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'Hell' estate from Blair poverty campaign gets £2.4bn revamp
Mira Bar-Hillel, Property Correspondent14.08.08
One of London's worst-designed and most crime-ridden council estates is to be transformed over the next 16 years at a cost of £2.4billion.
Southwark council today unveiled a renewal programme for the Aylesbury estate, involving the gradual demolition of what is now a concrete carbuncle in a run-down and forbidding area.
All 2,700 flats on the estate, including 500 that were sold to tenants under the right-to-buy scheme, will be knocked down.
Owner occupiers will be bought out and displaced tenants will have to be found alternative accommodation.
When the estate is rebuilt there will be 1,700 new homes for rent, 500 shared ownership units and 2,800 new private homes for sale. Work is due to begin in January 2010.
The Aylesbury, nicknamed the "estate from hell" by residents, was where former prime minister Tony Blair launched his campaign against social exclusion shortly after his election in May 1997.
More than a decade later - and despite a series of plans to regenerate what is believed to be the largest estate in Europe - it remains one of the worst examples of public housing in Britain.
The 500 flats sold under right-to-buy will have to be bought back by Southwark either by negotiation or compulsory purchase. The tenants of the other flats will have to be rehoused in phases until the project is finished.
Martin Smith, project director of the Aylesbury programme, said: "We believe the phasing plan represents the best way forward. When devising it, we had to consider the physical condition of homes and how best to maintain them and the physical infrastructure of the estate.
"We also have to regenerate the new area to ensure we can afford to build the social housing for our tenants."
Paul Noblet, Southwark's executive member for regeneration, said: "Our first priority is ensuring residents move to good-quality homes that meet their needs. I am confident we will be able to achieve that goal."
Last year, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith visited the Aylesbury estate, accompanied by Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair and police minister Tony McNulty. They promised to work with police and community support officers to help reduce crime.
Six months later, on Boxing Day, a 20-year-old man was shot dead on the estate. His body lay undiscovered for 24 hours.
Reader views (2)
It is about time this crack town estate gets torn down... 20 years ago it was a prostitute and drug infested hell hole.
- Gillian, Florida, USA
MMM £2,400,000,000, 5,000 houses works out at £20k short of half a million per house. In the current house price climate that seems rather expensive. Would it not be more financially efficient to buy some of the thousands of houses for sale at current market prices. Never mind its only tax payers money from the bottomless pit of ordinary working people's hard earned cash. Plenty more where that came from.
- Nellie, East London
