Single Aspect Blog

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

 

UPDATE: Bi-monthly meetings -> Purfleet on Thames Community Forum

---

Whilst looking for a cheap ex local authority flat to buy in or near London I came across the Garrison Estate at Purfleet and went down to have a look one sunny Saturday.

Click for larger image

Read the rest of this entry »

I did some examples on Vue2 in Bletchley MK. Pictures linked from the table below:-

From August 17th 2008 until April 20th 2009 the sun never rose within sight of Vue2 NNW facing flats.

Where does the sun rise between those dates?  Let’s take halfway, say 136 days from 17/8/08 to New Year then 109 days from New Year to April 20th.  136+109 =   245.  Half that is 122.5.  136 – 122 = 14 so 14 days before the end of 2008 is our halfway point. This is about 17/12/2008, showing the sun rising to the South-East nowhere near the NNW facing flats.

The picture is taken at noon showing the arc of the sun sweeping South from sunrise SE to SW on setting at this time of year.

For only 365-245=120 days does the sun rise within sight of the NNW facing flats, and then only remaining visible for a short time

On Midsummers day the NNW facing flats would get just two hours of sunlight 0440-0640 from the East at a time when many people will be asleep, but that afternoon they will get five hours of sunlight from 16:23 to sunset at 21:29.

On 11-11-2009 the sun sets along the alignment of Vue2 and for two months it is not to be seen from the west, until 11-1-2010.

17/08/2008	17/12/2008	20/04/2009	11/11/2009	11/01/2010	21/06/2010

Click individual photos above for larger versions

Here’s the sun calculator, you drag the pointer around then zoom in to your house and change the date to winter or summer.

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/

---

This is the old one which no longer works

https://www.iesmith.net/tools/solarcalc.html

If you use it please be aware of the following to get the best out of it.

01) Open it up
02) Type in the name of a town and click the Go button
03) Zoom in with the vertical slider on the left or click the + button repeatedly.
04) Drag the red pointer to your street (note in Firefox the map started scrolling on its own so I switched browsers)
05) Drag the map across and drag the point separately to get the black X on your window
06) Switch from terrain to satellite (Map | Satellite | Terrain) to get a better view, zoom again and drag the pointer again
07) Once you’ve settled on the location click the calendar, set a date and tick the Daylight saving box if it’s the summer
08) Click calculate
09) At the point the map will probably switch to “We’re sorry etc . . . ” click the satellite button and you’ll have your picture back
10) Look at the sun position and sunrise and sunset positions for the date you chose

06_07098_FULL-DESIGN___ACCESS_STATEMENT-1131238.pdf

06_07098_FULL-ACOUSTICS_REPORT-1131223.pdf

06_07098_FULL-S106_LEGAL_AGREEMENT-1546259.pdf

06_07098_FULL-SUPPORTING_DETAILED_PLANNING_STATEMENT_-_BUILDINGS_A__B___C_-_COMMUNITY_CONSULT-1130432.pdf

04_07636/S106

06_07098/S106

Go to https://idoxpa.westminster.gov.uk/online-applications/ and enter the planning ref 06/07098/FULL for remaining documents.

---

I recommend you download the D&A at the top link above. The document is a masterpiece of marketing doublespeak and obfuscation turning night into day and black into white.

The two major points of interest are:-

1) the reduction in apartment size from the consented scheme leading to visible columns in the living rooms and bedrooms of Woods House pages 6, 7 and 8.

2) the reduction in ceiling heights in Woods House as compared with Bramah next door owing to the developer inserting an additional floor without increasing the permitted building height and taking the loss off all the existing floors by reducing their ceiling heights. See page 11.

Sir Parker Morris (1891-1972)

Set the standards for housing design Although Sir Parker Morris’ seminal government report, Homes for Today & Tomorrow, was published in 1961 it was only by the end of the decade that the impact of its generous space standards for housing was felt.

