Fancy That III
May 9th, 2008Our long-term objective is a lower starting rate of income tax of ten pence in the pound
Labour 1997 Election Manifesto
Drug abuse and social atomisation in working class communities
May 3rd, 2008this article on the impact of drugs on communities was originally posted on the IWCA website a good few years ago, I make no apologies for posting it up here in full
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Working class communities generally have to put up with the harsh downside of drug users and drug dealers and as such they are inclined to take a hardline attitude on the issue. Dave Abbot argues why the working class is right to be tough on drugs.
Drug use and abuse impacts adversely on working class communities in a number of ways. Firstly there is the link between drug use and criminal activity from petty crime to feed a drug habit to murderous turf wars between rival drugs gangs. Then there is the loss of public space with the creation of ‘no go’ areas by users and dealers from stairwells to crack houses. Drug abuse impacts on family life when addicts who are parents fail to socialise their children leading to problems with indiscipline and antisocial behaviour. Possibly the worst aspect of all is the loss of hope for the future which is replaced with the desire to seek oblivion through drugs rather than confront and deal with the harsh realities of life.
The British Crime Survey estimates that up to 70% of acquisitive crime such as burglary, theft from vehicles and shoplifting, is drug related. Local evidence from arrest referral schemes and probation data supports this estimate. Much of this crime is related to the need to raise enough money to feed a drug habit. The more desperate the addict is to get the money to feed their habit, the more violent will be the attempts to obtain that money.
Drug dealing creates an atmosphere of intimidation as dealers carve out their areas of operation and at the worst, leads to open gang warfare and murder. This is an issue that cuts across ethnic lines. The ‘black on black’ gun crime in major cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester has gained a lot of media attention. However, the problem of feuding drugs gangs is not just confined to the inner cities. The notorious gangland shooting on a farm track at Rettendon in Essex was the inspiration for the cult film ‘Essex Boys’ which was a somewhat glamourised portrayal of a feud between rival drug dealers.
One of the more drastic impacts of drug abuse on the quality of life in working class areas is the appropriation of public and private space by drug users and dealers for the consumption and sale of drugs. Vacant flats are appropriated for use as crack houses immediately creating a climate of fear as the presence of dealers and users keeps people as virtual prisoners in their own homes.
A resident on a council estate in the London borough of Camden described their experience of the impact of the neighbourhood being taken over by drug users: “At one point, they took control of a flat in the block and turned it into a crack house, at which point my mother and other decent tenants became prisoners in their flats - you certainly didn’t feel safe going in and out when you could be stuck in the lift with someone off their head on crack, or be swamped in the entry area by a sudden rush of 6 or 7 youngish guys on heroin.[1]” While the crack users and dealers may only have taken one flat to use, effectively they have made the whole block and beyond a combination of a virtual ‘no go’ area and prison as their antisocial and often unpredictable behaviour deters ordinary residents from anything but the most necessary trips outside of their homes.
There is the loss of communal space on estates as stairwells, public gardens and garage blocks are taken over by drug users, leaving behind a litter of needles and other items associated with drug use. This mess leaves a reminder that even when the users and dealers aren’t around, the communal space on the estate is effectively theirs to use as they wish. A resident of Somers Town in Camden describes the way public space has effectively been taken away from the use of the majority of residents: “Since the ‘house’ opened here, we have also seen females urinating in public in front of children, young children being offered drugs free, blood and drug paraphernalia (syringes etc) on communal staircases, and even women giving sex to punters in public and communal areas.[2]” Given the desperation of many of the people involved in these activities and their unpredictable and often violent behaviour, residents are understandably going to be wary about challenging them.
If a community has been robbed of its public space by antisocial elements, it has lost an arena for socialising and interaction. The simple act of stopping to talk to a neighbour becomes a test of endurance if the surroundings are littered with drugs paraphernalia and there is an intimidating presence of drug users and dealers. Being able to stop and chat to a neighbour without being fearful of the surrounding environment is something that should be taken for granted. Yet the activities of an antisocial and criminal minority are serving to undermine the ordinary everyday interaction that gives a community a sense of cohesion. Taking away public space in this way is effectively an attack on the entire community.
