Councillor Danny Beales

• IN life and housing development, timings matter.

Incomplete projects get in the way of living our lives.

With regard to Camden Council’s all-important West Kentish Town Estate regeneration scheme, the “Landlord Offer” to residents before the 2020 ballot about complete demolition of the estate addressed the question: “When will the redevelopment be complete?”

The answer was: “We will not know… until residents have told us whether they want to proceed.” So no end-date given.

However, the start date – autumn 2021 – was provided and missed. The project is now set to begin… soon.

After the 2020 ballot, Councillor Danny Beales tweeted “it’s always been clear it can take 10+ years to rebuild a whole estate”.

End dates in subsequent Camden documents were 2034, 2039, and 2043, the current official guess when the last residents will get their new homes. Only 18 years to go.

Cllr Beales’s word for this is “flexibility”. In July 2022 he told the cabinet that an important benefit of Camden’s preferred housing delivery model, namely “council as developer”, “…is that it gives you a greater degree of flexibility about future phases”.

“Flexibility” has affected the timings of all four big estate regeneration schemes in Gospel Oak (one is complete) and most things in the area, especially the work to Queen’s Crescent.

There are 250 homes still to be built at Bacton Low Rise (phase 2). Last month we found out work will restart in 2025 after stopping in 2017. Again no end date is provided.

Meanwhile Wendling residents have just learned that their estate’s regeneration is awaiting Camden’s exploration of “different models to enable delivery” including “a partnership with a quality construction partner”. Yet again, no end date given.

Two things are worth saying here. First: Camden attaches no importance to giving reliable project dates to its residents. By itself that is an extraordinary finding.

Second: the “council-as-developer” approach to rebuilding Camden’s big estates is being dropped because, as the housing scrutiny committee has been told, “funding capacity issues require the consideration of developer-led approaches where investment and risk can be transferred”.

What does all this mean? The short answer is Camden is unaccountable and in financial doo-doo.

The two problems are probably closely linked.

TOM YOUNG
Address supplied