9 February 2020
Had enough of the Council’s lies about how they’ll improve your life if you’ll just agree to move out of your home so they can demolish it?
Then it’s time to say:
and join us in demanding that the Lib Dem Council keeps its 2012 promise to invest nearly £200m to repair, refurbish and maintain the existing council homes and another £200m to build extra council housing, all paid for by the rental income and with no dodgy transfer of our public land into private hands for peanuts.
The evidence shows that “Estate regeneration” means demolition and ethnic and social cleansing and that we can afford to build much more council housing in Kingston without demolishing our existing council housing and giving a private developer the right to use most of the land for unaffordable private flats. If we let the Council do that, it will be impossible to ever build desperately needed council housing on that land.
Page Index
1. Estate Regeneration means LESS homes for people in need
2. Vote “Yes” for demolition and ????
3. You have a Right (Not!) to Return
4. Who decides your Housing Needs?
5. Refurbish and add. To demolish is MAD
6. Better Homes – Broken Promises
7. Vote “Yes” for higher rents
8. We won’t be fooled again
1. Estate Regeneration means LESS homes for people in need
Social rent IS NOT council rent. It’s a term designed to blur the lines between council rent, more expensive, less secure, housing association rent and even more expensive London Living Rent, so when the Council says it’s going to build social rent (and the reports all refer to social or affordable rent, not council rent) you don’t know what they mean. For the sake of argument however, lets pretend that council rent and social rent are the same thing.
South Acton Estate had 1,506 council rent homes. This has been renamed Acton Gardens since Ealing council handed it over to L&Q housing association and Countryside Properties to “regenerate” and when they’ve finished it will have 0 council rent and only 1,127 social rent, so that’s -379 social rent.
This is the place RBK is promoting to residents as an example of what Cambridge Road Estate could be like if we let them demolish it. A place full of wealthy new residents who start a petition to get the youth club closed down, because they’re offended at the sight of poor kids trying to stay off road and avoid getting stabbed.
They’re also losing their working men’s club, one of the oldest in the country which was used by lots of residents and brought them together and fostered a sense of community. Countryside are demolishing this to make room for more flats for rich people.
That’s just one example.
There’s also the Ferrier Estate (now Kidbrooke Village) in Greenwhich which had 1,732 council rent and now has 0 social rent, so that’s -1,732 social rent. Kingston’s Director of Growth, Nazeya Hussain, used to work on regen in Greenwich.
The Heygate Estate (now Elephant Park) in Southwark had 1,023 council rent properties. The Council promised tenants they would get new homes on the Estate but after decanting them all and demolishing their homes it built just 82 social rent, so that’s -941 social rent.
Aylesbury Estate in Southwark had 2,402 council rent properties. When it’s been regenerated it will have just 1,323 social rent, so that’s -1,079 social rent.
Woodberry Down (now Woodberry Park) in Manor House had 1,555 council rent properties and will only have 1,088 social rent when the regeneration has finished, so that’s -467 social rent. There’s another good article about Woodberry Down here.
If RBK could show us one Estate regeneration which hadn’t resulted in stock transfer to a housing association and the loss of proper council rent, secure tenacy homes, then they wouldn’t be promoting the ethnic and social cleansing of South Acton/Acton Gardens by Countryside as an example of what we can expect for CRE if we vote “Yes”.
2. Vote “Yes” for demolition and ????
At a Housing Committee meeting in November 2018 Harry Hall, Chair of CRERA, asked the Council what guarantee they could give that they will stick to the masterplan shown to residents before the ballot and won’t just completely change the plans later, as has happened with other Estate regenerations. Cllr Malcom Self said he didn’t think the Council could answer that and the Director of Growth, Nazeya Hussain, said she wished she had a looking glass into the future but any changes would be subject to planning approval. You can listen to a recording of this exchange here or download it to play to your neighbours here.
So there’s no guarantee that the Council will build what they’re telling us they’re going to build to try and persuade us to vote for the demolition of our homes and if they decide to do something completely different and break all their promises they’ll just need to ask themselves for planning permission. Even if you believe the Lib Dems are saints who would never break their promises (yeah right!), the Council could be under Tory control again in two years and they could decide to change the plans.
