The case against Winstanley and York Road regeneration plans Clapham Junction Action Group • Winstanley and York Road Estates, SW11 • Town & Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended); Greater London Authority Acts 1999 and 2007; Town & Country Planning (Mayor of London) Order 2008 • Local Planning Authority reference: 2019/0024 The Clapham Junction Group is a community group set up in 2008. We have conducted a detailed review not only of the latest decisions on the Winstanley and York Road Estates, but also of all the material available since the initial consultation on the planned regeneration in 2013. This report seeks to summarise these views and to bring a great number of them to the forefront for wider consideration by the final decision makers. This document seeks a response and a concrete rectification of the plans to reflect the original intent of the regeneration. We are aware that this contribution falls outside the existing statutory consultations. However, for reasons explained in this report, we do not consider that it should be detrimental to its outcome. Executive Summary We believe the size of the redevelopment that is now presented, the green spaces we were told will be preserved, the timeline the local residents are expected to endure and the way consultations have been conducted have systematically ignored community concerns and dismissed the local opinion, and, changed for the worse since inception. We have provided evidence on what has changed vs. original plans and community opinion in our detailed analysis. 1 of 17 We consider that the scheme proposed for the Winstanley and York Road estates regeneration fails to comply with the spirit of the Mayor’s Good Practice Guide to Estate Regeneration (GPGER) on a number of core considerations: • Decrease in affordable housing: While recent survey show that the area is in need of more social and affordable accommodations, the proposal will see a decrease of social provision while most of the site will be offer to market rent. Social cleansing is engineered in order to drastically reduced the number of social + affordable units in share of the new development. • Occupants pushed away from the whole area: Issue has been raised for freeholders who are going to suffer hugely from the decade(s) of redevelopment, and will be evicted from the area. • Consultations ignored and ballot prevented: We have clearly demonstrated and documented that the consultation results were dismissed, or at least grossly biased and the view of local residents were ignored all along the process. The Council has carefully avoided the GLA funding in order to prevent having to organise a ballot that would have surely be controversial. In the report we also show that: • The new open space will be smaller and only likely to be completed around 2035 and 71% of the existing trees should be removed! The developers acknowledge that during the demolition and construction works, most of green space would be cleared and replaced by dirt, dust, hazardous substances and heavy machinery. • The cumulative impact has been ignored, and worse, the very controversial developments along York Road that have created local outcry, have been used to dismiss the community concerns. We urge the London authorities, local bodies and Labour party to reconsider their positions on the view of the elements presented above and engage with the local community to make the estate regeneration a successful scheme that will be praised as an exemplar redevelopment. 2 of 17 Full report We wish to engage on this topic to enable a positive change, we hope you’ll enable that, if not, we would like to find a way to ensure this matter is visible to those more broadly in our community and government. Context The phased demolition of most of the existing buildings of Winstanley and York Road estates, being replaced by a huge development, providing 2550 residential units in blocks ranging from three to 32 storeys, has been given a green light by the Mayor of London. In March 2019, the Mayor of London delegated the decision on the first review of the Council's scheme for Winstanley and York Road estates. The first report (stage 1) supported the overall design strategy but required more scrutiny on the provision of housing. It also recommended that the Council updates its policy to protect the new open space created (2.49 hectares, a loss of locally designated open space compared to existing) to ensure that it benefits from appropriate policy protection in the future. A second report (stage 2) on 23 November 2020, Sadiq Khan himself ratified the formal approval from City Hall. We support the principle of regenerating the Winstanley and York Road Estates. The estates have been neglected by the local authorities and in the recent decade the area has been rightly labelled “one of the most deprived estates in the borough”.1 However, we consider that the consultations have been conducted as a meaningless statutory obligation, that legitimate local resident concerns were systematically dismissed or simply ignored, and that the whole scheme has been conducted by Wandsworth Council with a partisan political agenda in mind. 1 Although we acknowledge that much more could be said on Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney 3 of 17 Allowing such plan would contribute to deteriorate further the already poor level of trust expressed by communities towards local government.2 Undercover “social cleansing” The detail of the existing and plan provision shows a decrease of social units, and an increase of ... 800% of private units! The full detail of existing and proposed housing provision is available in the planning report published by the GLA on 18 March 2019 (GLA/4428a/01) Existing and the proposed housing provision [planning report GLA/4428a/01 - 18 March 2019] It shows a decrease in the number social rent units by 8% (from 527 to 484) and a staggering increase in the number of Market and shared value units up 800% (from 218 to 1,966). Even if we add the number of affordable rent units to the number of social units, there is a small increase of 8%, while the whole site will see an increase of housing of 236%. The report from the GLA acknowledges the figures, but considered that is balanced by the increase of space per unit. they say: "Whilst it is recognised that there is a loss of social rented units (-43 units), this is because the existing social rented stock comprises smaller units which have since 2 A survey from Civic Voice shows that the public does not trust the planning system nor does it trust planning developers. https://cjag.org/2020/01/16/community-participation-in-planning-a-london-forum- meeting/ 4 of 17 become overcrowded. The proposed scheme, which now seeks to provide larger units, has resulted in a decrease in the number of units but an increase by habitable rooms and floorspace. [...] on this basis, the loss of social rented units is considered acceptable" This presentation is clearly biased in favour of social cleansing. It is interesting to quote a recent planning report (Wandsworth p.a. 2020/2560): "The applicant has also submitted a Co Living Needs Assessment. The Assessment outlines that 17,500 households in the local area are living in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) [...] At the median household income of those households living in the PRS only 44% could afford a 1 bed PRS property." Therefore, while more than half of the population cannot afford a private sector rent, what is the choice of Wandsworth Council? To decrease the number of social housing, and barely improve the quota of affordable, while hugely increasing the provision of private rent units! Social Cleansing NB: For transparency, we have chosen not to include Shared Equity in the number of affordable units. Indeed, the report from the GLA itself states: "The proposals comprise 38% affordable housing (by habitable room) on-site, made up of 55% social rent, 45% intermediate (shared ownership and discount market rent). However, this figure includes the 86 shared equity units and it is 5 of 17 questioned whether they would meet the affordable housing definition within the London Plan and draft London Plan." When looking at the evolution of the tenure proposed along the project, we also see that further increase of size and density has always be pushed in favour of the private sector: the proposed new housing numbers in 2017 (Council paper 17-174) show that the target of 530 social rent has now been reduced to 484, while the open market sale has increased from 1148 to 1658! In 2012, CJAG denounced a factual plan from Peabody to minimise the cost of regenerating their Battersea - St John's Hill estate by decreasing the social rent quota and selling half of the new development to market rent. Our submission demonstrated that Peabody Trust began, some years before their application, reducing the number of social tenants in their estate, and leasing some of the flats on a short-term basis, so they could be emptied and used to relocate tenants during the different phases of the project. They reduced the number of social tenants from 353 to 225, and therefore it seemed nearly identical to their new scheme providing 221 social units, while in fact hiding a loss of 38% of the social provision. Wandsworth Council proceeded the same. The GLA report explains: "Of the 527 social rent units currently at the site, it is understood 397 units contain households that will require relocation with the remaining 130 units currently occupied on a temporary basis." As we said in the past, the fact that existing buildings are in a poor and declining physical condition, and therefore not occupied at full capacity, cannot be used as a justification for a scheme transforming drastically the landscape.