The so-called Parker Morris standards only became mandatory for housing in new towns in 1967 and it was another two years until it was compulsory for all council homes. Morris, who had been a town clerk for Westminster council, argued that people needed to be guaranteed better quality homes to match the improvement in living standards.

Among his conclusions was that there should be at least one toilet in dwellings with up to three bedrooms and that there should be heating systems for kitchens.

As a result, slum housing that failed to meet the standards was demolished. Unfortunately, in a government measure to lower public spending, the standards stopped being mandatory in 1980, and little of the public housing built in the quarter of a century since meets all of Morris’ aspirations.

Jon Rouse, chief executive of the Housing Corporation, says: “It is a remarkable testament that despite the passage of 40 years, the space standards conceived by Parker Morris are still regarded widely within the affordable housing sector as a benchmark to be strived for. Parker Morris was perhaps the first to sow the seeds of what we now call sustainable housing.

In his own words: “This approach … starts with a clear recognition of these various activities and their relative importance in social, family and individual lives, and goes on to assess the conditions necessary for their pursuit in terms of space, atmosphere, efficiency, comfort, furniture and equipment.”

From Homes for Today & Tomorrow. Three key dates: 1960 Co-founded housing development agency, the Housing Association Charitable Trust 1961 Publication of Homes for Today & Tomorrow 1969 Parker Morris standards made compulsory for all council housing.

The 1961 report that made Sir Parker Morris’ name synonymous with improved housing standards

If you download the software package from this page:-

https://www.nand2tetris.org/software.php

you will find a folder in projects called “demo” which contains three Xor files. If you open the Hardware Simulator and direct it to the “demo” folder the Xor.hdl file will run without errors because it is using builtin chips as expected, because it cannot find any other implementations of And, Or and Not.

AS: Society at the moment asks architects to build these new homes for them but I

0:22

mean this may be really stupid we may have to rethink the whole thing it may

0:26

be that we should only be asked to to repair the roofs and add the odd

0:31

bathroom to the old industrial houses and just leave people where they are to

0:36

smash it up in complete abandon and happiness so that nobody has to worry

0:41

about it anymore

0:43

PS: We still feel under an obligation to give the absolutely that the to provide

0:50

the best possible quality irrespective of what people expect and what treatment

0:57

it it’s going to get.

1:02

Narrator: Yet another building site in the East End of London. An East End rebuilt almost

1:08

out of recognition to those who knew it before the war but this site is

1:12

different there are no tower blocks for one thing. It’s by allison and peter

1:17

smithson virtually the only british architects to have an international

1:21

reputation and whose influence on architecture since the war’s been out

1:25

of all proportion to the relatively small amount of their work to be built.

1:28

their school at Hunstanton Norfolk and the economist office building in St

1:33

James’s London embodied significant innovations but their chief interest

1:37

is housing and they’ve done much important theoretical work on it. This

1:41

site at Poplar however represents the first opportunity they’ve had to put

1:45

their ideas on housing into practice and inevitably perhaps it’s very far from

1:49

being just another lot of council flats.

PS: We regard it as a demonstration of a more

1:55

enjoyable way of living in an old industrial part of a city it is a model

2:01

an examplar of a new mode of urban organization and we think we have here a

2:09

site big enough so that when it’s finished you’ll be able to smell feel

2:15

and experience the new life that’s being offered through your full range of

2:20

senses.