It’s not only drug users and dealers who take away public space but also the poorly socialised children of drug addicts. Drug abuse has a serious impact on families as the associated chaotic and unstable way of life leaves children without any effective parental guidance. As a consequence, these poorly socialised children often exhibit behavioural problems and an almost inevitable drift into delinquency and crime. A feature article in The Observer looked at the impact on the everyday life of Clyde Court, a run down estate in Leeds, of the antisocial behaviour of children from households where drug abuse was rife. Shona Trewannie, who works in a community school in Leeds, commented: “The kids hitting their teenage years now are third-generation drug addicts, with no experience of parenting. They have never lived in a house where people have gone to work and have no idea of what it means to live without violence and squalor. They’re practically feral.[3]” This paints a depressing story of a section of the working class in such a hopeless situation that not only have they lost every last vestige of self respect, they have effectively pressed the self destruct button not only on themselves but on their communities.
All the libertarian talk about allowing people to indulge in whatever takes their fancy falls down when decisions to opt for a life of drug induced oblivion have very real and drastic consequences for working class communities. Drug abuse is not an issue of personal choice - it has serious consequences for the community at large. From the appropriation of public space for drug abuse to poorly socialised children running riot, drug abusers do have a responsibility for the negative impacts of their actions on the neighbourhood they live in. While drug abusers do obviously need all the help and resources available to break their habits, they also have to be made aware of their own responsibilities to the community they live in.
Drug abuse in working class areas is a symptom of the much wider malaise of a loss of hope and faith in the future. From uncertain job prospects and bad housing to poor education and restricted opportunities, the odds are stacked against working class people significantly improving their lot. However, the vast majority of them do not resort to drug abuse as a way of trying to blot out the harsh reality of life. They get on with things as best they can demonstrating that there is still a sufficient level of self respect in the majority of the community to avoid the temptation of softening life’s blows through drug induced oblivion.
The problem is the growing number of young and not so young working class people who see no way of overcoming life’s problems and instead opt for drug induced oblivion as a means of escape. Resorting to drugs to blot out the harsh reality of life is a serious failure of individual subjectivity. It’s not just the loss of self respect that using drugs brings that is a problem but the implied admission that a decent life isn’t even worth struggling for and that oblivion through drugs is the best they can look forward to. Commenting on the issue of drug use in rather broad terms, Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick noted: “Nothing better expresses the lowered horizons and diminished expectations of contemporary Western society than its surrender to the vacuity of the drug culture.[4]” Seeking this kind of oblivion is symptomatic of the atomised and individualised times we live in.
Effective treatment for addicts that will reduce the harm they do to themselves and which will break their habit is obviously a priority. While the wider community understandably objects to the impact of drug abuse, the hallmark of a civilised society is that the drug abusers will get the help they need to stop their self destructive behaviour. Having said this, a way has to be found of sending out a clear signal that drug abuse is not an acceptable lifestyle option. If the drug users are native to the community, then any strategy aimed at eliminating the problem is going to have to avoid polarisation between the wider community and drug users. In situations such as this, both parties have an interest in working with each other in areas such as harm reduction and reducing the adverse impacts of drug use on the neighbourhood.
While ridding working class communities of the scourge of drug abuse and drug dealing is a valuable aim in and of itself, there are other gains stemming from this. A community free from drug abuse is one that has rejected any element of self destruction and is willing to face up to and deal with the problems it faces. By rejecting drug induced oblivion as a panacea for the harsh realities of life, the community is starting to look to the future again, even if that future will mean a considerable amount of struggle for them to realise their aspiration
Brown’s Folly
May 2nd, 2008an appropriate summary of brown
It’s like having an uncle who’s been building something in the shed at the bottom of the garden for the past ten years. You look through the window and there’s nothing there
increasingly unaffordable lewisham
April 7th, 2008the latest monitoring report of the london plan was published a month or so ago, which makes for some interesting reading re lewisham and affordable housing
out of the 33 london boroughs only 5 boroughs have failed to incorporate the mayoral target of 50% affordable housing (for major developments) into their own local plans - these are
Bexley, Richmond, Bromley, Lambeth and Lewisham
out of those 5 boroughs the actual provision of affordable housing over the last 3 years was
Bexley - 46%; Richmond - 20%; Bromley 23%; Lambeth 29%; Lewisham 22%
So not only is Lewisham one of the few boroughs who have failed to adopt the targets of the mayoral plan as standard, but out of those who have failed to adopt the target is also one of the worst in terms of actual provision.
