Campaigners call for greater ambition from council on housing

Vote for Pedro?: Pedro Street regeneration (artist’s impression). Photograph: Hackney Council.

The upcoming demolition of a boiler house in Clapton to make way for new council homes has prompted campaigners to call for greater ambition from the Town Hall.

Hackney Council announced on 19 September that it will bulldoze a disused boiler house on Pedro Street to clear a path for a block of 26 flats prioritised for locals.

In a consultation, the council said the new block near Hackney Marshes would be a roughly even split of social rent and shared ownership homes, providing “better streets and public spaces and improving shared green space for existing and new residents”.

The council stated that the social rent homes will be earmarked for people already living close to Pedro Street who are on its waiting list, such as families in overcrowded accommodation or those who need a new home for health reasons.

However, housing campaigner Pat Turnbull questioned the definition of the shared ownership properties as provided by the council.

Turnbull, chair of the New Kingshold Estate Tenants and Residents Association, said: “Pedro Street is described as ’26 new council houses…all for social rent and shared ownership’.

“This is the customary form of words the council uses, as if these two were equivalents.  Most people understand a council home to mean what it used to mean and still should – a rented home at a rent someone on a low or middle income can afford.

“Shared ownership is not that. These homes are aimed at high-income households, and are unaffordable to most Hackney residents, particularly at the current house prices. They are certainly not going to house the 12,800 people on the council waiting list.

“The fact is that in the last ten years, housing prices in Hackney have risen astronomically, and when you build luxury homes that normal people cannot afford, that attracts the investors and developers, including people from abroad who just buy them as an investment. This drives up prices for people who still live in the area.”

Turnbull pointed out that the regeneration of Hackney’s Colville Estate, though twice as many homes were to be built on the site, many were to be offered under shared ownership or put directly on the market.

Hackney Council define shared ownership in its housing strategy 2017-22 as “intermediate housing”, with applicants purchasing between 25 and 75 per cent of the property’s value, paying the rest off at a subsidised rent.

New figures released by the Green Party at the beginning of the month show that Hackney has lost 537 social rented homes in redevelopment schemes on sites containing existing social housing since 2003, with a further 653 still to be lost in the future.

Green Party campaigner Samir Jeraj said: “I welcome the ambition of the Pedro Street project. I only wish the same could be said of other developments in Hackney.

“Hackney lost 537 council homes in the past 15 years and stands to lose a further 653 from regeneration. Much of this is the fault of central government’s war on council housing under Thatcher, Major and Blair – but the council could do much better.

“We’ve seen places like the Britannia Leisure Centre where Hackney Council is failing to meet its own target for affordable housing, while families are warehoused in hostels condemned by local health charities.”

The new site on Pedro Street is to be built as part of the council’s Housing Supply Programme (HSP), which had previously been projected to deliver around 400 new council-managed homes across the borough from 2018. This estimate has since been revised upward to around 500.

The council aims to build almost 2,000 new homes in total between 2018 and 2022. More than half of these will be for social rent and shared ownership – to be paid for by selling the remainder outright.

Mayor Philip Glanville said: “We’ve slightly added to the HSP from the cabinet report, because we’d always said as we went out into communities and looked at sites we would see if there are any other sites in the immediate area as we were doing resident consultation and engagement.

“We’ve got ongoing resident engagement across all of the sites now, and so I think in the next year, you’ll see more of those coming to planning.

“It’s a programme that was first discussed in 2013/14, and I think it shows that to do it in the right way, with the right quality and engagement, it does take a long time to get these projects through.

“Housing delivery is about long haul commitment to council housing. I think where Hackney has significant advantages is that essentially since 2011 we’ve been talking about building council housing.

“Then you get to 2018, and we’ve got multiple sites across the borough and in planning. You’ve got a permanent delivery pipeline, which means every year we’re delivering council housing.

“To get to that stage is I think an achievement, and not something other local authorities can say.”

The Town Hall went on to strongly dispute the figures as released by Berry, claiming that their methodology was in question.