London Councils report - a decade of renewal?
London Councils, the umbrella group for London boroughs, has published a report lobbying for more london estates to be redeveloped.
The report is titled 'A decade of Renewal'.
Given the growing number of estates demolished, left to sit empty and held hostage for years while developers extract further concessions from local authority partners, it should more aptly be titled 'A decade of Demolition and Landbanking'.
The report starts out by making the bizarre claim that "In many areas, the affordable housing supply that has been delivered in recent years has been enabled .. where boroughs have taken the lead to drive place and housing quality transformation through estate based regeneration."
Facts show that the exact opposite is true. In 2021, a report by London Assembly member Sian Berry showed that estate regeneration schemes had resulted in a net loss of 6,748 social rented homes since 2003.
It also showed that schemes in the pipeline with planning approval will end up resulting in a net loss of 13,539 social rented homes.
The London Councils report subsequently laments that they are spending £5m a day on temporary accommodation for homeless families, but fails to make the connection between this and the growing list of stalled schemes where thousands of council homes have sat empty or been demolished and not replaced for periods sometimes spanning two decades.
Shining Examples..
The report then goes on to introduce "a number of case study examples of estate regeneration schemes across London that showcase London boroughs’ appetite to get things built, built sustainably, and to a high standard that serves Londoners’ needs."
Curiously, instead of drawing from the dozens of London schemes already completed, it examines just two schemes, neither of which yet complete!
Exhibit 1
The first example given is the Agar Grove estate in Camden, which despite being a relatively small scheme and having received planning consent more than a decade ago, is still not finished and not due to complete until 2030.
The scheme is hardly a shining example to extol the virtues of estate regeneration. Despite costing Camden Council a considerable amount of money (2013 estimate was £143m), the scheme is resulting in an overall net loss of council homes and has been plagued by a series of major build defects.
Exhibit 2
The second example given is Kingston Council's Cambridge road estate.
Similarly, despite planning consent being granted nearly four years ago, not a single home in the first phase of the scheme has yet been completed. The scheme is also costing the Council an arm and a leg - £200m was the original estimate but it was recently reported that the scheme has run into viability issues because of increased build costs and a failure to sell many of the private for sale homes in the first phase.
The Council is now considering putting its hands further in its pockets to buy these out. It has also confirmed an "expectation of there being no more than a nominal value ascribed to the Council’s land". Its development partner will be paying £5 for the whole estate (£1 for each phase).
More of the same..
A common thread with these schemes and a striking omission from the report, is the phenomenal amount of money these schemes are costing councils' already-tight budgets.
Advocating the demolition of more much-needed council homes and handing estates over to developers who routinely stall and plead poverty, while complaining about spending £5m a day on temporary housing, defies all common sense.
Journalist, Pete Apps, has written in more detail about the London Councils report and its shortcomings here: https://peteapps.substack.com/p/the-limits-of-estate-regeneration