Overall Lewisham is ranked 7th worst out of the 33 boroughs with it’s 22% affordable housing provision delivered over the last three years. The average for across all boroughs was 31%, which is some way above what Lewisham managed, although still criminally short of the overall 50% target
Any time i’ve had conversations with the council or developers about the provision of affordable housing they always point out all the reasons why the mayoral targets can’t be met, but the monitoring report shows that it can, we have boroughs like Hammersmith & Fulham who have averaged 59% affordable provision over the last 3 years, Croydon did 55%, Ealing provided 51%, Brent has managed 49%, Newham 48%
(it’s also worth pointing out that all these boroughs mentioned did not just do well in terms of percentage provision, but all of them ensured the provision of between two to four times as many actual affordable homes than lewisham managed in the same period (lewisham provided 399 affordable homes in the last three years compared to 807 in hammersmith & fulham, 1,358 in croydon, 1,222 in ealing, 1,124 in brent and 1,155 in newham)
This shows it can be done, and it’s being done by other boroughs who face the same issues & difficulties and in the same environment and with the same pressures as Lewisham currently faces, so why do lewisham persistantly underperform in terms of both target setting and also in terms of meeting those (miserly) targets? According to the planning officer at today’s consultation i’m informed it’s just impossible to do it, this report proves however that it can be done, there just doesn’t seem the appetite to do so
greyhound development consultation
April 7th, 2008who put the con in consultation!
another hour was spent this afternoon going round the houses, this time with the council planning officers
the consultation seemed reasonably well attended (about 25-30 people when i was there), however the average age of consultees when i was there did appear to be about 60, probably reflecting the fact that for most, the timing of the consultation made it awkward to attend, hopefully a few more people made it along in the last hour or so of it
i raised the usual two issues at the session, one being the provision of affordable housing and the other being the lack of investment in the community infrastructure to cope with the the pressures that will be put upon existing infrastructure once the development is completed
On affordable housing, we went through the usual hoops which have been documented here a number of times - the usual starting point for these conversations is referring to the mayoral target in the london plan of 50% of all new developments to be affordable, they then point out that that’s just a target, and not many boroughs adopt that target in their own local strategy. Prior to going along today, i had a skim through the latest monitoring report on the london plan, which shows that only 6 boroughs out of 33 have failed to bring in the 50% target to their local strategy. Obviously when this was pointed out they then point out that not many boroughs actually meet those targets, which is why lewisham have opted for a more sensible/realistic target of 35% provision. However the latest monitoring report also states that over the last 3 years lewisham have only provided 22% affordable housing across all developments, this seemed to be news to the planning officers, so in a bid to deflect attention away from that put forward the argument that for this development they were providing 57% affordable housing.
I explained that 21% of that wasn’t affordable housing as it didn’t need to be sold as affordable to key workers in the first place and even if it was there is no restriction on key workers who buy, subsequently selling the place on the open market the following day after securing the purchase. So this then knocked of 21% of their 57% bringing it down to 36% which they then claimed was still fine as it was above their target. I pointed out that if their current 3 year average is only 22% they would have to ensure above target provision on some pretty big developments to get even close to their target, with things like the lewisham gateway scheme only offering 20% (and potentially even less) i asked how they were going to manage that. In reply they said that lewisham already had a huge amount of affordable housing so it didn’t really matter if they met their targets, i then pointed out that existing affordable housing in places like milford towers & the excalibur estate were a long way off the decent homes standard and would probably be demolished at some point, so how on earth can that argument work. As usual a bit of flap & fluster followed by the usual stuff about if they ask for more affordable provision the development wouldn’t go ahead with a heavly implication that if that happened then it would be all my fault!
further discussion about affordable targets ensued, which ended up with the planning officer saying that basically all they can do is hope to achieve their planned 35% provision, but if a developer isn’t happy to do it, they have no powers to enforce it, admitting they are very much at the mercy of the developers (and their money). And this appears to be the crux of the matter, money decides - not the council, nor its electorate. The provision of what should be a basic human right, a roof over you head, has been pushed further and further into the hands of private capital, who in good times can make money out of this, but in bad times and downturn, like the one we’re coming into now, they won’t make the money out of it so they won’t deliver - where will that leave the wise people in charge of our lives who put so much faith in the ability of the private sector to provide public goods?
