Colindale and West Hendon Property: I’d really gone to Colindale on Tuesday twenty eighth March 2017 to attend the general public inquiry into the second part of the demolition of the West Hendon property which was starting on the RAF Museum there.
However the proceedings there have been tedious and whereas such issues are vital except you’re personally concerned it quickly turns into laborious to stay concerned. Nothing I heard within the quick time I stayed wouldn’t have higher been submitted as paperwork and possibly had been. And it was a pleasant day exterior.
I left and paid a brief go to to the remainder of the RAF Museum earlier than going to {photograph} Grahame Park throughout the street from the museum, a big council property constructed by the GLC and Barnet Council on the remainder of the previous Hendon Aerodrome website within the 60s and 70s, the primary residents shifting there in 1971.
By the point I first visited to {photograph} the property in 1994, some modifications had been made, eradicating connecting walkways to separate the flats into smaller models and changing some flat roofs with pitched roofs. A extra dramatic phased regeneration started in 2003 and appreciable constructing work was nonetheless happening in 2017.
The regeneration will significantly enhance the variety of houses on the property, and the brand new properties are extra power environment friendly, however the unique variety of council rented properties of just about 1800 will likely be diminished to round 300. Round 900 of the brand new properties had been to be at so-called “inexpensive rents” and the remaining 1800 on the market or hire at market costs.
Just a few hundred present residents with safe tenancies will likely be rehoused, however a lot of the property residents don’t qualify for rehousing, together with some who had lived right here for over 15 years. They might want to discover non-public rented properties elsewhere in a typical instance of social cleaning by Barnet Council, in league with developer and social landlord Genesis Housing Affiliation.
As is the case in different regeneration tasks on council estates round London this leads to an enormous switch of land from public to personal possession and fails to fulfill the housing wants of poorer residents, lots of whom are pressured to maneuver farther from jobs, mates and households.
I walked from the property to Colindale Station by means of one other massive space of constructing work, primarily of pricey non-public housing in massive blocks of flats with an space motion plan for of pricey non-public housing in massive blocks of flats. In fact we’d like new housing however ought to be concentrating on offering it an affordable value for these most in want – which implies social housing. Not constructing houses that can take as much as 46% of tenants incomes in London, nicely above the “30 per cent of revenue” affordability threshold set by the ONS.
I might have walked from Grahame Park to the West Hendon Property a few mile and a half away however couldn’t see a good route on the map, so took the tube to Hendon Central and caught a bus from there. The West Hendon Property owes its genesis to a big bomb on thirteenth February 1941 which destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 366 homes, damaging an additional 400 within the space, killing 75 individuals and severely injuring one other 145. Over 1500 individuals had been made homeless.
York Park there grew to become York Memorial Park, a inexperienced open frequent designated as “a Warfare Memorial in perpetuity” as a mark of respect to all who misplaced their lives. Within the Sixties the remaining homes within the space had been changed by the West Hendon property, comprising of 680 one-bedroom flats, two-bedroom maisonettes and three-bedroom council homes, together with open house, a neighborhood centre and a play space.
Barnet Council handed the memorial park – a minimum of £12 million of public land – over to builders Barratt and so they constructed a 29 storey tower block on the park – “perpetuity” turning into shorter than dwelling reminiscence. The West Hendon property is being demolished in phases and being changed by Hendon Waterside, largely costly flats with views throughout the Welsh Harp. There will likely be a rise within the variety of houses to 2,171 however many will go to abroad patrons and will likely be stored empty as investments whose worth is predicted to rise steeply. And someplace behind the property will most likely be somewhat social housing – however solely a small fraction of the unique 680.
Few of the residents will qualify for rehousing however with greater rents and fewer safety of tenure. Most will lose their houses and be ‘socially cleansed’, pressured to maneuver out of the realm and away from mates, jobs, colleges and so forth. Housing isn’t only a disaster however a shamefull twentyfirst century scandal.
Extra footage on My London Diary:
West Hendon Property
Colindale
Flickr – Fb – My London Diary – Hull Photographs – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photographs
All images on this web page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Tags: inexpensive rents, Barnet Council, colindale, council rented properties, est Hendon, Genesis Housing Affiliation, Hendon, Hendon Aerodrome, Hendon Waterside, London, London Photographs, market costs, peter Marshall, REF Museum, social cleaning, Warfare Memorial in perpetuity, Welsh Harp, West Hendon Property, York Memorial Park
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