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Kensington and Chelsea Council’s attack on ‘immoral’ housing associations has raised eyebrows. But tackling estate regeneration is an important debate the sector must not shy away from, argues Emma Maier
Estate regeneration has become an increasingly fraught topic.
To some, redeveloping estates to increase the total number of homes, often reducing social homes on site, is a necessary route to increasing and improving stock in a high-value, low-grant world.
To others, it is straight up gentrification – breaking up communities and moving social housing tenants to lower-value areas.
Nowhere is this debate harder, or more important, than in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), in the shadow of Grenfell Tower.
There is a significant shortage of social homes and high levels of homelessness. High land and property values cap development opportunity.
Even before the Grenfell fire, tenant relations were poor. For RBKC, loss of more social homes has become politically untenable.
The council’s consultation on options to prevent further loss of social homes includes a proposal to halt all estate regeneration – both by the council and housing associations in the borough.
The proposal intensifies the focus on estate regeneration – already in the spotlight after sustained national media coverage and following London mayor Sadiq Khan’s backing for tenant ballots.
It will provoke a wide-ranging debate not only in RBKC but across the sector.
It is an important debate that the sector must not shy away from, despite it raising difficult questions about involvement of tenants and the quality of schemes and outcomes for the community.
Nationwide, sensitive estate regeneration should not be discounted where appropriate for the location.
But lessons must be learned from the doomed Haringey Development Vehicle and other projects. Transparency about the provision of affordable housing, timescales and reallocations are absolutely crucial, as is engaging with the community regarding the improvements they seek.
While RBKC’s discussion paper brings the issue to the fore, the council’s approach will raise eyebrows.
It has taken aim at housing associations, describing plans that result in a loss of social housing as “immoral” and targeting England’s largest association Clarion over its Sutton Estate redevelopment plans. It is a claim Clarion strongly refutes.
“Transparency about the provision of affordable housing, timescales and reallocations are absolutely crucial, as is engaging with the community regarding the improvements they seek.”
RBKC may find that starting a war of words backfires.
As it rightly focuses on increasing the proportion of social homes in new schemes, it must surely address its own role in the creation of the status quo.
Meanwhile, it has not managed to rehouse all Grenfell survivors, and residents moved out of homes neighbouring Grenfell after the fire are facing the choice of moving back in or seeing their rents increase and in some cases moving to overcrowded alternative properties.
Critics may well raise their own morality questions.
Alongside the charged language, RBKC’s discussion paper contains some creative thinking on bringing empty homes back into use, an open-book approach to viability assessments to boost the proportion of social homes on new developments and possibly new models for risk-sharing with developers.
This too should spark a conversation across the sector.
Emma Maier, editor, Inside Housing