By Bill Linskey, Chair of The Brixton Society
“Future Brixton” is Lambeth council’s umbrella term for the redevelopment proposals at Somerleyton Road, Brixton town centre, and the Town Hall site; it even has its own website. What links these three sites; what is the bigger picture?
All the consultations have concentrated on the detail – do you prefer option “A” or option “B” – and shied away from the fundamental questions of what it’s all about. What is so wrong with Brixton that it needs all this redevelopment?
Much of the railway side of Somerleyton Road is literally a waste of space and some form of redevelopment seems to have considerable community support. In Brixton town centre something has to be done with the ice rink site and the station entrance. The key driver for change at the Town Hall is the idea of co-locating as many as possible of the shrinking number of Lambeth staff to save public money. And overarching all this is the desperate need for more housing.
So there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the plans? Well, dig a little deeper. Why at Somerleyton Road is the best thing that the council can say is that it is, “aiming for at least 40% at council rent” (Future Brixton website) when it owns the land? Why does there have to be so much redevelopment in the centre disrupting parts that should be left to develop organically? Why such overdevelopment at the Town Hall site that we are to have (on the most recent plans) a 22 storey block of flats looming over St. Matthew’s Church and the Town Hall?
The answer, of course, is that there is no public money available to pay for what needs to be done; primarily, the provision of social housing. The only game in town is to let private developers build fabulously expensive housing that few local people can hope to afford to buy or rent in exchange for some “affordable” and, hopefully, some social rent housing. Even then we have to be careful of how the game seems to change as developments progress; look at what happened with the Barratt development in Coldharbour Lane. How much affordable housing was delivered compared to the original plans? No wonder the best the council can say is that it is “aiming” for a particular figure; it knows it cannot promise anything.
But given that we are in “the age of austerity”, what else is the council to do, nothing? Well, it could wait a bit …
The next general election is now less than nine months away and nothing is going to be built or, probably, even get planning permission in that time. What if a new, incoming government took a different approach and decided it was time to end the decades-long tax strike that the super-rich (individuals and big corporations) have been on. If they were to pay their proportionate share of taxes then the country’s fiscal crisis would be solved without ordinary working people (or even the most comfortably off middle classes) needing to pay a penny more in tax. Then councils could be funded to build social housing and make public realm improvements without needing to let private developers take over.
Clearly our council does not think that a new government with the gumption to do that is going to be elected.
Bill Linskey, Chair Brixton Society, writing in a personal capacity
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@Mark there is a lot of truth in your comment. Every government (be it local or national) spends money that are not theirs (they take it out of the people in form of taxes) and spend it for someone else (the local people). That is one of the shortcomings of our current political system that can not be escaped. Hopefully, this ‘regeneration’ would be for the better but only time will tell.
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Because governments and councils cannot be trusted – these things are much better left to private companies to do – they will only do it if they really see a market, and in general make the most of their opportunity – due to the powers of competition. The council cannot even maintain the – what was once – lovely Windrush Square – look at the state of it, lights don’t work, pavement and crossing are damaged and filled in with tarmac for Gods sake. The sweeping changes in Brixton, whether you like them or not, are a reflexion of the success of private companies having the capacity to actually do things. The council and government, if left in charge of actual work, would still be arguing the toss till the cows come home over whether a bin should be north or east facing.
Maybe there is another way, if the council were bold enough. Labour in Enfield are giving it a go – would like to see Lambeth at least consider something similar.
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/01/enfield-experiment-housing-problem-radical-solution