Council demolition plans are ‘social engineering’
A west London council’s plan to bulldoze housing estates have been described as ‘social engineering’ by Labour MP Andrew Slaughter.
Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request by Mr Slaughter detail plans by Hammersmith and Fulham Council to decant communities of social renters and release the land for private development in what is described by the leader of the council Stephen Greenhalgh as ‘a solution to concentrations of deprivation’.
In the documents the estates are described as ‘not decent neighbourhoods’, with Mr Greenhalgh saying ‘we want to attract people who are very rich’.
In total 3,500 homes on three sites in the area have been earmarked for demolition. The documents reveal Mr Greenhalgh discussing his plans for reform of housing in the area with a group of senior conservative party officials, including shadow housing minister Grant Shapps and Tory party chair Eric Pickles.
The round table discussions are labelled ‘creating mixed communities in concentrated areas of deprivation’. During the meetings one of the sites, Fulham Court, is described as ‘not a place, it is a barrack for the poor’.
The White City estate is described as ‘an ideal place to develop and deliver a master plan’.
During discussions Mr Greenhalgh says that social renters now deliver ‘no return on asset value’.
He outlines plans to allow council rents to increase to market levels, to provide welfare payments to households based on need rather than rent paid (so that single adults only need to rent a room in a shared house) and to provide social housing only for the old, infirm and disabled.
Participants acknowledged that plans to demolish the site could be seen as ‘Portereque’ social engineering, referring to the homes for votes scandal begun by Dame Shirley Porter in 1987, and said that funding would be needed to manage the process.
The discussions have been used to feed into Tory policy ideas on social housing reform.
Mr Slaughter said: ‘This is social engineering on a grand scale and it is being recommended to the Conservative Party hierarchy as the way forward in housing: no security, high rents, no duty to house the homeless, no right to buy.’
Hammersmith and Fulham Council has been in discussions with a number of developers over the sites, and began consultations with tenants earlier this year. Its plans were laid out in its development framework document, released last month.
A spokesperson for the council said that the demolition plans are currently a vision rather than policy and gave a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ that all residents affected would be given a replacement home in the area.
In response to the allegations, Stephen Greenhalgh said: ‘Standing still is simply not an option when it will cost the council over £1bn over the next ten years just to maintain our existing housing stock. Our ambition to redevelop a number of our council estates over the next 15-20 years is not a secret plot but the way to deliver more homes and better quality housing in a greatly improved environment. In some ways we are behind other parts of London as the redevelopment of the Ferrier estate in Greenwich, Woodberry Down in Hackney and West Hendon in Barnet is already underway.’
The redevelopment of the Ferrier estate in Greenwich began earlier this year. Social housing residents there were initially promised replacement housing on the estate, but in the final development plans, the majority of new homes are private.
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