After skating not terribly impressively on thin ice around the affordable housing question for some time, the point was raised by the planning officer about the additional investments in the community infrastructure that would come along with the development, this seemed like a good time to raise the estimated 17% increase in peak time rail travel that the development will bring about. I asked them if they were comfortable with the assumption in the transport assessment documentation that says because rail usage has decreased over the last couple of years, then they expect the observed decrease to continue for the next 6 years so by the time the development is complete in 2014 the 17% increase in rail usage will have no affect on existing passengers. The first reaction to that was a comment that they don’t think rail usage has went down in the last two years! I agreed and pointed out that at the developers consultation two weeks ago they had stated that the council had seen, and were happy with, these assumptions. To this i received no response, as almost on cue they then went on to talk about how the stations will be tarted up, new cycle paths provided etc.. I said that as welcome as these things are they do not address the issue in question and alleviate the concerns about the impact on public transport infrastructure, to this i received the reply that they think that it does alleviate my concerns, which i thought was nice, members of the public seem to be unable now to decide for themselves whether their concerns are alleviated or not - who put the con in consultation? well lewisham council probably didn’t put it there in the first place but their doing a grand job of ensuring it stays there
as with the previous consultation i only got to raise these two issues and was unable in the time alloted to me to raise other issues like the impact on road congestion, existing local tenants in non decent homes getting first refusal on homes in the new development, the contradictions of urging people to use public transport more yet assuming the amount of people who use public transport will get less, the pointlessness of allowing one person 5 minutes to speak at any planning committee when it is clear that for developments like this community objections will be multi-faceted and often conflicting. Annoyingly on both consultations because of the amount of time I had to spend getting the representatives to even agree with me on statements of facts about the development (i.e. the effort required to cut through all their bullshit) before i could even raise the concern about it, meant that I was unable to raise all these other issues that i wanted to raise.
One thing i did notice though with both this and the previous consultation is the almost visible draining of colour in the faces of the represenatives as they begin to realise that you actually know what your talking about in terms of the facts in relation to both the specific development and the wider issues - and i wonder just how often when people havn’t ploughed through the details of the documentation, this fact is taken advantage off. it certainly was at the previous, developers consultation, however with this one i got the impression there was more honesty about the facts of the thing, however a lot more spin on them as well. On a number of occasions the planning officer appeared visibly flustered and often lost for words, which did give some sense of satisfaction (in terms of knowing the issues i was raising were genuine ones which couldn’t easily be brushed aside), not that that makes much difference in the overall scheme of things though, but it’s nice to know your on the right track
more phoney consultation
April 3rd, 2008this time from the council
A number of letters of objection and concern have been received to this application and in these cases it is Council policy to hold an informal meeting or a drop in session with local residents to enable an assessmet to be made of the areas of concern before the application is considered by the Council’s Planning Committee
A drop in session has now been arranged between 4pm and 8pm on Monday 7 April 2008 in the First Floor Foyer of the Civic Suite at Lewisham Town Hall, Catford Road, London SE6 and you are invited to attend. Local Ward councilors will also be invited
The applicants will also be in attendance to answer any questions you may have on the proposed development
After attending the last consultation session i’m even more skeptical as to any good that can come out of these things, not that i’m against real consultation itself, but it’s clear that these sessions are not designed to support real consultation
my main gripe however is with the logic of the whole process - details of the planning applications were sent out in December last year and invited people to comment and/or write to the council with any concerns they had. Presumably now everyone has done this and the council has an assembled file of comments received. If they are honest in what they say about ‘making an assessment of the concerns’, why do they not take as a starting point the concerns that they already have and follow them up with those who made them, why start a completely separate exercise which starts the whole process over again
It’s clear to anyone how this consultation session will play out as, we have to raise the same concerns again from the start, and then go through a process of being fed incorrect answers from the various representatives or when finally tied down to a correct position, the attitude is pretty much like ‘that’s the way it is folks’
The last consultation i went to on this was a complete waste of time (and presumably tax payers money) and no doubt this one will be, it’s all about ticking the boxes in a tunnel vision type manner so an outwardly glossy presentation can be made of the whole affair
Hopefully if the same representatives of the applicants are in attendance for this session they will have learnt a bit more about their scheme compared to the last time
lewisham MP’s no friend of social housing
April 1st, 2008In spite of the numerous areas in lewisham (excalibur estate, milford towers etc..) that at present do not have a hope in hell’s chance of meeting the decent homes standard by 2010 and Lewisham’s poor record of ensuring acceptable levels of new homes built are made affordable, all three Lewisham MP’s yesterday voted against a bill in parliament which would have seen more money allocated to both council house repairs and new homes built to help towards meeting affordable homes targets
The guardian reports
Gordon Brown suffered one of the biggest backbench revolts since becoming prime minister last night as 28 Labour rebels backed an amendment to a housing bill calling for more resources for council house building and repair. The rebellion failed to check the bill’s progress as opposition MPs voted with the government. But it signalled backbench unease that the government is failing to meet the demand for social and affordable housing.
