16 May
Poverty of Process
Comments on the Final Masterplan
The deadline for comments on the final masterplan passed recently. The [Elephant Amenity Network (EAN)] is a coalition of local groups and people that includes council tenants, leaseholders, shopkeepers, market traders and community groups. Since July 2011, members of the EAN have been actively engaging with the consultation process, which was set up by developers 'Lend Lease' who employed a PR company called 'Soundings' to manage it. Now that the consultation has ended, members of the EAN group have expressed their frustration at the shortcomings of the process. Here are some of the feedback comments made by members of the group:
"I decided there was little point in providing another detailed submission. 90% of the comments I made in July 2011 (exhibition 1) and October 2011 (exhibition 2) have not been responded to at all, let alone realised in terms of any significant changes to the masterplan. My 1st contact with Soundings was to ask whether they thought the principles of neighbourhood planning and the Localism Act were relevant to their work at the Elephant and Castle. I never received an answer." - Richard Lee, EAN member & local resident
EAN's criticisms of the masterplan included the following:
* Insufficient affordable and social housing
* The ‘affordable’ housing which is due to be provided is anything but affordable [(1-bed social-rented units starting at £275 per week!)]
* Too few family-size homes
* Over-provision of parking spaces, completely unnecessary in a public transport hub
* No Local and sustainable food production (allotments and permaculture)
* No Recognition of natural habitats
* No 20 mph speed limit zones
* No reference to schools, GP’s, community managed and owned amenities
* No teenage play and youth provision
* No Local jobs target (How can we ensure that any of the jobs created will go to local people?)
* No London Living Wage guarantee (How are we to ensure that any of the jobs created will pay a reasonable wage?)
* No Working with voluntary and community sector employment/training providers (How can we ensure that local people can receive the training to take up the the new jobs?)
* No Procurement policies that support local providers (How are we to ensure that contracts go to local businesses?)
* No Support for existing local independent retail (How are we to ensure that existing local retailers are not priced out of the area by high st. chain stores?)
* No guarantee of a fully accessible public realm (How can we ensure that the new public park will be truly public and accessible to all if privately owned?)
* No provision of existing buildings for interim use (empty existing buildings could be put to use during the 15 years that the development is estimated to take)
* No provision to maintain public access through all sites (The Heygate estate's 25 acres of land is set to be enclosed by a fence for the next 15 years)
Noise- The new layout is connected and permeable, but it will open the centre of the site to noise and pollution from the Elephant's major roads. At present, the Heygate's perimeter blocks act as a very effective barrier to the noise and pollution from the Walworth & New Kent roads. The new layout does nothing to address this issue.
The Park: The park is very narrow in relation to its length. It would appear that the park has been positioned according to the [serpentine viewing corridor], along a narrow east-to-west strip which is entirely encapsulated by high-rise blocks. The obvious disadvantage is that the park will be entirely overshadowed by the new buildings on its Southern border, and is likely to end up becoming London's first ever park to be built permanently in the shade.
The exhibition models in the final masterplan exhibition were misleading: the high-rise buildings surrounding the park were shown in Perspex on the exhibition model, which neatly avoided any true sense of enclosure; light perspectives on most of the visual imagery provided at the exhibition were incorrectly represented- one of the computer-generated images showed the midday sun shining from the North East!
Despite numerous concerns about the publicness of the new public park, this area has also been left in the dark. The local community have been pressing without avail to have arrangements here formalised, in order to avoid the ‘privatised public space’ model – places like More London or New Street Square, where security guards pounce on subversive activities like picnics or photography. The EAN are calling for the park to be officially adopted by Southwark council, in order to protect it legally in perpetuity as public open space and to ensure that public interests are upheld.
Sustainability- The question of sustainability in the masterplan approach, is of course predicated on the premise that the site must be completely redeveloped [and not innovatively and – possibly - more sustainably refurbished as a prototype for the future]. None of the questionnaires have ever allowed for this response, answers to the limited questions about priorities have been interpreted to assume that all respondents agree to wholesale redevelopment.
Concerns raised about the negative carbon impact of the scheme from this perspective have gone entirely unheeded:
"I attended the sustainability workshop on 15th December. During the workshop, I suggested the provision of independent evidence on the potential CO2 implications of the redevelopment project, which includes the analysis of embodied carbon in the current buildings on the Heygate estate, plus the estimated carbon footprint of the new development. Lend Lease's representative agreed to provide these once the masterplan had been finalised.