AS: A general objective when we get a new site is to knit together what is

2:28

good in the surroundings by the insertion of a new building to inject

2:34

thereby new life even to buildings and things that are old and tired. Right from

2:42

the start we began to identify with a site to put down mental roots hooking

2:50

onto rosebay willowherb, the children overturning wrecked cars, the smell of

2:55

curry on the stairs, rejected tenements, oddments of past character or obvious

3:04

large identifying fixes of the district or the city or even the region in our

3:11

case, the big power stations. In the late forties and early fifties when we first

3:19

started thinking about housing the lack of identity and the lack of a pattern,

3:25

any pattern of association we used to talk of objects as found, that is

3:32

anything and everything can be raised by association to become the portrait of

3:38

the ordinary and in this way an industrial site is very easy to identify

3:46

with compared with a semi detached housing estate a site on an industrial

3:52

blight or ones industrial heritage depends how you look at it can very

3:59

easily be used to renew a district to re-identify and become a real piece

4:07

of urban renewal. This is something to do with urban scale and that industrial

4:14

sites are somehow forthright and honest. This may be a personal thing as coming

4:22

from the Northeast we see the ships as connectors of people to their district

4:28

and to the world outside. On this side the ships can be a decoration to the

4:35

urban scene – the ships on the Thames approach the Isle of Dogs turn at right

4:42

angles and go past. The river is the biggest fix of all a big geographical

4:50

fix there are also two historical fixes which affect our site. The East India

4:57

dock of 1806 and the 1844 railway.

5:04

AS: When we started work three and a half years ago and you could still walk up to

5:10

the fifth floor the now-demolished tenements you could look over the

5:15

upcoming roar the tunnel traffic into the East India dock. Calm sheet of water a

5:24

few ships. Now when we’ve reached the fifth floor level again it’s being

5:30

filled and when you should be able to see it from the houses you won’t be able

5:36

to. We’ll be left with a handful of China shards on the site maybe ballast from

5:45

the East Indiaman, maybe cargo fallout used locally

5:52

This is not to say we relied on the East India dock or any other fix for

5:58

support.

5:59

We realize you’re in a situation of flux and change. The life has gone from the

6:09

two historical fixes on site and the ships on the terms are literally passing

6:18

either down to TIbury if the container port opens or to Antwerp and

6:26

Delta port if it doesn’t. We realize you have to be strong enough to be

6:33

self-supporting. Big enough to be self-supporting, that you have to carry

6:40

the full responsibility for renewal of your part of the district and ultimately

6:47

of the city

6:48

PS: The site is bounded on three sides by very heavy traffic on the left the

6:55

northern approach to the Blackwall tunnel at the bottom the east in your

6:59

dock road which shared you to grow from a four-lane to a six-lane highway and on

7:04

the right by Cotton street the main feeder road to the Isle of Dogs.

7:10

We’ve tried to overcome the problems of this high level of traffic noise in a

7:15

number of ways. At the edge of the back line of payment as near as we can get

7:20

the source of noise we put an acoustic wall which is higher than motorcars

7:25

which throws the noise back towards the road instead of allowing it to pass

7:30

through towards the building. But to stop it looking like a prison, the wall panels

7:36

have angle gaps between them – so if you walk along you can seek keep seeing

7:41

through but there is no direct path for sound to pass through. Inside this a line of

7:49

trees helps to break up the sound of traffic, and the building’s themselves

7:54

have been deliberately organized to create an area in the center of the site

7:58

protected from noise. A stress-free zone. The buildings are not organized like

8:04

filing cabinets one after the other.

8:06

The site has been split like a kipper with the same functions on the inside in

8:12

each building on the outside we put the noisy next to the noisy that is the

8:18

walkways or decks and the living rooms – but the living room themselves are

8:24

protected by these vertical pieces which stop noise traveling across the face of

8:29

the building and by designing the windows so that they can check in a

8:33

position that admits air at the top but present prevents the entry of direct

8:38

noise at the bottom. With these various devices we can get the noise level in

8:44

the living rooms down to a reasonable level. On the inside away and protected

8:51

from noise we place the bedrooms and the kitchen. The kitchens are so planned that a

8:56

mother can keep an eye on a two to three year old child playing out on the access

9:01

deck on one side and also from time to time

9:05

look down on the other side into the into these play spaces which are

9:10

intended for the somewhat older children. In the middle of the stress free zone

9:15

the ground is modeled upwards to discourage people from playing football

9:19

and so making excessive noise though provision for

9:23

football is made elsewhere on the site. The mound doesn’t look very large on the

9:29

model but it is in fact two stories high and it will be surprising eminence

9:34

within the flat landscape of the site. There is already in London one place

9:39

that has a central stress-free zone and that is Gray’s Inn. Gray’s Inn is still an

9:47

extraordinarily civilized place. It has become more livable as traffic has got

9:54

worse by contrast to the areas surrounding it.

