Elephant and Castle scheme

Councillor Toby Eckersley of Southwark reports:

Last night the Executive of southwark Council voted to proceed with the elephant and castle regeneration scheme, involving the demolition and clearance of the entire Heygate estate (27 acres to the s-e of the main E&C roundabouts)

So the Elephant and Castle scheme is still a political priority.

27 acres? where on earth are they going to rehouse the families? I would have though they would have at least a thousand properties on there...

they are building a new development on Bermondsey street for all the scum bags

now now..there but for the grace of God and housing benefit.

I understood Southwark had identified 25 "spare" plots of land, for instance the prefabs which house the Bankside Open Spaces Trust on Library Street, where homes could be built for the Heygate residents to be decanted into.

There is probably some way of finding out where they are and neing nimbyish about it.

David, I still am curious as to how many families actually live there, and will they decant a block at a time?

A quick google suggests there are 1,200 households in the estate.

I also found an interesting article at

http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,624075,00.html

which suggests turnover of tenants is high.

I couldn't find anything on how the decant would be managed (I'm sure local papers had stuff on the this at the time it was announced), but it would not surprise me if the high turnover allowed SBC to chose to stop offering new tenancies after flats were vacated, do nothing about anti-social activities in the empty flats, which would speed up the turnover rate and only act when the only people left are those with no choice. Call me cynical if you want.

you may be cynical David, but your probably right! Mind you the tenants of Symington housee were lucky about 20years ago....the block had structural defects...the council gave the tenants the choice of staying put and charging them half rent whilst work was being carried out, or moving out into different properties.

The majority of tenants wisely took the latter option, a few tenants remained.
Then for reasons that are still beyond me, they started moving people in from the housing list.. then as work started the contractors said the block needed to be demolished ...so another hundred or so people had to move again, then another assessment decided that the flats could be reoccupied after major works.

the scaffolding stayed up for years while they made their mind up...cost us a fortune...Some of the new tenants had the council over a barrel by refusing to move until they had soemwhere of their choice...! and good for them..

I wonder if that will happen on Heygate?

Regeneration or capitalisation?

they are preposing to build on the only few green spaces we have left in elephant and castle to rehouse some of the tennents.. this can not happen, its a discrace destroying our community