Westminster's 1950s estates to get 21st century overhaul
Westminster wants to radically transform 1950s estates with a multimillion pound renewal programme.
A six-week consultation of residents and local businesses will start this month.
Philippa Roe, cabinet member for housing at Westminster Council, said: ‘This is a huge and incredibly ambitious programme of change for Westminster that will benefit generations to come.
‘It offers potential to benefit businesses and new jobs and training to some of Westminster’s most deprived neighbourhoods.
‘These are tremendously exciting plans to transform our housing estates into thriving communities in their own right.’
The plans will initially focus on four areas – the Church Street neighbourhood, just off Edgware Road, where nearly 12,000 people live and the Brunel, Tollgate and Ebury Bridge estates in Westbourne Park, Maida Vale and Pimlico respectively.
Westminster plans to work with national experts, architects and residents to re-examine existing buildings, street patterns and local facilities to see how they can be improved.
The council wants to increase the amount of housing, create thriving mixed communities and ‘end the divide between Westminster’s estates and their surrounding neighbourhoods’.
The aim of redesigning the estates is to make them ‘more welcoming’ to residents and communities.
The current design of the open spaces in the 1950s estates is considered to isolate the estates from their surrounding neighbourhood.
By improving and opening out communal areas, the local authority also hopes to eradicate anti-social behaviour hotspots.
A consultation report has been drawn up and Westminster will be setting up steering committees made up of local residents and ward councillors – which will hold one-to-one surgeries for local people – to provide regular updates on its plans in the coming months.
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Readers' comments (2)
Dave Hollins | 03/10/2009 9:09 am
The published views of some Westminster Conservatives are much the same as those of Stephen Greenhalgh, leader of Hammersmith. So we can expect a similar type of plan and tenants will have to be on their guard against redevelopments that are actually about social engineering and severely reducing the number of social homes, thereby removing 'the difference' between estates and the surrounding areas. Westminster still has thousands of families in temporary accommodation and a huge overcrowding problem and needs every social rented homes it can get. Any plan that reduces the number available will be a callous move. Lady Porter didn't get her way in Westminster trying to get rid of tenants because they were more likely to vote Labour, and this lot mustn't get away with it either.
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stella Hargreaves | 07/10/2009 3:32 am
Dave Hollins, I wholeheartedly agree with you-you do realise (do you?) that Housing associations in London and all over the uk are also selling off and market renting homes that should go to the homeless? This includes my H.a, Peabody, in the heart of westminster. We can't find out from Peabody exactly how many houses and flats have been sold or market-rented because HAs don't come under the Freedom of Information Act.
What we do know is that tenants (or residents, as we're now called) are to be asked to vote on the standard of service they're willing to pay for. I've been asking for about 3 years how this will work; what happens to a minority who can't afford what the majority want? The last answer I got was 'they won't have to pay' No, they won't cos poor people won't be housed in the most enviably located estates, they'll all go to those who can pay the market price! Peabody's doing what Porter tried to do. At a meeting with tenants protesting at sales of Peabody properties in 2005, our chief executive (mr Howlett) said it was none of our business what Peabody did with the rents- 'it's the same as when you buy goods from Sainsbury's' he said. I won't bother to state the flaw in this, it's too obvious. Nobody knows exactly how many HA properties have been lost to social housing in the past 5 years, unless the TSA knows? The total must be in the high thousands, I'd say. Does anyone know the best way to find out? Stella Hargreaves
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