The residents of the Ferrier Estate were promised only a few people would need to be decanted, then later the council said they were running behind schedule so everyone would have to move out or they’d be evicted and made homeless and now there’s 0 council or social rent homes there, it’s all private or so-called “affordable” so the previous residents can’t move back.
The residents of the Heygate Estate were promised they’d all be able to return and at least 500 council rent homes would be built but after they’d all been decanted the plans were changed and now there’s only 82 social rent, with the rest sold privately to landlords and investors to rent at £2000+/month.
This report from the Finance and Contracts Committee on 18 March 2019 says at para.46 that the Council will transfer the Estate land into the Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) they’re setting up with Countryside (a LLP is a private company, so the land will no longer be owned by the Council) and then Countryside will provide funding which matches the value of the land. The funding they’re going to cough up is clearly not going to match the true value of the land with planning permission for thousands of unaffordable private flats (which the Council is obviously going to grant) or Countryside wouldn’t be able to make their massive profits (which is what Estate regen is really about), so the Council will just pretend the land is worth much less than it really is so Countryside doesn’t have to provide much funding.
Only after that will they work out how much it is going to cost to develop that Phase and if the value of the land plus the matching funding from Countryside doesn’t come to 50% of the cost of developing , the Council will have to top it up by general fund (i.e. council tax) borrowing. The fact that they’re anticipating that the value of the land + a matching amount of cash won’t cover the costs of redevelopment just proves that they intend to massively undervalue the land and transfer it to a private company for peanuts, with council taxpayers shouldering the debt for building 1500 £0.5m+ private sale flats whilst Countryside profits.
3. You have a Right (Not!) to Return
These are some e-mails dated 9 September 2015 between Darren Welsh, Head of Housing, and Julia Nunes-Carvalho, Housing Estate Regeneration Programme Manager.
In the first one Darren warns the Council not to offer a “right to return” as in his previous experience in Southwark (where 1000 council homes on the Heygate were demolished and replaced with just 82 social rent) it had proven very hard to deliver.
In reply Julia warns that they’ve already been telling residents they’d have a right to return (even though the Council had apparently not even discussed this yet), and residents would be upset if this wasn’t at least offered.
Then on the next page Darren repeats his warning that it is “difficult to deliver”.
This is from the original Decant Policy and admits that there is no law which provides a “right to return” and says the Council may “at its absolute discretion” offer this “where practicable” but there is “no guarantee” it can do so.
However councillors didn’t want residents to see the truth and asked for it to be changed.
This is from the final Decant Policy after it was changed. It now says the Council is “committed” to giving “local people” the right to return “in accordance with this policy”, which just means you might be allowed to return if you meet all the conditions set out in the rest of the policy but there’s no guarantee.
Under “Moving to a Suitable Home” it explains there are two options. If you want to permanently move off the Estate (i.e. a Permanent Decant), then you’ll have to bid for properties on the Choice Based Lettings system as they become available, where you’ll be competing against not just other CRE residents but also the people on the waiting list in Band 1 who will have priority because they’ve been waiting longer. If you don’t manage to succesfully bid within the fixed period of 3-6 months (see para.12.9), the Council will make one direct offer of a “suitable” (according to them) permanent home which you won’t be able to refuse as if you do you’ll be evicted and declared intentionally homeless.
The other option is if you say you want to be able to move back to the Estate after it’s redeveloped. Then you’ll be classed as a “Temporary Decant” and you won’t get any opportunity to choose where you move to but will be issued with one direct offer of “suitable” temporary housing. If you refuse to accept it, you’ll lose any “right to return” and become a permanent decant, and you’ll have 3-6 months to bid for a home like all the other permanent decants, after which the Council will make one direct offer of a “suitable” permanent home which you won’t be able to refuse.
The Council claims that it only intends to decant a few people and most will be able to stay in their current homes until they can move into a new home on the Estate but that’s exactly what Greenwich (where Kingston’s current Director of Growth, Nazeya Hussain, used to work) told the residents of the Ferrier Estate to get them to accept regeneration and then it broke that promise after demolition had started and forced everyone to move off the Estate under threat of eviction, because they said they were behind schedule and had to meet deadlines and now there’s 0 council or social rent homes on that Estate. Regeneration is all about lies and broken promises.
