Cressingham Gardens Calls For A Poll – On Saturday 2nd December 2017 residents of Cressingham Gardens in Tulse Hill marched with supporters to a rally at Lambeth City Corridor in Brixton to demand Lambeth Council maintain a poll of residents over the plans to demolish their houses. I went early to take a stroll across the property and take some images earlier than the rally and march.
Cressingham Gardens – Tulse Hill, Brixton
Council estates usually get a nasty press, with media consideration concentrating on these which have been badly deliberate and have been allowed to deteriorate, typically intentionally populated with greater than than share of households with issues of assorted varieties, used as ‘sink estates’ by native councils. Some councils have even employed PR corporations to denigrate and demonise these of their estates they need to demolish and dump to personal builders.
These builders have additionally powerfully lobbied our major political events who’ve handed over a lot of their insurance policies over housing to builders and property brokers and different property professionals who stand to make big income from turning public property into non-public estates.
But many council estates are nice locations to dwell, typically a lot better deliberate than non-public developments of the identical period, and offering extra space for individuals than the cramped and costly flats which are changing them the place redevelopment schemes have gone forward. Lambeth Council have a number of such estates, together with these at Central Hill and Cressingham Gardens the place this might clearly be the case, and residents at each websites have campaigned strongly to maintain their houses.
We appear at all times to be in a housing disaster within the UK, and among the options that have been taken to satisfy this haven’t at all times labored to effectively, notably with some system-built excessive rises which have been shoddily erected by non-public builders for councils.
After I left residence within the early Sixties I lived in non-public rented flats, then in a New City in a flat from the event company after which for a few years now as an proprietor occupier. The non-public leases have been fairly squalid and the publicly owned flat was slightly extra spacious than the small Victorian home we have now lived in since. It could have been good to have been in a position to transfer into socially owned housing after we relocated however it wasn’t out there.
Till the Thatcher authorities got here into energy public housing had considered one thing fascinating with even Conservative Councils comparable to Lambeth was then having a mission to supply high quality housing for working class Lambeth residents. They employed among the finest architects within the nation, comparable to Edward Hollamby, the chief architect for Lambeth Council who was accountable for Cressingham Gardens and designed this low rise ‘backyard property’ improvement inbuilt 1967 to 1979 at low value and with a excessive inhabitants density, however with the 306 houses every having their very own non-public outside house.
Because the Twentieth Century Society state “this is likely one of the most distinctive and progressive post-war social housing estates within the UK” however the utility for itemizing the property in 2013 was rejected regardless of Historic England praising the best way the design responds to its setting, with talent and sensitivity, “each within the scale and massing of the constructed parts, in addition to by means of the combination of those parts with casual open areas which convey a park-like character into the property”. It seems to have been a call made in defiance of each the property’s architectural and historic advantage and solely on political grounds.
The property is on the Twentieth Century Society Buildings at Danger listing. Lambeth Council have accomplished their preparation and transient for its full demolition and their web page states they “will shortly be beginning RIBA Stage 2 (Idea Design).“
Cressingham Gardens residents say Poll Us!
Individuals met up subsequent to the Rotunda within the centre of the property designed by Hollamby as a youngsters’s nursery, many carrying banners and posters. Residents have been joined by different campaigners, together with these attempting to save lots of Lambeth’s libraries and housing campaigners from north London.
Residents love dwelling on Cressingham – a small well-planned property with a fantastic group feeling and lots of know that they are going to be unable to afford the so-called afford ‘reasonably priced’ houses that the council desires to interchange their houses with – a 2 mattress flat after regeneration will value £610 (at 2017 values.)
They need the property to be refurbished slightly than demolished, which the council says would value £10 million. Many dispute the council’s costings and say that among the issues the council has recognized are a matter of poor upkeep slightly than needing costly constructing works. However residents in any case level to the council having simply spent over £165 million on a brand new City Corridor and say refurbishment is an inexpensive possibility.
It isn’t the price of refurbishment which makes the council flip it down, however the income that builders could make from the positioning – and which the council hopes to have the ability to get a share. Although such schemes haven’t at all times labored out effectively. Though the builders have carried out very properly out of demolishing the Heygate web site in Southwark and constructing excessive density blocks on it, the council made an enormous loss, although some people concerned have ended up in profitable jobs on the again of it.
Lambeth is a Labour Council, and for the reason that earlier Labour Celebration convention celebration coverage had been that no demolition of council estates ought to happen with out consent, however Lambeth Council appear decided to disregard this and go forward with their plans for a so-called ‘regeneration’ which might see all 300 houses demolished, with none plans to supply fast council housing for the roughly 1000 residents who could be made homeless. To the council these residents are merely occupying a web site value a number of hundred thousand kilos – an asset the council desires to grasp. It doesn’t care about communities, about individuals.
Those that have grow to be leaseholders of their houses are prone to get much more shoddy remedy. The quantity of compensation they’re prone to obtain is prone to be lower than half they would wish to purchase a comparable property within the space – on or the rebuilt property.
Cressingham is in a really fascinating location, on the sting of a big park and with good transport hyperlinks a brief distance away. Many are prone to have to maneuver miles away on the sting of London or exterior to search out property they’ll afford, removed from the place they now dwell and work.
The march set off for Brixton City Corridor on the nook of Acre Lane the place a small crowd of supporters was ready for them. The positioned a field containing petition signatures in entrance of the locked doorways on the steps and a rally started with shouts calling for a poll.
Amongst those that had come to talk together with residents from the property have been Tanya Murat of Southwark Properties for All and Piers Corbyn, a housing campaigner additionally from neighbouring Southwark.
One of many strikers from the Ritzy cinema reverse advised us that none of them may now afford to dwell in Lambeth now, and it’s clear that we want extra social housing not much less within the space. An area Inexperienced Celebration member additionally advised us that they have been the one celebration within the space campaigning for extra social housing.
Potent Whisper carried out his tackle Regeneration, ‘Property of Conflict’, from this Rhyming Information to Housing. The video of this was recorded in Cressingham Gardens.
Others who had come alongside included individuals from Class Conflict and the e RCG (Revolutionary Communist Group) who’ve been very lively in supporting social housing campaigns in addition to Roger Lewis of DPAC who advised us how council cuts have an effect on the disabled disproportunately.
Extra on My London Diary:
Cressingham residents say Poll Us!
Cressingham Gardens
Tags: architectural advantage, in danger register, Poll Us, Brixton, Brockwell Park, Class Conflict, council property, council housing, Cressingham Gardens, demolition, builders, drainage, Property of Conflict, backyard property, Inexperienced Celebration, Heygate, housing disaster, housing want, big income, Lambeth, Lambeth Council, Lambeth City Corridor, leaseholders, itemizing denied, London, London Photographs, march, ousing, peter Marshall, Piers Corbyn, poor upkeep, Potent Whisper, protest, refurbishment, regeneration, Rhyming Information to Housing, Ritzy strikers, Rotunda, social housing, Southwar, Tanya Murat, Ted Hollamby, Tulse Hill, Twentieth Century Society
You’ll be able to depart a response, or trackback from your personal web site.
