Surprise as Tories Judge that Compulsory Purchases for the Regeneration of Southwark’s Aylesbury Estate Breach Leaseholders’ Human Rights

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Surprise as Tories Judge that Compulsory Purchases for the Regeneration of Southwark’s Aylesbury Estate Breach Leaseholders’ Human Rights

It was with some shock that, two weeks ago, I read the following headline in the Guardian: “Government blocks plan to force out London estate residents.”

The article was about the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, south east London, one of the largest estates in western Europe, built between 1967 and 1977. Labour-held Southwark Council is in the process of destroying the estate, replacing it with new, privately-funded housing in which genuinely affordable flats will be almost non-existent, and ensuring that many of the estate’s residents are socially cleansed out of London — or at least have to move to less desirable boroughs than Southwark.

At the Aylesbury, the council is working with Notting Hill Housing, a former social homebuilder that has enthusiastically embraced the drive towards building private housing and offering unhelpful — and not genuinely affordable — part-rent, part-buy options for former social renters that has been prompted by government cuts.

Astonishingly, this is the same Southwark Council that engaged in social cleansing at Walworth’s other huge estate, the Heygate, for which they were soundly criticised. The estate was sold for a pittance to the Australian developers Lendlease, who are currently building a monstrous new private estate, Elephant Park, which features no genuinely affordable social housing. The Heygate’s tenants, meanwhile, have ended up scattered across south east London, Kent and beyond, as the graph below shows.

As the Guardian reported, however, an inspector for the department of communities and local government, tasked with investigating compulsory purchase orders required for the Aylesbury demolition to proceed, delivered a highly critical report that was backed by the government, and, specifically, the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, who accepted the inspector’s conclusions on September 16.

The government inspector found that Southwark Council’s “request for permission to issue people on the Aylesbury estate with compulsory purchase orders ‘adopted extremely low valuations,’” as a result of which “residents would ‘need to invest considerable personal resources’ if they were to stay in the area after they were moved out of their homes.”

This, if anything, was something of an understatement, although be honest I find myself bewildered that Southwark Council and Notting Hill Housing were unable to work out that offering, on average, £187,000 to leaseholders on the estate for their properties, while new replacement flats cost £459,000, was going to be perceived as grossly unfair.

And yet that is what has happened. Those renting their homes off the council have no protections, of course, and can be disposed of with impunity, as is happening across London, and up and down the country, as greedy developers and crooked or weak politicians seek to demolish as many council estates as they can, with the developers rebuilding them privately for eye-watering profits.

Leaseholders, however — those who bought their properties as a result of Margaret Thatcher’s sell-off of council housing in the 1980s — thought that they would enjoy the protections of the property-owning class, and were never told that, whenever politicians on the local or national level felt like it, they too would be kicked out of their homes.

Turning down Southwark Council’s plans, Sajid Javid backed the inspector’s findings that, “For elderly residents, who are of an age where they would probably be unable to obtain a mortgage to make up any shortfall and their future earning potential is likely to be limited, using their savings and other investments would severely limit their ability to choose how they spend their retirement.”

The inspector added, “In this regard, the compulsory purchase order would not only deprive them of their dwelling but also their financial security. If they chose not to pursue this option, they would inevitably need to leave the area and this would have implications for their family life, including the lives of those dependent on them.”

The Guardian added that the inspector has also concluded that “it was likely that people of black and ethnic minority backgrounds would be disproportionately affected,” and that all these issues “would lead to an unjustified breach of the leaseholders human rights, which the council could have avoided by seeking a different agreement with the leaseholders,” as the investigative journalist and researcher George Turner noted in a follow-up article in the Guardian.

In passing, I must note that any Tory minister defending human rights can only be regarded as being able to do until his own government succeeds in removing Britain’s human rights obligations, as Theresa May intends.

The Guardian’s initial report also noted that, “According to documents released by the council, the plan to demolish then rebuild the estate would leave about 30% fewer social rented homes and more than four times the number of private homes,” and research undertaken by the newspaper also suggested, as it overwhelming to be expected, that “those let at social rent levels after the rebuild would be more expensive than their current value.”

As well as being a blow to the greed of developers, the government’s intervention should also strengthen calls for properties to be upgraded wherever possible, rather than demolished.

