Social Cleansing

Below is information I have recently received from the chief exec of Community 7 Tom Maguire. As well as the issue of tenants being encouraged to leave the Kensington New Deal for Communities (NDC) area altogether, an agenda to drastically reduce tenants in the NDC area is being put into place by the Liverpool City Council, NDC administrators, Government Office for the North West, C7 and the NDC homeowners.

Community 7, Government office, and all the service provider’s involved with the Kensington NDC continually use semantics when trying to explain away what they are doing. Tenants and residents do have different issues, yet the service providers explain this reality away with, they are all residents. Nothing of what these people claim to do is based on concrete reality. Everything they claim they are going to do is based on proposals or suggestions only.

Riverside Housing is the biggest housing association in the northwest, with over 23,000 properties in the Merseyside area alone. The recently registered C7 are a subsidiary of Riverside. This means that C7 has to do what Riverside tells it to do. C7 claims that it has tenant representatives on its board, but this matters little because, there are NO tenant representatives on Riverside’s main board, (although Tom Maguire the chief exec of C7 says there are 3 tenant reps on Riverside’s board) which is presided over by Riverside’s £111,000 per year chief executive, one of the highest paid chief execs in the UK. Most of the housing associations in Liverpool have hardly any tenant representatives on their boards. There are about 9 housing associations in the NDC area. These housing associations are working hand in glove with C7 and intend to transfer all their properties over to C7 with hardly any democratic tenant consultation.

Information on housing associations can be found on:
 http://www.islingtonfacts.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

From the begging of the Kensington NDC project the various service providers or partnerships, including central government, intended to address the situation of tenure within the NDC area. It was decided that tenancies should be reduced and that owner-occupier should be increased. The decision to implement this social cleansing was taken in secret and has deliberately been kept out of the public arena. It is estimated that 60% of the NDC area is tenants and 40% are homeowners, but these figures are probably wrong. In my opinion the present situation is 50-50.

The chief exec of C7 Tom Maguire recently stated publicly at the Edge Hill Neighbourhood Planning meeting, which was held on Tuesday 15th July 2003, that it was “proposed” in C7’s business plan (C7’s business plan is not available for public scrutiny) that 200 new houses would be built for rent to tenants who face demolition in the designated demolition areas, the largest demolition area being in the Edge Hill zone of the NDC area. The building of these 200 houses is only proposals they are not based on concrete reality. If the Housing Corporation decides not to fund C7 these houses will simply not be built. In my opinion the Housing Corporation, with C7 and all the other service providers have no intention of building this many houses for rent. The whole emphasis is to socially cleanse the area of tenants and give existing tenants houses to homeowners through one deal or another. Even if C7 builds 200 houses they will not accommodate all the tenants who will be made homeless through demolition.

The Edge Hill area consists of about 1,300 properties of which aprox 70% are owned by RSL, private and council landlords, RSL being the largest. (The NDC area has been divided into five zones, each zone consisting of just over 1,000 houses. The Edge Hill zone is one of the five zones)

It has now become apparent that the Neighbourhood Forward Planning Group (NFPG) has been having meetings that the tenants cannot get any information about and have decided to make proposals not to demolish Nuttall Street, Milroy Street, Thorburn Street. This decision has been made because many homeowners who face demolition do not want a shared ownership loan of approx £35,000 (which never has to be paid back unless they die or sell their new house) towards buying a new house. There are 28 C7 properties empty in Nuttall Street, Milroy Street and Thorburn Street, which will be refurbished at the cost of £15,000 and made available to homeowners whose properties will be demolished in Royston Street. The proposals also include the refurbishment of all the houses in these three streets. These RSL houses could be given to homeowners on a key for a key basis.

Tom Maguire also told me that proposals have been put into place to address the issue of making other RSL properties in and around the whole New Deal area, which are and will become empty through natural migration available to homeowners who’s houses are due for demolition in the Edge Hill area and other outlying areas within the New Deal zone. These RSL houses could also be sold to prospective homeowners.

The NDC zone encapsulates approx 4,200 houses and flats. At this present moment there are thousands of would be tenants on Riversides data base or list who can’t get anywhere to live and Riverside’s C7 could be in the process of selling off RSL houses in the NDC area and doing deals with homeowners who’s houses are and will be designated for demolition.

Tenant who lives in flats, especially in Botanic Road, are also expressing fears that C7 may convert the three storey RSL properties on Botanic Road into highly sort after three storey town houses for sale to rich yuppies as part of the intended gentrification of the area. When I put this issue to Tom Maguire he did not deny that this could happen.

It is now quite apparent that the homeowner board members want to reduce the amount of tenants in the NDC area. This can be further authenticated by New Deal Community Board member for the Edge Hill area and homeowner Norma Williams, who lives in Royston Street, who recently stated: “We had all been aware rented tenure was excessive, and that more owner occupiers would provide a more stable community.” It’s also interesting to note that the senior civil servant for the Kensington NDC project at Government’s Office for the North West, Liz Gill, has stated that central government promotes this reduction of tenants in poor run down inner city areas.

The two board members who represent the Edge Hill area are homeowners and were voted onto the board by an overwhelming majority of homeowners, even though, as stated, 70% of the Edge Hill community are tenants.

There is no appropriate tenant representation on the NDC board (8 homeowners 1 tenant and 1 tenant recently resigned). Nor is there any proper tenant representation on the five Neighbourhood Forward Planning Groups, the five now nearly defunct Citizens Panels or the five Neighbourhood Planning Group meetings, which are held aprox every three months. At the last Edge Hill Neighbourhood Planning Group meetings only 10 or 20 tenants turned up and 5 or 6 of them walked out in disgust at the way in which the meetings excepted agenda was changed to stop me, a tenant who has lived in the area for 18 years, from becoming vice chair of the Neighbourhood Planning Group. The Forward Planning Group for the edge Hill area has 10 homeowners representing the homeowner’s issues and only 2 tenants representing the tenants issues. In effect the tenants, although as stated in a 70% majority in the Edge Hill area can be outvoted at every meeting by homeowners. It is also an excepted fact that the two tenants who were selected are friends with the homeowners. I applied to go onto this Forward Planning Group, but was rejected by the homeowners.

In effect from the onset of the Kensington NDC project moves were made by certain homeowners and service providers to shut tenants out of the decision making process. Procedures were never put into place to encourage tenant participation and the ironic thing is that this NDC project was supposed to reach the most disadvantaged and socially excluded residents of working age within the NDC zone. It is common knowledge that it is amongst the tenants that the most disadvantaged of working age can be found. Yet local and central government want to throw tenants out of the NDC area altogether.

It’s interesting to note that the Deputy Prime Minister's office at the DETR is looking at tenant democracy in Denmark, which is far more advanced than in the UK. If you log onto:  http://www.housing.odpm.gov.uk/local/pat5/09.htm and observe the document which covers housing associations in Denmark you will see that central government must be aware of the fact that there is no tenant democracy in most of the RSL’s in the UK. This is in spite of the fact that central government and the Housing Corporation talk about more tenant representation on RSL boards and more tenant forums, which use open democratic procedures.

Mike Lane Tel 07770-478756