Michael Meacher, Labour MP for Oldham West, said demand for social and affordable housing in the UK “far exceeds” the government’s plans and it is “unrealistic” to rely on the private sector to build the required homes.
The government plans to have 3m new homes built by 2020 at a rate of 240,000 a year, but Meacher said that with problems in the sub-prime mortgage market spreading to the UK, there was no chance that private firms would build this many
the bill itself says
In section 80 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 (c. 42) (calculation of Housing Revenue Account subsidy) after subsection (3) insert-
(3A) In determining a formula for the purposes of this section for any year, the Secretary of State shall take into account-
(a) the resources required properly to manage, maintain and repair houses and other properties within their respective Housing Revenue Accounts,
(b) research into these matters, and
(c) the resources required to enable respective authorities to acquire, rehabilitate and build new housing to be held within their Housing Revenue Accounts that contributes to meeting the need for affordable housing within their respective areas.
All three Lewisham Labour MP’s, listed below, couldn’t face the prospect of such a thing however (or perhaps couldn’t bring themselves to upset their dear leader) and voted against this amendment
Jim Dowd - Lewisham West
Bridget Prentice - Lewisham East
Joan Ruddick - Lewisham Deptford
(the same three MP’s last week also voted against a motion in parliament to halt the closure of post offices across the UK, despite some of them rather hypocritically pledging to constituents that they would do all they could to save local post offices within their constituency)
heavy on empty rhetoric, light on substance
March 18th, 2008no not new labour, the tories or the liberal democrats, but a summary of the ‘consultation process’ that i’ve just attended
first of all i asked one of the ‘communications consultants’ from Local Dialogue (the communications company coordinating the ‘drop in’ session) as to why they continue to publicise the development as 57.1% affordable housing when in actual fact only 35.8% of it is sustainable affordable housing. Instead of just admitting they didn’t know the facts, i was provided with a barrage of consultant heavy, substance lite, rhetoric about the affordability issues of the development. Upon further pressing as to whether or not the 21.3% of ‘affordable’ housing made available under the LWI scheme would be made sustainably affordable (i.e. restrictions placed on it so it can’t be sold on in the open market after initial purchase), they pretty much down right lied and told me that they ‘were sure there would be restrictions in place to ensure that this was the case’.
Knowing full well that there was no such restrictions being made, i quoted them the relevant page number of the documentation that spelled out this fact and i was soon ushered away and told that someone who ‘know more about this stuff’ would come and talk to me. Eventually the person ‘who knew about this stuff’ arrived, upon seeing the name ‘Savils’ on his name tag, my expectations of this person knowing ‘about this stuff’ plummeted. We went through the same spiel as i’d done with the communications consultant, and arrived at exactly the same position, basically an outright lie as to the sustainability of the ‘affordable’ housing made available under the LWI scheme, i.e. an assurance that it would be retained into the future and made available to key workers on an affordable basis, which again i countered by quoting them the relevant parts of the documentation of both the developrs and the LWI scheme itself which contradicted what they had told me.Thus groundhog day arrived again and our chap from Savils went off to get someone who knew even more than him about ‘this stuff’.
