there, we cannot fight for them.

Many thanks to the people who turned up to support our presentation last night, to Nicola Curtis, Karen Bennett, Norman Bennett, Robert Gibson, Victor Hernandez, and other residents of Central Hill Estate; to André Ceporo, Andrew George and Jasmin Stone from the RCG; to Sid Skill and Jay-jay Thomas from Class War; to Pete Elliott, the Green Party candidate for the Gipsy Hill ward; to Senaka Weeraman, Line Nikita Woolfe, and Alex Engel from ASH; and to Andreuccio SustainaBotti, Richard Hering, Gill Slater, Paul Watt and others who made the effort and continue to fight the social cleansing of our communities.

And finally . . . if you think Lambeth are to be trusted on planning issues then what’s all this about?