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Whole communities will be decimated through gentrification!

Mike Lane | 02.09.2004 12:31 | Liverpool

Over 100 families in the Liverpool Kensington New Deal for Communities area are now on a firm war footing with the Liverpool City Council and all the so-called service providers that work in “partnership” with the City Council.

It was reported in the Liverpool Echo yesterday that more than 100 families who live in a part of the Liverpool Kensington area, an area which encompasses 4,000 properties and has been designated as a £62m New Deal for Communities (NDC) regeneration area, are now on a firm war footing with the Liverpool City Council and the 36 oppressive NDC regeneration administrators, who have set themselves up in a new £1.4m administration building that is also home to another bunch of oppressive community worker known as Parks Partnership. The NDC regeneration workers are headed by a middle aged £60,000 per year out of town middle class, mother superior type, chief executive. It is now an accepted fact amongst NDC residents that the £62m NDC funding is being used to decimate the community so that massive gentrification of the area can take place. What we are witnessing here in Kensington is the destruction of a whole community by local government and all the service providers who work in so called “partnership” with them.

The Echo article also states that the City Council has had extensive “consultation” with the NDC residents. Anyone who knows how City Councils operate in the UK know through bitter experience that the so called consultation methodology that is used by councils and all their conniving service providers is not in any way conducive with open democratic procedures, neither does it reflect the views of the wider community. The consultation forms are cleverly put together and designed to contain loaded questions, which almost always, covertly promote the agendas of local and central government and the dominant culture at civic society level that the latter represent.


The Echo article can be observed on the Liverpool Echo web site Link:
 http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/page.cfm?objectid=14592485&method=full&siteid=50061

As has recently been reported on Indymedia, from the onset of this regeneration initiative it became quite apparent even to the most casual observer that the Liverpool Kensington NDC area was chosen because of its close proximity to the city centre and because the M62, one of the main motorways into the City Centre, runs directly through the centre of the NDC community.

Already over 700 houses have now been earmarked (with more to follow in other parts of the NDC area) for demolition in the Gladstone Road Royston Street area of the NDC zone. Over 200 RSL tenants have either left or been moved out of the above mentioned area completely and a proposed 100 former RSL properties in one corner of the same area could be left standing and refurbished so as to sell to troublesome argumentative homeowners who’s properties are going to be demolished. This stealing of RSL properties without any meaningful consultation with the RSL tenants is happening because the RSL Community 7, which is a subsidiary of the massive RSL the “Riverside Group” and the City Council know that the homeowners will refuse to leave the area if they are not offered another house under what is now being called a “key for a key arrangement. As can be seen from the Echo article when the homeowners unite as one group they can force the council and the RSL’s to back off so the council and the RSL’s have to put structures into place to stop this. They normally do this through what is known as the “philosophy of gradualism” but when that fails they simply steal former rented RSL properties from under the noses of the tenants, refurbish those properties at about £12,000 per property, then sell the properties to demolition homeowners for the money that the homeowners will receive from the compulsory purchase of their old homes. This is happening throughout the whole of the UK as the New Labour government marches ahead with its national new homes for sale and shared ownership strategy. The New Labour government knows that by using the philosophy of gradualism, just like the Tories did, that in twenty years time the younger generations will just come to except as normal that they will have to pay £200 to £300 per week mortgage for their new house. This government also wants to relinquish its responsibility to the rented sector and in effect put the rented sector, i.e. public housing, into the hands of private sector landlords such as RSL’s who have to hike up the rents so as to stay in business.

It is now becoming an excepted fact that about 80% of the new houses that will be built by a construction firm called Lovels will be for sale and shared ownership. The first wave of these houses will be built in the Gilead Street area of the NDC zone, an area which directly encompasses the area where the above 100 families live. The first phase will involve the building of 172 houses and luxury flats and out of these only 44 will be built for the RSL Community 7 to house demolition tenants in.

From the onset of this NDC initiative Community 7, the City Council and the New Deal regeneration administrators put structures into place to enable them to surreptitiously go out into those parts of the community which have been earmarked for regeneration, identify the few argumentative tenants and those tenants who have leadership skills and secure the silence off these tenants with veiled promises that they will be first in line for relocation to the few new houses which will be built for rent.

Lovels are working in so called “partnership” with the “Riverside Group” are building thousands of houses for sale on former public land right across Merseyside, land were council and RSL houses once stood. This is being allowed to continue because the media refuse to report on it and the trade unions will not take any meaningful action to stop this insidious blatant stealing of former public land by wealthy builders and property developers with the sole intention of building houses for sale on it.