Next up was a man from English Partnerships (the publicly funded body which gives the land to developers at discount prices to encourage development). Our chap from Savils remained in on the conversation and proceeded to tell the English Partnership’s person about how I was incorrect in the assertions that i had made about the lack of sustainability of this part of the affordable housing provision, the chap from Savil’s heart sunk as the english partnerhip’s person sheepishly admitted that my points were correct, and these ‘affordable homes’ did not even have to be sold to key workers in the first place, never mind retained for key worker provision in the future. I pressed him as to why they did not put restrictions in place to ensure this much needed sustainability of affordable housing, and bizarrely he went then on to say that if they did this then it would not be financially viable to the developer and they would walk away and no affordable housing would be built (the way he delivered this seemed to pretty much suggest that I would be personally responsible if that happened). Again however this was just nonsense, i pointed out that English Partnerships sells the land to the developers at a discount price, whether english partnerships in conjunction with the housing associations then decide to enforce restrictions to ensure the sustainability of the affordable proportion of homes or not, is purely a matter for English Partnerships & the housing associations, it doesn’t affect the developers profit margins in the slightest, they pay £xm for the land at the outset and that’s it, they have no ongoing interest in whether the resultant homes are retained as affordable or not. This point, after much discussion was eventually conceded, and in a remarkable u-turn in terms of justification flatly said that english partnerhsips were not a landlord so it was not in their interest to retain their interest in the affordable housing element, i.e. the quicker any key workers who buy a place in the new development (which results in them owning 50% and english partnerships owning 50%) sells it onto the open market and releases the equity that english partnerships have tied up in the place, the better
The most bizarre element of the evening however came at the end of this conversation when the chap from Savils proceeded to ask me a number of questions on how the LWI key worker scheme, on the development that he was touting, actually worked!
In between these rather depressing conversations on affordable housing, I also raised the point about the 17% increase in peak time rail usage that the development will lead to. In the transport assessment that accompanies the planning proposals the developers state that this will not cause any problems in terms of stress on the existing infrastructure as they expect rail usage to drop year on year from now until 2014 when the development is completed. I asked both the communications consultant and our chap from Savils if this was reasonable expectation, at first they both confirmed that it was, i then asked if it was a reasonable expectation in light of the comments made elsewhere in the planning documentation which talk of strategies to encourage more people to use public transport to reduce road congestion and improve environmental concerns. At this stage they began to back up against the ropes a bit, i then asked if over and above this was it a reasonable expectation in light of all the other residential developments that will be going on in Catford in the next few years which will undoubtedly lead to an increase, not a decrease, in rail passenger usage. At this stage they, resorted to a new defence which was to say that they were only going on the estimates that had been supplied to them by Network rail. Again this was quite far from the truth, Network Rail supplied them with actual passenger usage figures for the last three years, which the developers then extracted the year on year decrease (it doesn’t feel like a decrease) and bizarrely then assumed that this decrease experienced in the last two years will continue up until 2014. So onto another front, they then said that Network Rail & South Eastern had seen the transport report and had no problems with it. This may well be true, but i’m not surprised that South Eastern trains have no problems with a 17% increase in both revenue and probably a similar increase in profit giving their tendency to squeeze more and more people onto trains without providing either longer trains or more frequent services. This particular conversation ended with the good news that at least we’ll have a, nice new shiny stations, cycle path along the rail track and a new bridge, which they somehow thought, bizarrely, were mitigating factors of the original issue
Before going to this thing, I had a list of other areas i wanted to raise with them, impact on road traffic, the poor consultation process, assumptions made in the transport assessment, Milford Towers residents getting first refusal on the new social housing, the pricing of the homes & flat, but at this stage i felt it wasn’t worth it as i knew how the conversation would go, and additionally i could sense that the three people who had been assigned to me were were keen to escape, so dishearten i threw in the towel and left.