As Eileen Short of the organisation Defend Council Housing explained, “Whether it’s motivated by cynical financial interests, competing interests of other landlords, or fear of the political consequences of attacks on tenants and housing, the government’s decision to block compulsory purchase on Aylesbury is good for council housing. Tenants and leaseholders have fought long and hard against privatisation, demolition and sell-off of the Aylesbury, pushed by governments over 20 years. Councils and ministers need to stop all demolition of good quality council homes and instead invest in existing and new homes to meet the growing and desperate housing need for secure and really affordable council housing.”

In his follow-up article, George Turner provided further details of Southwark Council’s miserliness, explaining that information about the amounts paid by Southwark Council for homes on the Aylesbury Estate were obtained by campaigners under the Freedom of Information Act, which reveal some “very low offers being made and accepted under the threat of compulsory purchase.”

As he explained:

In September 2012, for example, Southwark council paid one leaseholder on the Aylesbury estate £75,000 for a large, 47 sq m, one-bedroom flat. In 2014, the council paid £147,500 for a four-bedroom, 97 sq m maisonette. To put this in some kind of context, by January 2013, the average house price in London had hit £400,000.

On the neighbouring Heygate estate, Southwark council paid an average of £107,000 for a two-bedroom flat. Its purchases on that estate started in 2004, but as late as 2011 the council was still paying £115,000 for a two-bed flat there.

Turner also provided an example beyond Southwark “where councils have been forcing sales at low prices” — specifically, the West Hendon estate in Barnet, where, as the leaseholder Jasmin Parsons explained, “some leaseholders were offered just £90,000 for a one-bed flat and £130,000 for a two-bed maisonette when the council applied for the first in a series of compulsory purchase orders.” Turner added, “This offer was later increased after the leaseholders employed a surveyor to act on their behalf, but still fell far short of the amount required to buy an equivalent home.”

Turner went on to point out that, although “some leaseholders on council estates who bought their property directly from the council would have benefited from the right-to-buy discount” offered under Thatcher’s 1980s legislation, while “[o]thers, who had bought their property off another leaseholder, would not,” the key issue is that “right to buy offered a price which allowed them to move into or stay in their area,” while, in contrast, “[e]state regeneration has offered a price that compels them to move out.”

He then provided further explanations of the problem with compulsory purchases:

In theory, people facing compulsory purchase must be given the market value of their homes. But until now, local authorities, the government and the land tribunal have all backed an approach that has compensated leaseholders based on the average value of homes on the estate to be demolished, not the average value of homes in the wider area. That approach comes with some very obvious problems.

An estate facing demolition is generally the lowest-value housing in any given area, partly because councils will have let the buildings deteriorate, seeing little point in maintaining something that is going to be knocked down. And who wants to buy a home scheduled for demolition anyway?

Another issue facing these leaseholders is that once the council signals its intent to regenerate an estate, it kills the market in the area. That can happen years in advance of a compulsory purchase order being made. Instead, the “market value” becomes the price that leaseholders can get from a single purchaser, the council, which is also their landlord, and the body applying for compulsory purchase.

Given the approach adopted by councils, it is obvious that the amount offered to compensate leaseholders for the loss of their homes will rarely, if ever, be enough for them to afford a home in the area. Unless they can raise significantly more cash to buy back into the redeveloped and more expensive estate, or to buy more expensive housing in the local area, they will be compelled to leave. It is “pay to stay” for leaseholders.

To account for this, councils sometimes offer residents subject to a compulsory purchase order the chance to enter a shared ownership scheme. Having had their property taken from them by compulsion, leaseholders are given the “opportunity” to buy back part of a home on the new estate with the money they have been given, and the privilege to pay rent on the remaining share.

Leaving aside the obvious inequity, for many residents these offers are simply unrealistic. At West Hendon, 85-year-old Adelaide Adams was forced to sell her home for £175,000. An equivalent home on the “regenerated” estate would be £407,000, with service charges of over £2,000 a year. To her it was obvious that, after having spent 30 years on the estate, she was no longer welcome.

Turner called Sajid David’s decision to halt Southwark Council’s compulsory purchase “a change of heart,” although only time will tell if it was merely a blip. It is, however, certainly progress after the this same government “allowed Barnet to compulsory-purchase homes at West Hendon last year and Southwark to go ahead with compulsory purchase at the Heygate and on previous phases of the Aylesbury.”

