Teviot estate
Homes under threat: 535
Landlord: Poplar HARCA
Ballot Status: Approved
Planning Status: Pending
Developer: Hill
Architect: BPTW
Itla: Mike Tyrell
535 homes have been earmarked for demolition by housing association Poplar HARCA at its Teviot estate in Tower Hamlets.
The estate underwent a stock transfer to Poplar HARCA housing association, which was completed in 2007.
The estate borders the Limehouse Cut canal to the North, the River Lea to the East and Langdon Park and Balfron Tower to the South. Poplar HARCA have already come under criticism for its privatisation of Balfron Tower.
The scheme is part of Poplar HARCA's ‘Poplar Reshaping’ masterplan which envisages the redevelopment of ten estates: Aberfeldy, Brownfield, Bow Bridge, Coventry Cross, Burdett, Devons, Lansbury, Leopold, Lincoln and Teviot.
In December 2018, residents were told they would be balloted on the regeneration options for their estate, but that if they chose refurbishment then they would have to have new homes built above them in order to pay for the refurbishment.
In March 2019, residents were informed that their steering group had requested the refurbishment option to be taken off the table.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of residents voted for full redevelopment in May 2019.
Residents were also told that the scheme would take 7 to 10 years to complete but in tender documents reported in the Housing Today journal, Poplar HARCA cites a contract term of between 15 and 20 years:
It is noteworthy that Poplar HARCA's rehousing offer to leaseholders is more generous than most (with the exception of Circle Housing's offer in Merton as it allows a certain amount of the shared equity loan to be written off after 7 years (Circle writes it off completely).
A planning application was lodged in June 2024, for demolition of the estate and construction of 1928 new homes of which 411 social or London Living Rent, 98 intermediate affordable and 1419 private homes.
The planning application says that the 411 replacement social will be provided either as social rent or THLR (Tower Hamlets Living Rent) which is around three times more expensive than social rent.
This is breach of the Mayor's own policy which says that social rented homes must be replaced with like-for-like tenure. The Mayor's stage 1 report for the planning application brushes over this and is silent on the fact that the 35% affordable housing proposed falls short of his 50% minimum policy requirement for estate regenerations.
The scheme's failure to provide the minimum 50% affordable housing requirement is justified by a an FVA (Financial Viability Appraisal) submitted by Poplar HARCA.
The appraisal argues that providing more than 35% affordable housing would make the scheme 'unviable' but brushes over the fact that a 16% protected profit margin for Poplar HARCA has been written in to the appraisal as a cost - i.e. Poplar HARCA is guaranteed a £131m profit before any surplus available for affordable housing is calculated.
We argue in our Alternative Good Practice Guide to Estate Regeneration that housing associations should not be allowed to profit from estate redevelopment.
The Financial Viability Appraisal also counts on £95m grant funding from the Mayor despite the Mayor's policy of funding only additional social housing on estate redevelopments and not replacement social housing!
This begs the question of what is the point in the Mayor's estate regeneration policies if he allows boroughs, developers and housing associations to routinely ignore them?
Links:
Planning application documents