The good news however is that we get to do it all again in a couple of weeks when the council do their own drop in session for this (this one apparently was only for the development consortium)
They also mentioned that the planning committee meeting which will decide (rubber stamp) the development is scheduled for some time in May, in which 1 person out of the 10,000 people who were sent details of the planning proposal has the opportunity to speak for a massive 5 minutes at said meeting
more last minute ‘consultation’
March 17th, 2008keeping in line with the borough’s policy of announcing consultation exercises at the last minute and doing next to nothing to promote or publicise said consultation, we are brought news (via the lewisham mercury, dated 12/03/08) of a consultation session in relation to the proposed development at the catford greyhound site.
The plan to build 593 homes on the site, close to Catford and Catford Bridge railway stations, will include 330 affordable homes and a further key 130 at a lower cost for key workers
The plans, released by Lewisham council on behalf of Hyde Housing association and others, will be on show at a public drop-in session at St Dunstan’s College, Stanstead Road, Catford on Tuesday, March 18, from 4pm to 8pm. Representatives of the developers will be available on the day to answer any quesitons. For more information on the session, call Lucila or Sam on 020 7357 6606
I presume the quote in relation to the amount of affordable homes is incorrect, as the planning documentation refers to 186 affordable homes and a further 133 as part of the LWI key worker scheme, making 319 ‘affordable’ in total (although as highlighted previously on here, only 186 of these actually qualify to count as affordable, as the other 133 can be flogged off to anyone in the market at anytime), against the implied 470 affordable ones by the quote in the mercury.
The main problem again however, is like the initial consultations held prior to the planning application being submitted (and like the so called consultation exercise in relation to the proposed sculpture for catford road), the council has made no effort to publicise or promote this so called consultation exercise. I live in the area that received notification of the planning application, yet i heard nothing about the previous consultation exercise, and if i hadn’t picked up a copy of the mercury today i wouldn’t have heard anything about this one either. I was in laurence house this afternoon, and saw no notifications or notices anywhere in relation to this on any of the notice boards, nor did i receive any communication about this from the council itself, nor have i seen any notices in relation to this anywhere in Catford. Furthermore the time selected for the consultation, 4pm to 8pm on a tuesday, does not seem to me to offer a reasonable opportunity for most people to attend this.
I searched on the internet for any notifications that may have been posted about this, but found nothing to indicate that it had been (it certainly wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the Lewisham council’s website).
Interestingly however, googling on the telephone number quoted by the mercury lead me to the website of the consultants (the inappropriately named, Local Dialogue) who are running this session, who proudly display on their front page the following:-
Communicating and consulting around planning issues is an essential part of the planning process. Dialogue understands planning and development. We understand what makes communities tick. We know how to structure and implement worthwhile and meaningful communications and consultation programmes.
yeah right.
Urban renewal, gentrification and the impact on the working class in London
March 14th, 2008an interesting & incisive paper on urban renewal from Dave Amis
there’s a lot of good stuff in it, and i’ve quoted some of the key points from the first part of the paper below
A considerable amount of research has already been produced on gentrification, but much of it looks at it from the perspective of the agencies charged with urban renewal and the middle class incomers who are moving into working class areas. There is some research looking at the impact on the working class. However, it is fragmentary and somewhat dated, particularly when it comes to empirical information on the displacement of working class households
What can start to be put on a more concrete footing is situating the process of urban renewal in the broader context of the seeming acceptance of neo-liberalism as the naturalised background to our lives. Putting the issues of urban renewal and gentrification in a broader context is not academic posturing but an attempt to outline the scale of the challenges we face
In the 1960s there was still a sense of social obligation underpinning urban renewal in the form of slum clearance and new housing - even though too much of what was built turned out to be an abject failure. The acceptance of neo-liberalism and an increasingly competitive global environment has shifted the focus of urban renewal to making London a competitive world city that will attract investment. While there is a nod and a wink to the notion of wealth ‘trickling down’, the emphasis is on making London an attractive place to do business regardless of what it takes in social engineering.
Displacement of working class households is an inevitable part of the process of urban renewal and gentrification where the project is one marketing London as a global city and an attractive location for investment. Regardless of how it is dressed up, essentially what is happening is social cleansing aimed at removing what is seen as a redundant working class
The overall supply of social housing in London has fallen significantly over the last ten years - a net reduction of 66,058 homes or over 6,000 homes a year. Losses through the Right to Buy have totalled just over 22,500 homes over the past two years.