9:57

Its little pool of calm in central London is one of the real discoveries

10:03

almost of the last 10 years. The idea that one could having rooms,

10:09

chambers there looking out onto this quiet central tree-filled area is marvellous.

10:14

AS: London has these simple good spaces but above this scale there’s virtually nothing.

10:22

London really has never faced up to being more than a collection of villages.

10:27

PS: No, the idea that you could have a collection, a scatter of events

10:34

as a city it is quite acceptable to us providing of course that the

10:39

communication systems work well. But, when the city becomes big when the city

10:46

becomes an urban region the scale of the parts, the scale of these events that the

10:51

pieces of the scatter, the scale of them’s got to be increased so that it

10:56

matches the scale of the urban region and that the scale of the communication

11:00

systems the scale of its leisure areas the scale of the zones of operation of

11:06

the city all about to get bigger and more obviously structured and inter

11:11

related to one another

11:13

Structured and interrelated so that they can be read as easily by ordinary people

11:18

as we hope our building will be read. This site is just big enough for us

11:24

to say and for people to read a whole sentence in the language of architecture.

11:29

The language of architecture is something that can both explain and

11:34

enhance the use of a building.

11:36

Thus in an old building you recognize where the door is because it

11:41

is identified by portico. In a new building we have to produce equivalent

11:46

symbols which indicate where you’re supposed to walk in, where you drive, where you bring

11:52

the dust cart and so on.

11:54

On this site we’ve cut moats in the ground on the traffic side of the buildings and

12:01

there all vehicular movement and garaging take place. So coming to the

12:06

building as a walker from a bus stop

12:09

you never come into contact with vehicles and conversely the driver of the

12:13

dust card has no fear of knocking down an old lady.

12:17

Similarly the building’s themselves explain how they are intended to be used.

12:21

These long horizontal recesses can only be decks for walking along, and the entry

12:27

points to them by way of lifts and stairs the vertical movements are clearly

12:32

indicated by the change of scale and volume. On the decks there are what we

12:37

call “eddy places” outside the front doors where the dwelling takes a piece

12:42

of the deck for itself so your doormat is not kicked aside by the passers by

12:47

and you can put out a few pots of plants or leave parcels. This “eddy places” is out of

12:54

the general flow of movement along the deck. The deck itself is wide enough for the

13:00

milkman to bring his cart along, or for two women with prams to stop for a talk and

13:05

still let the postman by, and the building also explains its use in that

13:10

wherever you need to take hold of something or move around some woodwork

13:14

of concrete element then there’s a smooth rounded corner. Its form will

13:22

respond we hope to the way people want to live now with their equipment, their

13:27

domestic appliances, and their cars. In a way it would be like the first Georgian

13:34

Square in london it will be to outsiders something that they can, they can

13:40

immediately see is a new form and to the people who live in it it’s it offers a

13:47

a place with a special character that in which will release them and change them

13:56

and be capable of being lived in generation after generation. At the turn

14:05

of the century architects dreamed of garden cities and in every town and village in

14:15

England we see council houses built, built, and building right up till

14:19

today which are the children of the garden city idea – and in the twenties in

14:27

the heroic period of modern architecture the models, the prototypes, developed on

14:34

the continent for a simple clean sun giving architecture are now being built

14:40

in England in the Sixties. What we have now is people living in these clean

14:47

sun-drenched boxes with fitted carpets inside and vandalism outside.