In this email dated 24 February 2016, David Hill, Lead Officer, Accommodation Services, warned that the regeneration of CRE would require alternative accommodation for 500 households and Kingston only had approx. 200 voids a year and 140 households already in B&B who needed most of those.
In November 2017 the Council told us there were 3,573 households on the housing register, with 296 in Band 1.
We asked for the current figures in August 2019. When the Council replied in October 2019 they said that they had a technical problem and couldn’t give us the figures for the housing register but they did tell us that they have 816 households in temporary accommodation.
This is a report by Ark Consultancy dated January 2017, which says on the last page that all tenants are to be decanted from CRE by January 2021. The Council claimed this was a mistake but instead of asking for their money back they’ve recently given Ark a £462,000 contract for “Consultancy services to provide strategic leadership and delivery to achieve effective HRA Business and Financial Planning. Making best use of HRA housing assets and managing homes effectively.”
As this article in Building magazine dated October 2018 shows, the Council told them that “Residents will be moved for the duration of the works”, not just a few residents for a short time. The only time the Council is honest about what it’s planning is when it’s talking to business people behind our backs.
This is the Council’s letter dated 13 August 2018 in reply to our FOI response asking for details of their decant plans, i.e. where residents are going to be decanted to, for how long, how much this will cost and who’s going to pay for it. They said they haven’t made any such plans yet and they haven’t published any since, so if they tell you they know how many people they’re going to decant and where to, they’re just lying to try and trick you into voting for the demolition of your home.
Temporary accommodation residents
The residents in properties being used as temporary accommodation on CRE are even more vulnerable, as they have no right to be rehoused in Kingston and can be evicted at short notice and put in a hostel or B&B out-of-borough if the Council gets a “Yes” vote to demolish the Estate.
Due to the lack of temporary accommodation in Kingston, on 7 September 2017 the Housing sub-Committee approved a new Temporary Accommodation Policy, which allows the Council to place people in ‘nearby’ boroughs or out-of-London.
According to this policy ‘nearby’ boroughs include Croydon, Lambeth, Reigate, Elmbridge, Spelthorne and Runnymede. In June 2017 the Council had already placed at least 111 households, mostly with children, in some of these areas.
‘Out-of-London’ areas that the Council may potentially use include Dover, Dudley and Wolverhampton, all over 3 hours travel from Kingston. Other areas that it has looked at and considers ‘affordable’ include Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, Leeds and Newcastle.
Leaseholders and Freeholders
Owner-occupiers get just as screwed by Estate regeneration as the tenants. On the Aylesbury and Heygate Estates in Southwark the Council paid residents as little as £108k for a 1-bed flat, when similar flats in the area were selling for around £375k. On the West Hendon Estate in Barnet pensioners were offered just £175k for a 2-bed flat, when it would cost them £407k to buy another one locally. Most people can’t get a mortgage for the difference, especially if they’re elderly, so they have to move far away to find somewhere they can afford after being forced to sell to the council for peanuts.
RBK says owner-occupiers will have the option to return by exchanging their 100% owned home for a part-share of a new shared ownership or shared equity property, starting at 25%. If you’re taking someone’s home from them against their will, you should pay them enough to buy a replacement home in the local area, not a part-share of one.
Shared ownership is notoriously risky as you have to pay rent on the share of the property you haven’t “bought”, plus crippling service charges and you’re responsible for all the costs of repairs and maintenance. Even worse, legally you don’t actually own anything and have no more security than an assured tenant, so if you fail to keep up with the rent and service charges and get evicted you aren’t entitled to get back any of the money you paid for your “share” of the property.
4. Who decides your Housing Needs?
The Decant Policy says at paras. 7.2 to 7.4 that if you have any health issues which affect your housing needs, you will need to complete a separate medical assessment and then the Council’s medical advisor will “make a recommendation to the Council”.
