Plans by a labour-controlled south London council to bulldoze a residential estate, the Central Hill Estate, Crystal Palace have been binned, after a decade-long campaign by locals, reports Inside Croydon.
image: for illustration by Stephen Richards, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14470982
… residents have long argued against demolition…
Inside Croydon writes:
Lambeth Council has paused the redevelopment of Central Hill and two other estates after a critical report recommended a ‘fundamental reset’ to the way it handles the long-running projects. Lambeth said it was now planning to hold further consultation with residents on the 450-home estate near Crystal Palace, ‘looking at different viable options ranging from refurbishment all the way through to full redevelopment’.
The council had planned to knock down the Rosemary Stjernstedt and Lambeth Borough Architects Department-designed estate, where homes are plagued with damp, mould and accessibility problems, replacing it with 1,200 new properties…
But residents have long argued against demolition, claiming that the homes on the complicated, sloping site are structurally sound and simply need proper refurbishment and upkeep…
Redevelopment and demolition on the architecturally-acclaimed Cressingham Gardens and the Fenwick Estate have also been stopped. Lambeth has, belatedly, started a public consultation on these and three other estates, including Fenwick, Knight’s Walk, South Lambeth, and Westbury. The move follows the publication last November of the highly critical Kerslake Review into the running of its housing development company, Homes for Lambeth…
… a flagship endeavour established in 2017 with a business model similar in many respects to Croydon’s Brick by Brick, the failed company which did much to bankrupt the borough without ever delivering the volume of social housing for which there is such demand….
