It seems incredible that the campaign to stop demolition in Saltwell and Bensham has been running for more than 5 years. In "celebration" lets remind ourselves of the press release issued by Gateshead Council on 27th May 2004.
Their press release was headed "Council Acts to Quash Rumour of 'Demolition Plans'" and continued with the following;
"Rumours being circulated in Bensham and Saltwell suggest that Gateshead Council is intending to demolish whole streets of houses, along with schools, nurseries and shops. None of this is true."
Now in 2010 we can look at the residents worries in perspective. One and half streets have been demolished. The original consultation back in 2005 showed the potential of 1200 homes being bulldozed with the council settling for 440. Shops are closing as residents have been bullied out of their homes by using the fear of ever lower rates of compensation if the council has to use compulsory purchase powers.
Back in 2004 the council said;
John Robinson, Director of Development and Enterprise for Gateshead Council says: “The poster declares that ‘…people across the area have not been told about the plans to demolish whole streets.’
“But it is not true to say that people have to save their homes from demolition. Nor is it true that they have to fight to keep their shops, their schools, their nurseries or their friends and neighbours."
(Well, that bit is true, because there were no plans in the sense of a written document committed to demolition. )
Technically he was right but substantially misleading the public. Plans did not formally exist for demolition but that is what was planned and announced in September 2005. Residents have been fighting since then to preserve their homes and their community.
The original drawings showing 1200 demolitions have never been formally taken off the table and could re-visit the area again.
The council said; "A wide range of options will be outlined and Gateshead Council’s consultants will be keen to hear people’s views on them. Those options could include .... the selective demolition of unwanted houses"
In fact all the demolished homes in the area had residents who wanted to stay, albeit with refurbishment, in their properties. To get people out council officials promised many incentives and suggested that families would get new houses as a kind of swap once new homes were built. These offers were always verbal and the Residents Association always cautioned people not to accept verbal offers but wait for offers in writing - something council officers were desperate to avoid.
The "selective demolition" has now turned into planning applications to demolish whole streets. On average the council has spent an estimated £80,000 per property buying perfectly structurally sound homes in order to demolish them. So far there are no plans to build new homes anywhere but rather to cover the area with grass.
After five years residents can see good things in the area. Primarily the refurnishment and renovation programme. The Residents Association called for this back in 2005 but it has only happened because of the campaign to stop demolition.
So far the Residents Association has saved hundreds of homes from the wreaking ball while in the meantime Gateshead has a massive housing shortage. Surely it is not beyond someone to point out that demolition is last century's dogmatic planning solution that now needs to be abandoned.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Pathfinder And The Butterfly Effect
In Gateshead the first council houses have been built in years. Only 100 houses have been built but it's a great start. This is at the end of a decade of housing failure throughout the North of England created by a bizarre academic theory and a government looking for a big idea.
Recently the sad story of pathfinder has been told in the Times. Environmental journalist Charles Clover has been one of few members of the national media who has noticed that the north has been bulldozed. The supporters of pathfinder housing renewal would like to persuade you that demolition and re-shaping the north has been a re-start of slum clearance. However this is a false impression. The vast majority of the older housing stock in the north was built for the well off working class who could afford decent well built properties. This is the case in Saltwell and Bensham.
Chares Clover wrote in a recent Times article that the origins of pathfinder are to be found in the academic ideas at Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) in the University of Birmingham. In the late 1990s academics led ny Brendan Nevin studied Liverpool and came to the conclusion people were leaving the north becuase there was insufficient good quality housing and if 400,000 homes were demolished this would provide a market incentive for re-development by the private sector.
You would have thought that the Labour Party, whoose core vote was in the north, would understand that it was jobs that had move people south not house prices. However Nevin's bonkers ideas gained credence in the DLTR - John Prescott's monster department. In 2002 a little noticed pledge to spend billions on demolishing the north was passed by Parliament. This created a number of well paid executive jobs in undemocratic bureaucracies to carry out the work. Not surprisingly the guru of housing demolition, Bernard Nevin, is now Chief Executive of the pathfinder demolishing Bootle and Edge Hill in Liverpool.
