Blueprint for the future

A collective intake of breath sounds around the room. Stephen Greenhalgh, controversial Conservative leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council, has just been quoted describing the homes on the West Kensington estate as ‘not decent’.

Seventy tenants from the estate and the adjoining Gibbs Green estate are unimpressed. They have gathered at the West Kensington Tenants’ Association building on a rainy October evening to plan how to save their homes from demolition.

A week previously, some of them had appeared on national television during the Labour Party conference. They spoke about their battle against Mr Greenhalgh’s plans to knock down around 900 council and housing association homes in order to make way for a mixed use development.

Days after their prime-time slot, the tenants discovered those plans had gone a step further: a collaboration agreement to potentially develop a 70-acre site, which includes their estates and west London’s Earls Court Exhibition Centre, had been signed by landowners Hammersmith & Fulham Council, Transport for London, and private developer Capital & Counties.

The tenants believe the proposal for their estates is part of a wider council plot to move poorer residents out of the Conservative-led west London borough, and wealthier residents in. They are aware that their landlord has a track record of pushing for shared ownership or intermediate housing in place of new social homes.

Their plight became national news when housing minister, John Healey, used his Labour Party conference speech to describe their situation as a portent of what could be in store for all social tenants should the Conservatives win the next general election.

‘Hammersmith & Fulham is a laboratory for future Tory Policy,’ he railed, accusing the opposition of harbouring plans to triple social rents and scrap security of tenure. A week later at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, two fringe sessions with Mr Greenhalgh on the bill were packed to the rafters, delegates eager to hear his ideas. It’s time to look at the evidence: what is going on with housing in west London, and is it a blueprint for a future Tory government?

The man himself says that ‘observations’ made about him are ‘driven by lies and misinformation from the local Labour party who have just been knocked into third place in a Hammersmith & Fulham Council by-election.’

‘I have never described the homes on the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates as “not decent”,’ he says. ‘In fact the council has just spent a quarter of a billion pounds on bringing all our housing stock up to the decent homes standard. The focus of the council is to deliver high quality services at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer. We want to delight Hammersmith & Fulham residents rather than the Conservative Party.’

Mr Greenhalgh has been leader of the borough since 2006, when a Conservative council was voted in after 20 years in opposition. Mr Healey has described Hammersmith & Fulham as David Cameron’s ‘favourite’ council. Mr Greenhalgh’s apparent influence within his party enables the Labour Party to present him as the personification of the radical Conservatism that could slip through the back door if the Tories get into power.

Far-reaching influence

Certainly Mr Greenhalgh wields influence in the capital. In May 2008 London mayor Boris Johnson appointed him to a panel overseeing an audit of City Hall finances. Then he was asked by Conservative chair Eric Pickles to head a new Conservative Councils Innovation Unit.

When Principles for social housing reform, a pamphlet co-authored by Mr Greenhalgh and surveyor and regeneration expert John Moss, was published by think tank Localis in April, it became clear that Hammersmith & Fulham’s leader was a radical thinker, with right-wing Conservative ideas about social housing.

In March, before the 75-page document was released, Localis hosted a discussion about the ideas within it. A freedom of information request by Andy Slaughter, Labour MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherds Bush, revealed that shadow housing minister Grant Shapps was there.

In May, Inside Housing published an interview with Mr Greenhalgh. In it he said: ‘We need to challenge the needs-based system that underpins social housing. We are challenging the current orthodoxy about how social housing is allocated, because the social consequences are so bad, the economic consequences for the competitiveness of our inner cities are poor, and the financial returns are risible.’

‘Slums’ and ‘barracks of the poor’ are among the words used to describe estates in Principles for social housing reform. Its authors argue against security of tenure - semi-sacrosanct in the world of social housing - and for a move away from social rents towards market charges. The authors describe the differences between assured tenancies in the private sector and secure tenancies in the public sector as ‘unjustifiable’.

‘Social housing has become a destination for the majority of households, 82 per cent of which are still living in social homes after 10 years,’ they state.

The public profile of its leader may have grown throughout conference season, but Hammersmith & Fulham Council is distancing itself from the radical ideas that have given Mr Greenhalgh so much attention. A council insider told Inside Housing that the authority is proud of its record on affordable housing, adding that Mr Greenhalgh worked with think tank Localis in a personal capacity.
Mr Greenhalgh himself reinforces this point. ‘My co-authorship of the Localis pamphlet has nothing to do with my role as Hammersmith & Fulham Council leader,’ he states.

John Morris, chief executive of Localis, confirms that the content of the pamphlet, ‘is not the policy of the Conservative Party as it stands’. ‘It’s the job of a think tank to stimulate debate,’ he explains.

