pension333: Earls Court project: avoidable unpleasantness?

As accusations fly over the fate of two estates in Tory west London, you have to wonder why it all got so nasty

A fortnight has passed since a dossier was handed to the police alleging that residents of two West London housing estates had been promised preferential treatment in the allocation of replacement homes if they gave their backing to the estates' demolition, and arguing that such behaviour could constitute a criminal offence.

I won't go into great detail about the dossier's contents at this stage, though I have seen it and read it carefully. Suffice to say that it contains a number of testimonies from residents, which include claims that officers of the Conservative-run Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) council and people saying they were members of the Conservative Party gave assurances that supporting the council's demolition plans would ensure priority allocation of new homes on the nearby Seagrave Road site - a part of the wider Earls Court redevelopment scheme. Some specific individuals are named.

What will happen next? Search me, though I understand the Met is making an assessment. What I can say with certainty is that the dossier further underlines the deep and grievous passions the Earls Court project has generated and the mistrust of those opposed to it of the motives and methods of the council and its developer partner Capco - all of which raises the very pregnant question of whether it really had to be this way.

A good insight into the suspicions at work is provided by a tortuous yet engrossing correspondence I've obtained between Stephen Cowan, who leads the council's opposition Labour group, and two of the council's most senior officers (neither of whom, to be clear, are among those named in the dossier as having making alleged legally dubious offers).

This correspondence has been going on for a five-month period and seems unlikely to end just yet. On his blog, Cowan concludes from the exchanges so far that the council was aware that a so-called "VIP list" of residents had been promised priority treatment in rehousing and that this list had been compiled by parties who wanted demolition to proceed, yet has failed to properly investigate claims that some of its own officers had gone along with this activity.

Cowan asks if the council has been "complicit" in an alleged "homes for support" exercise. He considers that no straight answers have been provided to his questions about the matter and that this smells "like a cover-up."

H&F's response to claims about an improper list is as follows:

The Council has not allocated any homes and nobody has received preferential treatment. During a lengthy consultation process, the Council has made a note of people interested in moving to Seagrave Road and will continue to note any further interest. Residents will be moved in accordance with a local lettings plan, which will take into account need and ensure that old homes are demolished only after their replacement homes have been built.

In other words, while the council acknowledges it has made "a note" of people who might be keen to move to Seagrave Road it denies that those people have been promised or will be given priority. Cowan continues to demand an independent inquiry into any involvement by council officers in the compiling of any "VIP list" of residents to whom such promises might have been made. He wonders why the council won't oblige him.

Cowan and his Labour colleagues, like the anti-demolition campaign, have consistently asked that residents of the two estates ? the West Kensington and its smaller neighbour Gibbs Green ? are given a formal and binding vote on the future of their homes. The council has persistently refused to do this.

It is easy to see why H&F might be nervous about arranging such a ballot. Its own analysis of the consultation responses (pdf) found that more than three times as many estate residents oppose the demolition plan than support it, though it continues to try to spin this massive rejection away.

Meanwhile, one of H&F's cabinet members, the Famous Harry Phibbs, has tweeted that opponents of the scheme were "tricked or bullied" into taking that view and that "support is growing as the lies are exposed." The Famous Harry has written that these "lies" include telling people that the council's promises to rehouse people in better homes than they have now are false and that they could end up living in Barking instead. The anti-demolition campaign, needless to say, begs to differ.

I think you're catching the general tone of the proceedings, one that encompasses the daily lives of many who live in the estates according to those I've spoken to lately.

Could all this unpleasantness have been avoided? Was there a way for the council and Capco to have included the estates within the (much) larger Earls Court scheme ? which is, of course, controversial in many other ways ? in a manner that a majority of residents would have embraced?

Way back in February 2007, the then new leader of the council Stephen Greenhalgh ? who Boris Johnson has recently made head of his new office for policing and crime ? appeared on the internet channel 18 Doughty Street TV with local Tory MP Greg Hands. Both argued that they wanted to improve the lot of poorer people on their patch of inner West London and tackle deep inequalities. I can no longer find this item online ? perhaps someone else have better luck ? but I recall feeling that they believed what they were saying.

Greenhalgh championed the Earls Court project right up until he stepped down as leader earlier this year. Yet to some in the regeneration business the entire Earls Court enterprise has looked unwieldy, impractical and undesirably old-fashioned from the start ? a top-heavy, top-down wrecking ball of a scheme that will be difficult to finance, characterised by unrealistic claims and always at risk of incurring resentment. And it doesn't look to me like a project guided by the bottom-up, localist, "big society" principles that modern Conservative administrations are supposed to be applying, particularly in a London borough seen as a trailblazer for national party policy ? David Cameron's favourite council, no less.

Perhaps H&F assumed that it and Capco would be able to press on smoothly with their plans, brushing all opposition aside with ease. But although the council continues to steam ahead, surely confident that its admirer Mayor Johnson won't use his powers to stand in their way, I doubt it expected opposition of quite the type that it has met.

Jonathan Rosenberg, the anti-demolition campaign's community organiser, is a veteran of such community-based struggles. He was right in the thick of a huge battle against the radical Tories of Dame Shirley Porter's Westminster in the 1990s. That ended with residents taking control of homes Westminster wanted to sell off and the Dame eventually being relieved of �12 million.

Many in the property trade see Capco as unstoppable. But the campaigners insist they will grind the Earls Court scheme down to a halt. If they succeed, the council and the developers will have only themselves to blame.

Dave Hill

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/davehillblog/2012/sep/27/earls-court-project-stephen-cowan

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