AS: The

14:57

realities of our working life are going to be traffic, noise, air pollution,

15:04

vandalism, lack of quality.

PS: And the theory developed in the twenties and thirties

15:11

the simple architecture in which there will be few cars. This, this dream this

15:20

model has been overrun. Overrun by the glut of the supermarts and the glut

15:26

on the roads.

AS: The accuracy of the brief given to architects makes for the reality. It

15:37

aids the architect’s accuracy in pinpointing the dream.

15:42

The brief given to our outside architects by the Greater London Council

15:48

is continually being revised by feedback from tenants and from their own

15:55

maintenance people. The GLC are probably the world’s best briefers of Architects

16:01

in this sense certainly I, I’ve never heard of any better. But although this is

16:07

done very responsibly the building of this mutated dream by all the people

16:13

concerned, it seems that the GLC really got very small thanks from Society for

16:18

this because when we take foreign visiting architect around these sites

16:24

they’re literally horrified at the amount of vandalism we see.

PS: But

16:30

funnily enough that doesn’t seem to change one’s own attitudes towards

16:34

building. That is that we we still feel under an obligation to give the absolutely

16:39

that the – to provide the best possible quality irrespective of what people

16:47

expect and what treatment it it’s going to get,

16:50

nevertheless it’s very depressing for the contractors and the buil, the

16:57

builders, the contractors, the subcontractors and the architect to feel

17:01

that all the effort they’re putting in is going to be – much of the effort that

17:05

that they put in is going to be smashed up.

17:07

AS: I mean society at the moment asks architect to build these new homes for

17:14

them but I mean this may be really stupid we may have to rethink the whole

17:20

thing it may be that we should only be asked to to repair the roofs and add the

17:26

odd bathroom to the old industrial houses and just leave people where they

17:31

are to smash it up in complete abandon and happiness so that nobody has to worry

17:36

about it anymore. You know we may be asking people to live in a way that that

17:43

is stupid. They may be just want to you know be left alone.

17:49

PS: One of the men are inside said that this

17:51

what we were trying to do with too good for the people that were going to live

17:54

in it and we find this a unacceptable but to say that it’s too good but one

18:04

wonders why that’s what why one feels like that and I suspect that it’s partly

18:09

historical, that is that architects have always felt the need to build not for

18:18

the occupying generation but for, to sort of body out the ideals of their period in a

18:25

way that they could be felt by the by generations that follow. In the East

18:32

London there are five or six very famous churches. One of them is close to this

18:38

site St Annes Limehouse by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Now Hawksmoor couldn’t have

18:46

cared I suspect why he was asked to build these churches. They were built

18:51

buy having a coal tax with which the program for building them

18:59

was abandoned halfway through

19:00

in fact the things that happened him, the way the money was raised very similar to

19:05

the situation now, but he built in the best possible way and the building has

19:11

lived on through 10 or 15 generations into the present carrying the kind of ethos

19:17

of the early 17th century to us now and we feel in the same way an

19:24

obligation which is outside of the present financial or economic situation

19:29

to build for successive occupying generations.

AS: Unless a building outlasts

19:36

its first users we get no body of choice that is there’s no pool of housing from

19:44

which people can choose how to live, where they want to live

19:49

and more important you get no buildup of a comparable body of quality. This was

19:59

the situation we stepped into after the war completely vandalised environment of

20:05

anything will do, make do, you know there were no possible standards because

20:12

there was nothing – nothing decent to compare things to. Therefore maintenance

20:19

of quality objects is a real cultural necessity. Londoners are not particularly

20:26

good at this I don’t think they really know about it, that is if culture of cities was a

20:31

criteria for joining the common market, any African state would have as good a

20:37

chance as Londoners have.

PS: If we’re not to be torn apart by our differing

20:43

individual natures as makers and destroyers society has to to to to make

20:48

a framework so that the that the the makers can get ahead of the destroyers.