David Cowans, chief executive of Places For People, is acknowledged in the Localis pamphlet. He says that it contributed to a ‘sensible conversation about the concentrations of deprivation [that exist across the UK]’.

As for housing associations operating in the borough, they are steering clear of the debate. Only Cyril Ashley, operations manager at Westway Housing Association, which works across seven London boroughs, was willing to speak - and only to say that he ‘hasn’t noticed any difference in the policies in Hammersmith & Fulham and elsewhere’.

James Watson, spokesperson for Hammersmith & Fulham Homes, the borough’s arm’s-length management organisation, confirms that one of the most radical ideas expressed in the Localis pamphlet - a move towards market rents - is not being acted on. ‘There are no plans to double or triple rents. Rents are fixed by national policy,’ he says.

More mixed communities

Mr Greenhalgh and his Conservative colleagues at the council do, however, push their own agenda where possible. For example, the borough prioritises those willing to seek work when it allocates social housing.

They also have a reputation for being chummy with investors and developers - for two years in a row they have travelled to MIPIM, an international event for property developers in Cannes, France. The collaboration agreement signed earlier this month with Capital & Counties, a developer owned by global property firm, Liberty International, is testament to the fact that the authority is working to build the ‘mixed communities’ so often mentioned within Principles for social housing reform.

At the Conservative Party conference, Mr Greenhalgh had the chance to respond to the controversy. ‘Housing is very, very important and we should have a mature debate [about it],’ Mr Greenhalgh told packed fringe sessions. ‘I find it a bit ironic that the debate is led by somewhere like Hammersmith & Fulham.’

He also defended himself on the ConservativeHome website. ‘We should remember that the national debate on social housing reform was initiated by [former Labour housing minister] Caroline Flint and there is a consensus among housing professionals that the system needs to be improved,’ he blogged.

He argues that there is no difference between his boroughs’s local development framework, published for consultation in June, and policies already being pursued elsewhere in London, including the Labour boroughs of Newham, Southwark and Hackney.

Hammersmith & Fulham’s LDF states that six estates in the borough could be replaced ‘as part of any redevelopment schemes around them’. Mr Greenhalgh’s blog also reassures tenants they will be looked after: ‘We will consider redevelopment only if we can offer our tenants and leaseholders better housing in any new development, and we have issued them with a cast-iron guarantee that they can stay in the local area in an affordable home of their choice.’

Suspicious minds

Tenants are not convinced. ‘The estates are prime real estate,’ says Maxine Bayliss, a tenant at Queen Caroline estate, one of those listed in the LDF. ‘There seems to be an obsession with home ownership in this borough, but affordable housing is extremely expensive here,’ she says of the average £260,000 price tag for a one-bedroom flat.

‘Tenants on this estate wouldn’t be able to afford a one-bedroom flat. Where are we supposed to live?’

Ms Bayliss cites the redevelopment of Janet Adegoke leisure centre in nearby White City as an example of why she believes that the publicity surrounding Mr Greenhalgh and his ideas is more than just ‘scaremongering by the Labour Party’.

In July, the London mayor rejected a planning application made by Building Better Health, the developers working on the mixed-use scheme, in which all social housing had been removed - originally, 25 per cent of the 179 homes were to be socially rented.

Weeks later, Mr Greenhalgh served on the mayor’s forensic audit panel, which examined the work of the London Development Agency. He was also consulted on the mayor’s housing manifesto. By August, Greater London Authority officers decided the scheme was acceptable after all. This case is now folklore among tenants in the borough, who fear that their council will be given more power if the Conservatives win next year’s general election.

‘Now we just need the incoming Conservative government,’ summed up Mr Greenhalgh and Mr Moss after introducing their ideas within the Localis pamphlet. And with the Conservatives pushing their localism agenda, it seems the authors may get the national support they crave.

Some Conservatives seem to be disassociating themselves from Mr Greenhalgh’s ideas. Mr Shapps, for example, accuses Labour of ‘trying to frighten tenants’ by whipping up a storm around Hammersmith & Fulham, but still insists that he only turned up at the end of the Localis discussion where the ideas for the pamphlet were being thrown around. Conservative leader David Cameron meanwhile has not responded to Mr Healey’s call for him to reject Mr Greenhalgh’s ideas.

Back in West Kensington, the residents’ concerns are purely local, but they are happy to be dragged into a national debate if it helps them in their fight to keep their homes.

‘There has been some good TV coverage of the residents,’ says Jonathan Rosenberg, who has been co-ordinating the tenants on the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates. ‘It has been empowering’.

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