When the minutes of the sustainability workshop were finally circulated by Soundings - two months later on 13th February - the minutes failed to include my suggestion and Lend Lease's agreement to the carbon analysis. I contacted Soundings to request that the meetings minutes were updated to include the analysis, and it took six requests before the minutes were amended. According to Soundings, the carbon-impact assessment has now been completed by Lend Lease, but we are still waiting for them to release the findings...." - A Glasspool, EAN member & Heygate estate resident
The [exhibition board for sustainability] at the final masterplan exhibition stated the following objectives:
‘Social aim – to deliver a genuinely mixed-use neighbourhood, as an integral part of a wider regenerated area, for all ages, backgrounds and means.’
"This is patent nonsense – people of all ages, backgrounds and means cannot afford to stay at the Elephant, given the very low proportion of social rented and really affordable housing." - Annie Lennox, EAN member
"This is an insult to myself and the rest of the 3,000-strong community on the Heygate, who have been strong-armed and intimidated out of their homes, and will now remain permanently priced out of the area." - Former Heygate Resident.
Trees- The exhibition board for Landscape & Trees shows removed trees only as small red dots, which is a graphic technique aimed at playing down the impact of tree felling. Moreover, the display is wholly inaccurate: a large number of existing trees are not depicted on the map whatsoever.
General- On a general level, the final masterplan exhibition refers to material that will be submitted, in a few weeks, as part of the outline planning application. This includes the amount of floorspace per use, the environmental impact assessment, access and landscaping statements and some 16 other supporting documents.
Yet the exhibition largely restricted itself to colourful bite-size displays and non-specific statements. A huge amount of new material will suddenly emerge with the planning application, which could and should have been covered in the public exhibition.
Local residents have had no opportunity to input into these documents, there have been no panels, no cooperative survey work, no sharing of frameworks, let alone a collaborative approach to the production of documents.
Lend Please! Land Please!
Contrary to this 'For Sale' sign erected by a confused local estate agent, the Heygate is not for sale. The Heygate estate was already [sold by Southwark council on Friday 23rd July 2010] to an Australian company called 'Lend Lease'. Perhaps this is why Southwark council was so quick to remove the 'For Sale' sign, in order to avoid a rush of enquiries from people wishing to buy a home on the Heygate.- Although I think there might still be a [couple of leaseholders] on the Heygate still willing to sell up...
The details of the agreement, i.e. the sale price have not been disclosed by Southwark council. It is claiming that the sale price is 'commercially sensitive' information and therefore cannot be made public. One of the opposition councillors disagreed with this decision and tried to make some of the details public. She was quickly silenced when the labour administration [took legal action to have her censured]. This is the first time in the history of Southwark council that a councillor has been censured. One might be forgiven for asking why the council are so keen to avoid the details of its deal with Lend Lease entering the public realm? Could it be something to do with Lend Lease's track record for securing public handouts?:
Lend Lease are given the millenium dome with the land on the Greenwich peninsula surrounding it by Lord Falconer:
Lend Lease then sell the dome for £24 million and keep the 150 acres of land surrounding it for development:
Lend Lease receive £275m handout in Olympic Village Fiasco:
Ten Heygate Myths
1. The Heygate estate was built on a WW2 bomb site. - False: the Victorian streets preceding the Heygate were bombed in the war, but only very lightly: most of the buildings remained intact until they were demolished - not for structural reasons - in the late 1960's.
2. The Heygate estate is being demolished because the buildings are defective. - False: the buildings on the estate were declared structurally sound by a [council-commissioned survey in 1998.]
3. The Heygate estate is being demolished because the buildings contain asbestos. - False: The buildings do still contain asbestos, but all exposed asbestos was removed during major works in the late 1980s- [see 1998 survey]. Note that the E&C shopping centre, Metro Heights, Peronnet House etc. all still contain asbestos; as do most buildings constructed throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
4. The Heygate is being demolished because the council didn't have enough money to maintain the existing buildings. -_False: The same [council-commissioned survey] made cost estimates and stated clearly that the cost of demolition would be greater than the cost of repair/refurbishment.
5. Former Heygate residents have been given the 'right to return' to flats in the new development on the site. - False: Heygate residents are not being offered tenancies in the new properties being built on the Heygate footprint. But even if they were they probably wouldn't be able to afford the rent: the new social-rented flats will be provided under the new 80%-of-market-rent scheme and will cost £275 for a 1-bed flat and £549 per week for a 4-bed flat.
6. The scheme will produce 2,500 new homes. - True: But it will also see the needless demolition of 1,200 [perfectly good homes] on the Heygate estate, and most of the new homes will be bought up by foreign buy-to-let investors: [this report] confirms that last year two thirds of all new-build properties in London were sold to overseas investors.
7. The scheme will create thousands of new jobs. - True: But most of these will either be temporary construction jobs which are likely to go to the preferred contractors not local people or low-paid unskilled jobs in high-street retail stores and there is no guarantee that the new jobs will go to local people. The final masterplan contains no mechanisms to ensure this, (i.e. no minimum local jobs target, no procurement policies that support local providers, no working with voluntary and community sector employment/training providers, no minimum London wage guarantee).