These “medical advisors” have been in the news again recently because they just ignore all the evidence and say the applicant has no health issues that are relevant to their need for housing and councils use these recommendations to justify refusing people housing and leaving them on the streets. Some people are lucky and find a legal aid solicitor to take the council to judicial review but thanks to Government cuts to legal aid, there are no longer enough solicitors to help everyone sadly. Sometimes even when people have a solicitor the courts just take the council’s side, as in this case where Brent were allowed to force a severely ill woman to move to Wolverhampton, based on their medical advisor’s assertion that suitable medical and support services are available everywhere.
This is the Award Report for the “Independent Tenant and Homeowner Advisor” (ITHA) contract worth over £100,000 that was awarded to Newman Francis. It says on p.3 that the ITHA will “facilitate the regeneration of the estate” so they were being paid to neutralise opposition to regeneration and to persuade residents to support it. Not independent at all then! They’ve been replaced by PPCR now but the Council won’t let us see PPCR’s contract so it probably says something just as dodgy.
This Purchase Order shows that Newman Francis was also awarded a contract worth almost £20,000 in 2017 to conduct the Housing Needs survey but no-one seems to have been surveyed by them and residents haven’t received a written determination of their Housing Needs from the Council, so you’re being asked to vote for the demolition of your home without knowing what accommodation the Council has decided is suitable for you to move to.
5. Refurbish and add. To demolish is MAD!
RBK claims it can’t afford to refurbish and the only way it can afford to build extra social housing is by handing our Estates to private developers to let them build private flats on most of the land and make vast profits.
This is a LIE designed to try and make you feel bad about voting NO to demolition. In fact you’ll be helping the most in need more by voting NO, as once the land has been covered in private flats selling for £0.5m+ we won’t ever be able to build council flats on it to help the 3,500+ people on the waiting list.
RBK is planning to waste millions of pounds on regeneration, with an estimated cost of £80m just to buy properties it doesn’t own on CRE so it can demolish them.
It’s wasting another £40m paying Countryside to project manage the building of 100-160 “affordable” flats on small sites around the Borough owned by the Council, which it will use to “decant” some of the 800 CRE households. That’s £0.4m to build each flat on land the Council already owns! It could buy 100 3 bed semi-detached houses with large gardens in Chessington for that.
Then there’s all the costs of decanting everyone and demolishing and clearing the site, so we’re probably looking at £200m+ before they even start to build any new homes on the Estate.
In the meantime RBK have robbed CRE residents of the Better Homes works they were promised in 2012 and 2015, which would have cost between £5m-10m and would have made sure every home had central heating, double glazing, decent kitchens and bathrooms, decent electrics, etc.
In 2012, after we rejected stock transfer for a third time and the Government gave the Council the freedom to invest in Kingston’s council housing, the Lib Dem Council produced a 30-year Business Plan for the Housing Revenue Account (HRA), as you can see here.
P.2 says that ALL council homes would be brought up to the Better Homes standard by 2016.
P.3 says that £85m would be spent on Kingston’s council housing in the first five years and £382 over the next 30 years.
P.4 shows that the survey conducted by Savills found no structural problems on any of Kingston’s council Estates and says that the existing properties only need investment of £191m to repair, refurbish and maintain them for 30 years, leaving £191m for building extra council rent homes, enough to build nearly 2000 on council-owned land.
P.5 shows that the works planned included the Decent Homes works to replace kitchens, bathroom, windows, doors, boilers and central heating but went much further and included fire safety works, asbestos removal and water treatment, renewal of core services such as lifts, doing adaptations for disabilities, improving insulation and upgrading the communal areas.
P.6 explains that even with all this investment in council housing, in 20 years the self-financing settlement debt would be paid off and the HRA would be accruing a surplus, rising to £150-190m, as shown by the green line on the chart. This surplus could then be re-invested in council housing but that won’t be possible if we let the Council waste hundreds of millions of pounds of public funds needlessly demolishing and clearing our Estates so that a developer can turn them into mostly private unaffordable flats for wealthy landlords and overseas investors to buy.
This chart shows the debt (blue line) decreasing over time and the surplus (green line) building up, whilst money is still spent on repairs and refurbishment (magenta line), around £85m in the first 5 years to do the repairs and refurbishment which have been neglected in the past. The red line shows the Government-imposed HRA borrowing cap which it scrapped last year. so now the Council has even more freedom to borrow to invest in council housing instead of demolishing it and building private flats.