20:55

AS: Although it’s not the architects business to talk about, think about up mechanisms

21:03

for changing the responsibility for housing in order to combat vandalism it

21:12

is our duty to speak about it in order to safeguard the architects dream of what

21:19

housing could be like and there are obviously understood ways, such as giving

21:26

a tenant full responsibility for keeping the house and the outside the

21:30

door step and the grounds in perfect condition to hand onto the next

21:37

generation who after all are an extension of ourselves they’re not some

21:42

nebulous character

PS: At the moment there is a terrific lack of fit between those

21:50

things which people own, the way people treat things they own and the, the way

21:55

they think about and treat what is in the public

21:59

area of ownership.

22:03

This is reflected terribly obviously in the, when you go to any, any dwelling

22:09

any house in any part of the country the inside is almost always well-kept well

22:15

furnished, clean. The outside, particularly in state housing. Broken lifts, smashed-up

22:24

glass in entrance halls, all the things we all know, know about. The architect is in

22:31

a strange situation, but he can recognize that the peoples aspirations about how

22:37

they wish to behave.

22:41

That’s a funny way of putting it, are

22:45

changing that is in spite of the vandalism, that people are learning to

22:51

expect a style of life which has more quality, and in a sense more control

23:02

and this is most clearly seen in the leisure pattern.

23:06

Ironically enough an opportunity to extend this leisure pattern on a huge

23:11

scale is being missed not far from our site.

AS: The scale of the London Docks is the

23:16

sort of scale we’re talking about this is an area equal to medieval London and

23:22

yet it’s a tiny area scene in the whole greater london in region. A few water

23:32

parks at that scale not needing grass-cutting no trouble with

23:36

footballers wearing the surface off. This water as leisure pleasure structured

23:44

housing groups is the european fashion at the moment. For Tower Hamlets such a fashion

23:51

is an economic bonanza like having an oil well in the back garden, or backyard

23:57

in their case. France has a regional plan

24:01

which is Rousillon to Languedoc virtually Marseille to the Spanish border

24:06

of water pleasure structured towns. As well as this there’s development all

24:17

along the coast, and architects Spoerry has built his dream of what housing could be

24:26

like in relation to water using for this town traditional provincaI materials

24:33

and the peasant language of architecture, but his dream was of a pedestrian town

24:40

and the house owners in Port Grimaud take the cars into load/unload but take them

24:48

outside to park. Therefore this town is a pleasure to use, it works it’s a real

24:56

economic success the sort of place you can take your children to to the beach

25:01

and they can go get an ice cream and you just don’t have to worry about it – and it

25:06

only started in June 1966. We, we could allow ourselves such

25:14

pleasures in London we needn’t be so puritanical about the fact that

25:19

the dock water is right next the River Thames and so near the Lea Valley leisure

25:25

pleasure grounds. Venice sinks in the mud, they’ll be round collecting to save it.

25:32

Prop it up. We could have a a new Venice in London. It’s virtually the same size if

25:42

you take from St Katharine’s dock by the tower to East India Dock which is by

25:49

our site.

25:50

The people who will live in Robin Hood gardens will use this way out of London

25:56

in their cars. They’re the privileged few in our society they enjoy the welfare

26:06

state they don’t have heavy taxes to give them angst and it’s not for them to

26:13

worry about the quality of the motorway, the fact that the fences are inconsistent the

26:20

lampposts are ugly or there are too many signs the bypassed and the bypasses are

26:29

unprotected, the generation younger than ours extremely depressed about the lack

26:36

of quality in the road program, considering so

26:43

many roads are being built in Germany and in America. It’s as if we were a country of

26:48

ostriches but our attitude to motorways, ring ways is at last, a chance of a great reversal.

PS: A chance

27:01

at last to get all traffic out of domestic environments. We are longing for

27:08

the day in which the motorway pattern and the mass transit system lines can settle

27:15

down so that we can get on with the job of rebuilding a quiet more humane living

27:22

environment.

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.