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Final hour qualms endanger renewal

The £560 million regeneration of a rundown south London estate could be scuppered after Lambeth Council raised a series of misgivings about the scheme.
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The £560 million regeneration of a rundown south London estate could be scuppered after Lambeth Council raised a series of misgivings about the scheme.

 

The Clapham Park Project has won support from the government's housing design watchdog, the London Mayor and the former housing minister Keith Hill, in whose parliamentary patch the estate lies.

 

But at a crunch meeting in the borough late last month council members ordered the project's blueprint to be redrafted after officials complained it broke a new set of council planning rules introduced in July.

 

The New Deal for Communities project has until today to come up with a new layout to satisfy the council's demands. David Lunts, executive director for policy and partnerships at the London Mayor's office, said the council could 'kybosh' the whole project, which depends on the transfer of the estate's stock to a new housing association.

 

'Triggering the stock transfer depends on Clapham Park Homes getting planning approval,' he said.

 

'Lambeth Council doesn't like it and has asked for the application to be withdrawn but if they don't win planning approval by March, the 12 month anniversary of the ballot, then the whole thing fails. It will effectively be kyboshed.'

 

The stock transfer was voted for by 59 per cent of tenants in a ballot held earlier this year (Inside Housing, 1 April).

 

A legal opinion drawn up for Clapham Park Homes by Queen's Council David Elvin of Landmark Chambers and seen by Inside Housing says the changes demanded by officers in a preliminary report 'would not be achievable' within the timescale demanded by the council.

 

Mr Elvin said the association's concerns that officers were seeking to 'delay or defeat' the planning application had 'some basis'.

 

'I note in passing that it seems to me that the concern at the officers' approach has some basis in that the preliminary report is seriously lacking in balance,' the opinion states.

 

Jackie Meldrum, the deputy leader of Lambeth's opposition Labour group, said: 'There is complete confusion as to what is happening in the planning department. 'Nothing has happened on this estate for years and years. If this fails the people on the estate won't trust anybody ever again.'

 

Joe Moll, chair of Clapham Park Homes, said despite months of negotiations with  Lambeth Council's planning officers the project's future was unclear.

 

'At the moment the best guess is that the scheme will not be granted outline planning permission in February, which could have a major impact on the ability to transfer the estate before the end of the March deadline,' he added.

 

'If we cannot find a way forward we will be left in a situation where the considerable efforts, hopes and aspirations of thousands of residents over a number of years and a not inconsiderable amount of public money will be laid to waste.'

 

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