This is from the Feasability Report done by BDP Paribas in June 2016, which confirms that there are no structural problems with any of the properties on CRE and they “should easily sustain a further minimum 30 year life subject to prescribed remedial works being implemented”.
If RBK wanted to build signficiant amounts of additional council housing to help people in need, for £200m they could build around 2,000 homes on one or more of the three golf courses they own (Coombe Wood, Coombe Hill and Malden), each of which is much bigger than CRE (circled below in red). Then, when the new Estate has been built, which will be much cheaper and quicker to do on an empty site, the residents of CRE can be invited to move into the new homes, with no “decanting” to temporary accommodation or living on a dangerous, noisy building site for 10-15 years, and CRE can be redeveloped when it’s empty, either as council housing or it could be sold to a developer at full market value to fund more council housing elsewhere in the Borough.
6. Better Homes – Broken Promises
On 17 June 2015, at the Residents, Health and Care Services Committee meeting, the Tory, Lib Dem and Labour councillors decided to tear up the 2012 plan to invest nearly £400m in Kingston’s council housing and instead agreed a plan to demolish our homes, starting with CRE, but promised that they would still “finish the Better Homes refurbishment of the Borough’s social housing”
On 21 June 2016, at the Adult and Childrens’ Commitee meeting, the Tory, Lib Dem and Labour councillors voted to suspend the Better Homes works on CRE, thus breaking their 2015 promise.
This is the Council’s reply dated 1 July 2019 to a Freedom of Information request about the Better Homes works.
At the bottom of p.2 and the top of p.3 it shows that the total budget for the Better Homes programme was originally £65m, with £25m to be spent in Years 1 and 2 (2012/13 and 2013/14) and £40m in Years 3 to 5 (2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17) but this was then changed and only £18.485m was spent in the first two years and an extra Year 6 (2017/18) was added, with £42.218m spent in Years 3 to 6, for a total spend of £60.703m. So it took them a year longer than originally planned but they spent £4.3m less than they’d estimated. Something’s not right here!
On p.4 they say the Better Homes works on CRE were originally planned to be done in Year 5 (2016/17) but admit that the only works done were works to kitchens and bathrooms in 180 flats in three of the tower blocks done in Year 4 and a small number of flats in Madingley also got new kitchens and bathrooms, with some other flats in Madingley having already been refurbished prior to that following the fire in 2010.
This page is from the 2019/20 to 2022/23 financial plan and shows that the Better Homes programme was extended by another two years, with additional spending of approx. £5.2m in 2018/19 and 2019/20 (Years 7 and 8).
Added to the £60.7m spent between 2012/13 and 2017/18, this brings the total to £65.9m, so they spent almost £1m more than the original estimate even though most homes on CRE never received the promised works. Something’s definitely not right!
Most of the 800 properties on CRE had the Better Homes works deliberately withheld, leaving residents in poor conditions to make it easier for the Council to bully them into voting for demolition. This is slum landlord tactics and RBK should be prosecuted for all the residents they’ve harmed by withholding these works.
7. Vote “Yes” for higher rents
Council rent in Kingston is around 35-40% market rent, roughly £110/week for a 1-bed flat, including service charges.
Social rent (i.e. housing association) is around £130-140/week, plus the service charges are higher and tenants have had just as many problems with their lifts breaking down and not being repaired for weeks or months.
London Affordable Rent is another new term the GLA has invented and starts at around £160/week for a 1-bed flat in 2020/21, excluding service charges.
So-called “Affordable rent” is up to 80% market rent, so around £240/week in Kingston.
The Council’s reports all refer to building “social rent” or “affordable”, rather than “council rent”. For example, in this report they refer to using £20m to build “new affordable housing on CRE” and at para. 8b they say they commit to building 330 affordable OR social rent homes on CRE, so they could all be “affordable” (up to 80% market rent) or “London Affordable Rent” with 0 social rent, let alone council rent.
In this report from June 2019 they refer throughout to “affordable housing” or “affordable homes” and specifically “London Affordable Rent”.
