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Protesters held signs reading “Boo to ghost flats!” as they gathered at the Town Hall last night (Thursday) in opposition to a new housing scheme.
They also waved red cards as the proposals for the redevelopment of Finsbury Leisure Centre were discussed by councillors.
Under Islington’s proposals, the centre would be demolished and replaced with a new facility including sports pitches and tennis courts.
The masterplan, however, will see 180 new homes built on the site.
The council has told the Tribune that private properties will make up 50 per cent of the development and homes for social rent will make up the other 50 per cent.
It is still consulting on the proposals, which have not yet been submitted for planning approval.
But residents in the area who oppose the scheme say it is too large a design for a ward which they say is “already the densest area” of the borough.
Teacher Liza Evers, who has lived in Bunhill for 35 years, said she was concerned about the loss of green space the plans entail.
“They’re contradicting their own pledge towards open space and green space,” she said.
“It’s vastly overdeveloped – we’re saying: yes, improve the leisure centre, improve community services, but don’t overdevelop.
She added: “It’s not nimbyism – we’re already the densest area.”
While Ms Evers welcomes the building of social homes, she said she is concerned the construction of private homes – built to “cross-fund” the affordable homes – will add to the number of “unoccupied ghost flats” in the area.
“On City Road, there are all these new towers built – those are [largely] empty, they’re ghost flats,” she said.
“There are a lot of unoccupied ghost flats: all you have to do is look at night-time over time – and I’ve been doing this for years – to see how many lights are on.
“So many of those flats aren’t lived in, they’re second homes or property investment.
Ms Evers added: “We’ve lived here 35 years, others have lived here longer. We don’t want to sell [Bunhill] off for someone not to live there.
“We’ll end up in ghost towns. To get intellectual, the whole neo-liberal project is selling it off, literally by the pound, for the pound.
“There are creative ways to deal with the housing problem – there’s way more to it than just slicing it up and selling it.”
During last night’s council meeting, Bunhill resident Luke Harding asked Cllr Diarmaid Ward how the council will “reutilise the unused office space and flats in the St Luke’s area to address Islington’s housing need.”…
Football players who use Finsbury Leisure Centre were among those waving red cards in the public gallery at last night’s full council meeting.
Under the council proposals, housing could be built on the site of the current sports pitches in Norman Street, with replacement pitches created on the rooftop of the new facility. At one point, opponents were warned the meeting might go into private session if they kept on with their protest.
Gordon Bennett, a Bunhill resident, has played football on the pitches every week for the last 15 years.
“It’s a big deal,” Mr Bennett said. “We really understood during lockdown how important it was to us when we couldn’t play.”
There are currently two smaller pitches and two larger pitches attached to the leisure centre. “They were refurbished about a year ago – they’re in really good condition, and they’re well-used,” Mr Bennett said.
He said council plans to move the pitches to the centre’s rooftop will reduce the space available for sports.
“By their nature rooftop pitches are going to be very small – there’s not going to be the amount of space that we have now,” said Mr Bennett.
“You won’t have that community feel where people walking by can watch and pick up a game. [Rooftop pitches are] a very different thing, and they’d be years away. We’d be talking about many years where those pitches are out of action,” he said.
Francis Moss, who lives nearby, said: “Many local schools use it as their playing field, for sports day as well as for after-school and holiday clubs.”
Red card drama in council chamber amid ‘ghost flats’ warning for leisure centre. Masterplan will see 180 new homes built on the site by Anna Lamche, Islington Tribune, 9 December 2022. See the full piece here.
What frustrates those living in EC1 is that the three Bunhill councillors – with Holloway based deputy council leader Diarmaid Ward orchestrating the party line they tow – simply don’t listen to local opinion. For reasons best known to himself, Ward has become obsessed with building new homes as infills and on leisure space. Rather than looking at retro-fitting empty buildings or putting a decent amount of energy into campaigning for the owners of the huge numbers of empty investment flats in EC1 to be compelled to let them to people on the council waiting list at social rent, he wants to use sports and leisure grounds to build ‘brand new’ housing (much of which will be sold to the private sector to fund Islington’s capital programme). Here’s some of what Bunhill residents we’re in contact with are telling us:
The community concern is that Bunhill Ward is already the densest area of the UK and Islington Council is over densifying the area to the detriment of current and future cohesion of community and wellbeing, taking away vital open space for all, putting St Luke’s Area social housing into shadow and further fuel poverty, issuing misleading designs and not engaging with community led design.
Moving green space allocation to other areas of the borough to maintain quota is not a solution. There are local buildings like Olivers Yard- empty for ten years- that could be transformed into an adequate local medical centre.
Will the council commit to working with the local community to set out a plan to deliver housing on other sites such as the Moorfields Eye Hospital site redevelopment and Olivers Yard, to improve the Finsbury Leisure Centre community facilities and open space?
