• Successful regeneration can never be about just bricks and mortar – it has to have local communities at its heart (How power operates in modern Britain: with absolute contempt, 3 July). Done right, there’s no doubt that regeneration can transform lives by delivering better homes; greater job opportunities; access to the best skills and training, and excellent local facilities, infrastructure and services. The figures here in Haringey are stark – we have more than 3,000 people in temporary accommodation and in just three months this spring, more than 100 children were referred to our social services as a result of either being homeless or living in unsuitable accommodation. We won’t stand for that.
Shackled by the impact of government funding cuts and constraints on borrowing that leave local authorities impotent in the face of mounting housing challenges, we have to find a different way to tackle the housing crisis and create the kind of places that local people want to live. It is for these reasons that councils across the country are exploring new options for funding large-scale regeneration – with partnership schemes being considered and adopted in areas as far afield as Sheffield, Havering and Oxford.
The Haringey Development Vehicle – a new 50/50 partnership between the council and developers Lendlease – is an innovative approach to regeneration. Far from privatising council assets, it will see council land and developer cash and expertise brought together to deliver billions of pounds of investment to Haringey – with 6,400 new homes and thousands of new jobs. Decisions, profits and risk will be shared between partners, allowing council profits to be reinvested in local services.
We’ve gone so much further than most local authorities in ensuring that the needs of local residents remain at the heart of our housing plans. Rather than selling off land, this partnership will allow us to retain control of our assets and ensure they’re put to the best possible use for Haringey’s communities. But the new homes and improved housing estates – which it’s important to be clear will come with a guaranteed right-to-return on equivalent terms for all existing council tenants – do not paint the full picture of how the partnership could transform Haringey.
Supporting local residents, and recognising that it is our diverse communities that give Haringey its strength, is at the heart of our ambition. That’s why, in addition to thousands of new homes, this joint project will see investment in community infrastructure including a new school, new health centre, new town centres with retail, office and community space, new civic offices and a new library. Alongside this will come significant wider benefits: £8m will be reinvested in social and economic programmes such as skills and training for local residents and community-based programmes to support people with mental health issues, while a £20m social impact programme will drive longer-term positive place-making, focused on boosting local people’s prospects, health, environment and community participation.
And our construction framework will ensure a raft of employment opportunities including contractual obligation to pay the London living wage, jobs for local people, investment in skills and apprenticeships, community engagement, outreach schemes with local schools and sustainable supply chains. With too much economic uncertainty facing the country today, we’re more determined than ever to secure the stability, expertise and investment needed to bring the right regeneration on behalf of everyone who lives and works in Haringey.
Cllr Alan Strickland
Haringey council cabinet member for housing, regeneration and planning
• Andy Forbes’ attack on Aditya Chakrabortty (Letters, 6 July) is grossly ill-informed. Perhaps Mr Forbes has not had time – in the week available to the public – to read the roughly 1,500 pages of the Haringey cabinet report which Mr Chakrabortty critiqued? Perhaps Mr Forbes himself would be happy to sign up to a personal property deal where page after page was marked “draft” and many hundreds of sections were redacted? I certainly wouldn’t. And when I once worked as a property solicitor I would never have let my clients sign such documents.
Mr Forbes appears to make a glib assumption that residents on Haringey’s housing estates approve the Haringey Development Vehicle because they are not “happy with their current conditions and … want change”. And because “many of them are in fact desperate for better-designed and managed estates and don’t care if the landlord is public or private as long as the service is responsive and good and caring”.
I’ve lived in Tottenham for over 30 years – with 16 years as a local councillor. I agree that of course people want change and many need much improved housing. But does Mr Forbes know if they have been given a vote on the scheme (they have not). Or if anyone has asked them if they’d like to stay as council tenants?
In any case, a non-ideological question Mr Forbes entirely ignores is whether the deal with Lendlease will actually work to improve current residents’ homes on the scale needed. And whether those residents in the existing community will be able to rent or perhaps afford to buy those new homes? After Lendlease, will the existing community even exist? It appears, too, that Mr Forbes may not have read the two long, detailed factual reports – full of expert evidence – gathered by Haringey’s own scrutiny panel on the HDV, a panel of councillors which advised not to continue with the HDV scheme.
Let me explain to Mr Forbes that he’s fallen for good-old politicians’ logic. Something must be done. Here’s something. We must do it.
Alan Stanton
London
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