At the Housing Committee in November 2018 we put it to the Council that they were planning to build London Affordable Rent (LAR) properties on CRE after demolishing it, to replace the existing council rent properties. In reply Duncan Brown, Assistant Director for Regen, said that the Council and the GLA consider LAR to be a form of council rent. So when they say “council rent” they probably mean LAR. You can listen to what Duncan Brown said here or download the recording here.
Then Emily Davey, Portfolio Holder for Housing, tried to answer the question but she tied herself in knots trying not to actually say “London Affordable Rent” and just kept saying “council rent”, even though Duncan Brown had just admitted that the Council considers LAR to be a form of “council rent”! She slipped up though and admitted that she didn’t know what type of housing the Council would be required to build by the Mayor of London. You can listen to what she said here or download the recording here.
At the Housing Committee on 6 February 2020 Emily Davey announced how wonderful it is that the Lib Dems are delivering new council housing for the first time in 40 years (listen here or download here). This is a lie, as the reports clearly show that the plans involve building “affordable” or social rent, with no mention of any council rent housing.
Cllr Davey ended by saying she was open to any questions but when Cllr Wehring asked what the rents for the new homes would be she didn’t answer and nor did her Director of Growth, Nazeya Hussain, who competely ignored the question and just waffled on about how the homes were being funded by the GLA (listen here or download here). Clearly that was the wrong sort of question!
The residents of South Acton Estate, Ferrier Estate, Heygate Estate, Aylesbury Estate, Woodberry Down Estate and the many other Estates that have been ethnically and socially cleansed learnt the hard way that any promises given about Estate regeneration are worthless and will be broken.
We have one advantage that they didn’t have though. We have a ballot and can stop the Council demolishing our homes and communities and giving our land over to private developers to fill with £0.5m+ flats for sale to wealthy investors by voting “NO“. However we need to make sure our votes are counted and don’t get “lost”.
With elections we have representatives from the various opposing parties monitoring the count to make sure there’s no fiddling and the Brexit referendum was the same, with people from both sides monitoring the count. Regardless of what you think about Brexit, at least we know that the referendum result reflects how people voted and that no-one was able to fiddle with the votes because of these procedures.
Now the Lib Dems want to hold this crucial ballot to determine whether our homes will be demolished without any oversight from their opponents, with the ballot completely controlled by them and the private company, Civica Election Services (formerly Electoral Reform Services) that they’re paying £20,000.
That’s not democracy, it’s mockocracy, so to make sure your vote is counted, if you decide to vote “NO” we suggest you take a photo of your completed voting form and email it to us at dchkingston@outlook.com with your name and address and the subject “CRE Ballot” before you put it in one of the ballot boxes that will be available on the Estate. Then if the Council claims that the majority of people voted “Yes” and we’ve got evidence that shows the opposite we can challenge them but if we don’t have the evidence there won’t be anything we can do, even if everyone says they voted “NO”.
With postal voting your vote could get “lost” in the post and with online/electronic voting there’s no paper record of your vote so it’s easy for a “NO” to turn into a “YES”, whether by hacking or malfunction but if you put your voting form in one of the boxes on the Estate after sending us a photo it will be impossible for anyone to get away with tampering with it.
If you’re opposed to the demolition and social cleansing of your Estate we’ve made a poster you can display to show what you think of the Council’s plans and to encourage your neighbours to vote “NO“. You can download it with a yellow background here or with a white background here.
It would be rather hypocritical for the Lib Dems to complain that our poster is offensive after they said that anyone who complained about their “Bollocks to Brexit” campaign, was a wallflower and too easily offended but politicians do tend to be a bunch of hypocrites so we asked a leading barrister, Jonathan Price QC, for his advice.
He’s advised that our poster is “an expression of political speech on a matter of very significant local public interest” and any attempt by the Council to stop you displaying it would be an unlawful interference with your Article 10 right to freedom of expression, as protected by the Human Rights Act.
If the Council says it’s offensive and tells you to take it down, tell them to put that in writing so that you can sue them and that should call their bluff. In the unlikely event that they do write to you, let us know by e-mailing us at dchkingston@outlook.com and we can send you some phone numbers for solicitors who specialise in human rights cases who might be able to help.
We can win if we stand up for ourselves and say:
Kingston Defend Council Housing 