What is happening concerning the issue of housing in the UK is “capitalism” in its most insidious form!

Mike Lane
- e-mail: mickjlane@btinternet.com
- Homepage: http://www.whistleblower.nstemp.com

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

consultation

02.09.2004 14:54

WE all know about consultation or rather the lack of.

In Farnborough half the town centre is earmarked for demolition, with Firgrove Court, social housing, earmarked for demolition for a car park for the unwanted superstore.

The Council and developers KPI and the RSL Pavilion, all claim widespread consultation has taken place.

To date, we have been unable to find anyone who has been consulted.

Comments to the Council are ignored.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/08/297093.html

Recently Hyde Housing Association carried out a consultation in Aldershot. Councillors were invited to the meeting one hour before the public. This was in order to stitch up the public.

In reality, this is consultation.

Keith Parkins


Consultation is a sham

02.09.2004 15:39

Public consultation is a sham. It's simply a trick used to
justify an unpopular and detrimental scheme that will only
ever benefit councillors and developers. The losers are
always the existing community.

You're right in saying that you haven't been able to trace anyone
who has been consulted. That because no one has.

We took part in 'public consultation' exercise in the South West
only to find later on that the council had somehow lost all 263
objections to the proposed project. Even if there is consultation
any dissenting views will vanish, but 'public consulation' happened
so it's OK to flatten the community and enrich the developers and
the councillors in their pocket. We have councillors doing 'very
nicely thankyou' from their dealings with city developers.

It's all faux-legitimacy.

Jen Trification


You are not alone.

04.09.2004 04:57

We here in Braunstone have watched 49.5million wasted on jobs for the boys.
residents who speak out are banned from standing for the BCA board.
The board as been reduced to yes men.
Why does Goevernment Office hold secret files on so called disident trouble makers?
See the largest regeneration staff of Council rejects.
See our new car sales lot, called the staff car park.
Hundreds of tons of contaminated rubbish buried in back gardens to save money.
Asbestos moved without telling anyone.
New health Center built on the most air polluted area in the city.
See the so-called experts waste money.
Board meetings moved well off the estate to stop the one or two residents turning up.
250 council houses for £250 not for profit of course to the accountable body.
all contracts to their own companies. Not bad if you can get it.

Alan Davie
mail e-mail: braunstone.135@ntlworld.com


Hi Alan

04.09.2004 11:49

Keep up the good fight mate. What you are doing in Braunstone is not going unnoticed here in Liverpool. I'll be speaking at a rally next week, here in Liverpool about the disgraceful behaviour of service providers. Try to put what is happening in your community onto Idymedia's main page. Remembers to Keep pressing yes on the menu boxes. Sometimes Idymedia is hard to get on, especially when the Internet is busy. We need to and want to know what is happening in your community. We have set up the "Tenant's Action Group" here in our NDC community. We have already threatened a sit in at Community 7 and as a result had a family rehoused who would have ended up on the street becouse of the incompetence of the Liverpool City Council's Bousing Benfit Dep.

The NDC community board members are now totally indoctrinated and far removed from the wider NDC community. I have decided to fight them from the outside rather than from the inside. We, that is about ten of us, are all good on computers, and as such are in the process of trying to put a documentary film onto a DVD disc, which we are going to post around the community. This will cause real anger amongst the 36 oppresssive NDC regeneration administrators and the community cronies, which include the board. I have already had veiled threats of being charged under the harassment laws. I have made it known to the service providers that if they decide to go down that avenue I will defiantly go to prison. If that happens, heaven forbid, it will be the biggest mistake that they will make, can you imagine what the community and outlying communities will think if a NDC resident is jailed for speaking out? Of course this wont happen but if it ever did I would expect to do 6 weeks in prison. Members of the community have offered to pay my rent and look after my car for the duration of the prison sentence. Man, can you actually believe what is happening and what I am saying here, it defies belief.

All the best Allan

Mike Lane
mail e-mail: -
- Homepage: http://-


media

04.09.2004 13:38

>>We ... are in the process of trying to put a documentary film onto a DVD disc, which we are going to post around the community.

excellent move. maybe you could try getting copies into public libraries as well (it's not just a Kensington issue afterall). will council library services be helpful?

- -


Rally

06.09.2004 11:11

Mike

More details on the Liverpool Rally would be welcomed. Is it something others from around the country could attend or is it Liverpool specific?

Welshy

Welshy