Prescott found the £2 billion to pay for demolition from Ed Balls at the Treasury and by coincidence Ed's wife Yvette Cooper became the minister responsible for demolition and chief supporter. If anyone with commonsense had been involved they would question the premise that you demolish houses working people can afford and replace them with houses they can't afford in order to stimulate the housing market. Unfortunately for the Labour Party no one with commonsense was available for the rest of the decade. While New Labour was winning huge landslide victories it's core vote in the north were having their housing costs artificially raised by lack of housing and demolition. In Newcastle the enthusiastic demolition of traditional working class areas led to a decline in the Labour vote and the city council was lost in 2005. The population decline lost the city half a Parliamentary seat and the boundaries have now created two potentially marginal seats.
Looking into Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire where elections can be won or lost Labour would dearly like it's traditional supporters to come out and vote in force. Unfortunately many Labour voters have been affected by the mis-directed pathfinder. Young people can't find the cheap housing because it's been demolished. They no longer have to move south for work but they have now found New Labour have scuppered the chance of them owning their own home.
In Gateshead the businesses of Saltwell Road are already suffering a dive in trade due to people being moved out. The prospect of 440 demolitions will reduce the affordable houses that are available for people. Unfortunately Gateshead's Labour Party, despite seeing the disaster that happened in Newcastle, think demolition won't take them out of power. So far Gateshead's Liberal Democrats have not worked out how big an issue housing is.
All of this is the perfect example of the butterfly effect. This is the semi-scientific theory that a butterfly flaps its wings in New Zealand the unintended consequence is a hurricane force wind Europe. In the same way a highly specialised academic theory on housing that should have been ignored by sensible people became Labour Party policy and may help those in the pathfinder areas abandon Labour.
If the Conservatives were in power this drive headlines ot "the ethnic cleansing of the working class", as one Labour MP claimed, fortunately the London based media rarely cover the North and Labour have gotten away with mass demolition. However the housing crisis may come back to bite them!
Links
The Times
Recently the sad story of pathfinder has been told in the Times. Environmental journalist Charles Clover has been one of few members of the national media who has noticed that the north has been bulldozed. The supporters of pathfinder housing renewal would like to persuade you that demolition and re-shaping the north has been a re-start of slum clearance. However this is a false impression. The vast majority of the older housing stock in the north was built for the well off working class who could afford decent well built properties. This is the case in Saltwell and Bensham.
Chares Clover wrote in a recent Times article that the origins of pathfinder are to be found in the academic ideas at Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) in the University of Birmingham. In the late 1990s academics led ny Brendan Nevin studied Liverpool and came to the conclusion people were leaving the north becuase there was insufficient good quality housing and if 400,000 homes were demolished this would provide a market incentive for re-development by the private sector.
You would have thought that the Labour Party, whoose core vote was in the north, would understand that it was jobs that had move people south not house prices. However Nevin's bonkers ideas gained credence in the DLTR - John Prescott's monster department. In 2002 a little noticed pledge to spend billions on demolishing the north was passed by Parliament. This created a number of well paid executive jobs in undemocratic bureaucracies to carry out the work. Not surprisingly the guru of housing demolition, Bernard Nevin, is now Chief Executive of the pathfinder demolishing Bootle and Edge Hill in Liverpool.
Prescott found the £2 billion to pay for demolition from Ed Balls at the Treasury and by coincidence Ed's wife Yvette Cooper became the minister responsible for demolition and chief supporter. If anyone with commonsense had been involved they would question the premise that you demolish houses working people can afford and replace them with houses they can't afford in order to stimulate the housing market. Unfortunately for the Labour Party no one with commonsense was available for the rest of the decade. While New Labour was winning huge landslide victories it's core vote in the north were having their housing costs artificially raised by lack of housing and demolition. In Newcastle the enthusiastic demolition of traditional working class areas led to a decline in the Labour vote and the city council was lost in 2005. The population decline lost the city half a Parliamentary seat and the boundaries have now created two potentially marginal seats.
Looking into Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire where elections can be won or lost Labour would dearly like it's traditional supporters to come out and vote in force. Unfortunately many Labour voters have been affected by the mis-directed pathfinder. Young people can't find the cheap housing because it's been demolished. They no longer have to move south for work but they have now found New Labour have scuppered the chance of them owning their own home.
In Gateshead the businesses of Saltwell Road are already suffering a dive in trade due to people being moved out. The prospect of 440 demolitions will reduce the affordable houses that are available for people. Unfortunately Gateshead's Labour Party, despite seeing the disaster that happened in Newcastle, think demolition won't take them out of power. So far Gateshead's Liberal Democrats have not worked out how big an issue housing is.
