Thanks for the reactions everybody, all really informative.
I wasn't aware that Fred Manson had left Southwark -- I should have been, as my Dad knew him.
I'm very much with guinnessdrinker and past caring on this, I am VERY suspicious about plans that reduce both the number and rights of council tenants with secure tenancies.
Brixton Hatter said:
I remember from a thread here previously the reasons Southwark gave for not replacing the flats with the same number of new homes - they apparently did a survey and claimed that out of the Xthousand (might have been 2,500) on the Heygate, only (something like) 1500 wanted to stay, with the others planning either to get their own accomodation or move away from the borough. Would be interesting to find that info again.
I'd be very interested too -- I wonder how new that survey was, how the questions were worded (I probably saw it, but there has definitely been more than one), why, if Southwark are so confident that the redevelopment plans are popular, they are so reluctant to put it to a direct local ballot of all affected tenants rather than a 'survey'
Thats a bit of rhetorical statement because I know they got their fingers burnt over their backfiring attempts to hive off the Aylesbury.
lang rabbie said:
Err.. I'm not sure how many flats there currently are on the Heygate, but I'm pretty sure that it is has to be less than the "5,300 new and replacement homes" included in the latest Elephant and Castle masterplan.
I'm not sure how many flats there are on the Heygate either, and in any case any figures I can remember off the top of my head leave me confused about whether I'm thinking about flats, or tenants, quite a difference obviously, but somewhere in the very rough region??? of 2000 I think.
But that 5,300 figure lang rabbie mentions leads one to ask the OBVIOUS question -- what proportion of that will be social housing??
Quite apart from my earlier point that whatever proportion is social housing, it will be HA not Council. I agree with hatboy that some HA's are excellent, probably more often the smaller ones, and I take marty21's point that few HA's act in a really draconian way towards their tenants, but this is a bulldozer led stock transfer on a far greater than normal scale, affecting far more people.
The more arcane (but still important) details of differences between HA and Council tenancies I'll leave to experts such as guinnessdrinker and marty21, but from my Council flat not far away I'm bound to be very concerned that it doesn't lead to further stock transfer projects that leave people like Keith Hill able to threaten Councils/tenants with the 'Get privatised or be starved of investment' non-choice.
My own estate is likely for the time being to be one of the last bastions of unaffected Council housing round here for various reasons (it's a small estate, with an older than average tenant profile) but I am still angry about the way that all over the cpountry, Councils are not being allowed to spend
existing Government and European funds on improving the estates -- mine is in good condition and only needs a relatively small proportion of money spent on it to make it excellent, but for now maintenenance only seems to be the policy ....
Defend Council Housing campaign site
And that suggestion that Housing Benefit will end up being paid direct to tenants, even if it takes ages for it to happen on actual Council estates, is outrageous ...
If those reports of what Keith Hill said and what Fred Manson thinks are true, then it's equally outrageous ...
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not against mixed development per se so long as existing, less well off residents don't end up seeing it as the thin end of a threatening wedge which will either lead to pricing out or unacceptable degree of polarisation --- an over Yuppified area will lead to pubs becoming winebars (I propose the severest punishment possible for anyone who prefers a bad "wine bar" (ie all of them
) to a good pub) and shops will become boutiques and independent small shops will become branches of chains ...
As I'm sort of repeating my first post here though, let me also repeat that I'm by no means totally against these changes, the planned architecture is far from awful and the landscaping, new trees, traffic rerouting, railway station refurbishment, possibly trams, etc etc will all be A Good Thing.
But it seems from what I'm discovering so far that neither the Government and the Council are at all interested in genuinely trying to involve the local community in a positive way -- perhaps on a superficial, anodyne, misleading survey kind of way, but not in any way that will compromise the real agenda of sending the area way upmarket and satisfying the ambitions of very hardfaced property developers.
In other words many local babies will be thrown out along with the admittedly very grubby architectural bathwater ....
Will continue to follow this thread ...