8. The Heygate was blighted by crime and anti-social behaviour. -False: This does not correlate with the official crime statistics for the estate. These show a very low level of crime compared to the average crime rate for the borough as a whole- [see report here.]
9. ‘The loss of 1,260 social-rented flats on the Heygate will be compensated by the construction of new social-rented flats in the area'.
- False: Only 612 social-rented units at council 'target rents' are due to be built in the E&C opportunity area. [Click here for details]
10. The demoliton of the Heygate is being held up by a handful of Leaseholders who are holding out for more money. - False: The last remaining leaseholders on the estate are unable to relocate with the [below-market valuations that are being offered for the homes.] The redevelopment of the site is being held up because the developers Lend Lease are having difficulty raising capital for the project since their credit status was downgraded following their Olympic Village bailout fiasco.
A Good Deal?
Financial cost of Heygate demolition
"It is ridiculously expensive to knock housing estates down. These are not dysfunctional buildings- if you invest in them they will be perfectly fine." - Dickon Robinson, Development Director at the Peabody Trust
It is commonly misunderstood that the sale of the Heygate's 10 hectares of public-owned land, will end up raising funds for the council's cash-strapped coffers. The reality is that the land is being transferred into private ownership not just at a social but also at a financial cost to the public. What is often overlooked in these schemes is the astronomical cost of emptying an entire neighbourhood and rehousing 3,500 people.
In 1998, the council commissioned an appraisal study investigating seven different options for repair/refurbishment/rebuilding of the estate including the option of full demolition. The [appraisal study concluded] that of all seven options, full demolition was the most expensive - coming in at an estimated £53 million. The estimate refers to a footnote further on in the report, which states that this option would also incur the additional cost of buying back the leaseholders on the estate (*4.22.1 - "Decant costs have not been included for leaseholders"*). A [Freedom of Information request] has confirmed that this has already exceeded £20 million.
Costs that were not included in the report's estimate include the loss of rent, which has now amounted to over £25 million, and is accruing at a rate of approx. £100,000 per week. Plus the estate is currently costing the council [£22,000 per year just for estate lighting] and [£48,500 per month for private security].
This represents a current net loss to the taxpayer of well over £100 million, and the costs are still accruing. Full refurbishment of the estate would have cost less than half of this amount, and would have left this vast area of land in public ownership. [A 1999 MORI poll] confirmed that residents were opposed to demolition and displacement, and that 63% of residents were in favour of remaining on the Heygate estate.
The full 1998 survey and appraisal study can be downloaded [from here.]
In terms of what Southwark council is receiving in return for the sale of the Heygate estate to Lend Lease- we still don't know if there will be any capital receipt at all. The current labour administration is determined to keep the details of the deal it signed with the Australian developer under wraps. In March this year, it even went as far taking [legal action against a fellow Lib-Dem Councillor] for having disclosed some details of the agreement.
Sustainable Development?
The carbon debt incurred by the original demolition and rebuild of the Heygate area 35 years ago, will remain in the atmosphere for a further 65 years. The huge carbon debt proposed for yet another comprehensive demolition and rebuild will remain in the atmosphere for another 100 years. This seriously compromises both the Government’s CO2 reduction targets and Bill Clinton’s praise for the scheme as 'carbon positive sustainable growth'.
The current masterplan claims to be undertaking the entire regeneration with a zero increase in carbon emissions. However, what it fails to point out is that its calculations are based purely on 'operative' carbon emission forecasts. What it fails to include are the 'embedded' carbon emissions, i.e. all the carbon emissions resulting not just from the construction of the new buildings, but also those from the original construction of the Heygate estate.
The buildings on the Heygate estate were built to last at least 60 years, and according to the most recent survey they are set to last many decades beyond this. They are constructed with 8"-thick reinforced high-grade concrete panels. Concrete is one of the best insulating materials that can be used in creating energy efficient homes.
We believe that the full-scale demolition of the Heygate estate is not the most sustainable option, and this is backed by extensive academic research confirming that the re-use/re-furbishment of buildings is less damaging to the environment than demolition/rebuild:
[Recent research] into energy life cycle analysis(ELCA) suggests that embodied energy may be as high as 50% of a building's lifetime energy use.
Members of the local community have since organised and are in the process of creating their own community-led regeneration plan for the area. Among Better Elephant's plans for the East Walworth area they plan to innovatively and sustainably refurbish a number of the Heygate's family homes, based around some of the recommendations made in [this 1998 council-commissioned appraisal study] and [other recommendations] put forward by various architectural groups.
These plans will also see the retention of the vast majority of the 450 trees in the urban forest which can be found in the centre of the Heygate estate.