In conclusion, Turner also pointed out that Sajid Javid’s decision “does not end the government’s support for the controversial policy of ‘estate regeneration,’ and will bring little comfort for those who have gone through the financial brutality it often creates, but it may give some protection to those facing eviction in the future.” He added that the ruling “establishes an important point of principle, which is that while compulsory purchase can force people out of their homes, it cannot force them out of their communities.”

However, as he also noted, the government still wants to bring forward plans to regenerate 100 estates across the UK, and campaigners — and anyone concerned with the importance of providing large-scale and genuinely affordable social housing — needs to be prepared to fight these plans, first announced by David Cameron in January, when, in an article in the Sunday Times, he wrote patronisingly about “sink estates,” making shameful generalisations about life on council estates, and indulging in typical Tory suggestions that poverty is somehow linked to moral turpitude and social dysfunction, rather than being caused by wider economic trends.

“Within these so-called sink estates, behind front doors, families build warm and welcoming homes,” Cameron wrote. “But step outside in the worst estates and you’re confronted by concrete slabs dropped from on high, brutal high-rise towers and dark alleyways that are a gift to criminals and drug dealers. Decades of neglect have led to gangs and antisocial behaviour. Poverty has become entrenched, because those who could afford to move have understandably done so.”

In London, the election of Sadiq Khan as Mayor promises a greater emphasis on the importance of social housing, but Theresa May’s new, post-EU referendum government has been quiet on housing so far, and we will have to wait and see what is proposed, although I would be surprised if the greed and class disdain that fuelled David Cameron’s diatribe against “sink estates” will disappear.

Also see below for a letter by a number of housing action groups to the Evening Standard, which ran an article on September 20 entitled, “Aylesbury estate residents ‘elated’ after the Government throws out bid to remove them.” The letter, in response, was published on the extraordinary Southwark Notes website, which has been covering the Heygate story and the wider struggle for social housing in Southwark for many years.

Letter To Evening Standard re: Aylesbury CPO rejection

In Monday’s article (regarding the secretary of state allowing Aylesbury Estate residents the right to remain in their homes in the face of Southwark Council’s and Notting Hill Housing Trust’s socially unjust ‘regeneration’ scheme) important points were missed. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Sajid Javid’s rejection of the compulsory purchase order should shame Southwark. Aylesbury Estate has a large Black and Minority Ethnic population. Javid’s report was clear that the redevelopment scheme will affect these most vulnerable local residents and noted Southwark’s failure to uphold its public sector Equality Duty in this respect.

The article also gave the impression that the leaseholders involved in this case are the last ones left on the estate. In fact, this recent Public Inquiry only relates to the “First Development Site”, a small part of the 60 acre estate. There are still hundreds of residents in the rest of the Aylesbury, watching this case with great interest because their homes are due to be affected by Phases 2, 3 and 4. The scheme if it goes ahead will result in a minimum net loss of 800 affordable council homes further impacting available housing for locals on the housing waiting list. After Heygate Estate’s demolition and replacement by mostly private sale homes, residents are fearful of Aylesbury becoming another Heygate. Campaign groups in Southwark are calling for a moratorium on estate regeneration schemes that are premised on demolition and decanting of residents.

Finally, the statement by Southwark’s head of regeneration states that the regeneration is “supported by the vast majority of residents”. This is not true – the only ballot of residents to date (in 2001) rejected redevelopment with a 73% majority on a 76% turnout. Southwark Council and Notting Hill Housing Trust must now rethink this entire regeneration model and listen to the residents’ needs and desires.

Aylesbury Tenants and Residents First

35 Percent Campaign

Elephant Amenity Network

Fight For the Aylesbury

People’s Republic of Southwark

Southwark Notes

Saving Southwark

Southwark Green Party

Southwark Defend Council Housing

Note: For further information about the Aylesbury Estate, see “The fall and rise of the council estate” by Andy Beckett in the Guardian in July, and also see “It’s hard going for people left behind on ‘sink estates’” by Hannah Layland (from the Guardian in February) about a family trapped in prison-like conditions on one of the Aylesbury’s blocks scheduled for demolition, which was the disproportionate response of the council and the developers to squatters taking over an empty block in 2015. For West Hendon, see the Guardian articles here and here. For the Heygate, above and beyond Southwark Notes, see this article in the New Statesman from 2013, and this from the Guardian at the same time.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).