All of this is the perfect example of the butterfly effect. This is the semi-scientific theory that a butterfly flaps its wings in New Zealand the unintended consequence is a hurricane force wind Europe. In the same way a highly specialised academic theory on housing that should have been ignored by sensible people became Labour Party policy and may help those in the pathfinder areas abandon Labour.
If the Conservatives were in power this drive headlines ot "the ethnic cleansing of the working class", as one Labour MP claimed, fortunately the London based media rarely cover the North and Labour have gotten away with mass demolition. However the housing crisis may come back to bite them!
Links
The Times
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Fourth Attempt At Demolition By Gateshead Planners
On Thursday 18th February Gateshead Council put out notices on lamp posts saying they were applying for permission to demolish homes in the pathfinder area. This is the surreal world of Gateshead Council where the public sector is facing massive financial cutbacks and a huge housing shortage it is going to spend money demolishing houses people want to live in.
The process is; one department in Gateshead Council goes to Gateshead Council and asks permission, as the planning authority, to authorise the method of demolition they have choosen. This is not on the principle of demolition just the methodology. As usual the residents are last in the list of people who are considered in this process. The council will listen to residents views, tell them to shut up, and demolish. The first time this matter came to Gateshead Council the Secretary of Saltwell and Bensham Residents Association was told to shut up or she would be thrown out. Such is the contempt Gateshead Council has for it's own residents.
On the 3 previous occasions Gateshead Council planners went through the motions and the application was found to be unlawful. It took the actions of a national charity taking them to the high court before they "discovered" this on the first two occasions. Later on even the Secretary of State, through Government Office North East (GONE), told them they needed an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
This all very dry and bureaucratic stuff but basically European Law says you have to assess the damage to the environment of demolition. Something most ordinary citizens would expect a 21st century local authority would want to do. Unfortunately Gateshead Council is not a 21st century council but is embedded somewhere between the Jurassic and Medieval regarding itself as immune from European Law. So after 6 months of thinking about doing an Environmental Impact Assessment it has decided it, as the planning authority, doesn't need one. This is called a "screening opinion". This may leave them open to further legal challenge.
Silent in all of this is Gateshead Council's highly paid legal advisers. So far they have allowed 3 unlawful planning applications go to committee. Will this be a further embarrasing own goal.
Once again residents will have to send their objections into Gateshead Council so that the Planning Committee can carry out the usual condescending process of ignoring local people. If the screening opinion is not legal then once again Gateshead Council may have to explain to a Judge why it doesn't have to obey the law.
The process is; one department in Gateshead Council goes to Gateshead Council and asks permission, as the planning authority, to authorise the method of demolition they have choosen. This is not on the principle of demolition just the methodology. As usual the residents are last in the list of people who are considered in this process. The council will listen to residents views, tell them to shut up, and demolish. The first time this matter came to Gateshead Council the Secretary of Saltwell and Bensham Residents Association was told to shut up or she would be thrown out. Such is the contempt Gateshead Council has for it's own residents.
On the 3 previous occasions Gateshead Council planners went through the motions and the application was found to be unlawful. It took the actions of a national charity taking them to the high court before they "discovered" this on the first two occasions. Later on even the Secretary of State, through Government Office North East (GONE), told them they needed an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
This all very dry and bureaucratic stuff but basically European Law says you have to assess the damage to the environment of demolition. Something most ordinary citizens would expect a 21st century local authority would want to do. Unfortunately Gateshead Council is not a 21st century council but is embedded somewhere between the Jurassic and Medieval regarding itself as immune from European Law. So after 6 months of thinking about doing an Environmental Impact Assessment it has decided it, as the planning authority, doesn't need one. This is called a "screening opinion". This may leave them open to further legal challenge.
Silent in all of this is Gateshead Council's highly paid legal advisers. So far they have allowed 3 unlawful planning applications go to committee. Will this be a further embarrasing own goal.
Once again residents will have to send their objections into Gateshead Council so that the Planning Committee can carry out the usual condescending process of ignoring local people. If the screening opinion is not legal then once again Gateshead Council may have to explain to a Judge why it doesn't have to obey the law.
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