Residents in Bunhill and Cripplegate ward have already seen how Islington Council ignored community proposals for the old Richard Cloudesley School site on Golden Lane. The development abuts the border with the City and as the Islington Gazette reported on 2 March 2018, when the scheme was passed by Islington’s planning committee:
Charles Humphries, chair of the Golden Lane Estate Residents’ Association revealed campaigners had worked with architects to come up with an alternative scheme that didn’t include a tower block and would result in 10 more homes.
He asked that the decision be put on hold until planners had the chance to look at their proposal, an idea not even referred to by councillors on the commitee during their discussion.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” he said. “That’s what they say. Here is a scheme for 66 flats, paid for with s106 money from the City of London.
“That has been the attitude from the inception of this scheme. Don’t rock the boat. But this is a balance of harm and public benefit, and we consider this isn’t a gift horse, it is a Trojan horse, and should be looked at very carefully indeed.”
So even in 2018, Islington councillors wouldn’t consider a community scheme that provided more flats at social rent than the one they went ahead with. As far as Islington Council is concerned, when it comes to the provision of social housing it’s either ‘my way or the highway’ – even when the community comes up with a better plan that produces more flats.
That said, it isn’t just in the south of the borough that residents feel Islington Council doesn’t listen to them, as this letter to the Islington Tribune demonstrates:
Islington Council seems determined to press ahead with plans for the proposed Vorley Road development despite the depressed property market for new one- and two-bedroom build flats.
Cllr Diarmaid Ward claims Islington needs to build and sell private flats in the new development to pay for the new council properties but seems to be ignoring the evidence of falling demand across the capital, including Archway.
There is already a glut of one- and two-bedroom flats on the market in central London as many young professionals gravitate out of the city in the fall-out of the pandemic.
The GLA Quarterly Housing Market Report (March 2021) states that house prices are reported to have increased slightly in the last year, probably in response to the stamp duty holiday, but weakening asking prices indicate that this growth is unlikely to last.
You only have to look next door to the proposed development for evidence of this demographic shift. The Land Registry reveals only 34 of the 140 flats in Hillhouse have sold since the new development came on to the market in 2018.
Clearly it makes no financial sense to build more of the same literally next door, especially as building costs have risen dramatically post pandemic. We need fewer private flats and more affordable lower density housing with outside space.
Cllr Ward and his colleagues need urgently to reconsider their development plan, or the council’s balance sheet, and more importantly the needs of the local community, will pay a heavy price.
Zadoc Nava, N19, Islington Tribune 14 May 2021. See the original here.
Which leads us back to the man driving the ill-thought out leisure space grabs and infills, deputy council leader Diarmaid Ward, a mandarin who is uninterested in community solutions to the problems he inadequately addresses. Turning to Sherry Arnstein’s “ladder of citizen participation”, we can see that not just Finsbury Leisure Centre but many of the schemes pushed by Diarmaid Ward reach only its bottom rungs.
Below is how the 8 rungs of the ladder are described at www.partnerships.org.uk/part/arn.htm:
1.Manipulation and 2 Therapy. Both are non participative. The aim is to cure or educate the participants. The proposed plan is best and the job of participation is to achieve public support through public relations.
3.Informing. A most important first step to legitimate participation. But too frequently the emphasis is on a one way flow of information. No channel for feedback.
4.Consultation. Again a legitimate step: attitude surveys, neighbourhood meetings and public enquiries. But Arnstein still feels this is just a window dressing ritual.
5.Placation. For example, co-option of hand-picked ‘worthies’ onto committees. It allows citizens to advise or plan ad infinitum but retains for power holders the right to judge the legitimacy or feasibility of the advice.
6.Partnership. Power is in fact redistributed through negotiation between citizens and power holders. Planning and decision-making responsibilities are shared e.g. through joint committees.
7.Delegation. Citizens holding a clear majority of seats on committees with delegated powers to make decisions. Public now has the power to assure accountability of the programme to them.
8.Citizen Control. Have-nots handle the entire job of planning, policy making and managing a programme e.g. neighbourhood corporation with no intermediaries between it and the source of funds.
To us it looks like Islington’s plans as regards Finsbury Leisure Centre fall somewhere between tokenism and non-participation. There is a one-way flow of information and how accurate it is remains open to question. Indeed, even the accuracy of deputy leader Diarmaid Ward’s council register of interests might be queried. Anyone who looks at Diarmaid Ward’s RoI and then does a few web searches, is likely to conclude that this councillor may not have been transparent when completing it. There is a discrepancy between Ward’s LinkedIn data and his council register of interests, in the former he states he is an AHRC PhD candidate at the Bartlett but the latter contains no mention of this. Below is a screenshot of part of the LinkIn profile on which Ward claims to be an AHRC PhD candidate.
Given that the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funds postgraduate studies, if Ward is getting money from them to pursue a PhD then surely it should be listed on his register of interests? Below a screenshot of Ward’s council RoI that makes no mention of AHRC funding for his post-graduate studies.
We don’t know if Ward is actually an AHRC PhD candidate as he claims on LinkedIn, since a search at the AHRC website brought up no results for him. His Twitter profile suggests his AHRC funding comes through LAHP (London Arts Humanities Partnership). He is listed by University College London (UCL) – on the Institutional Research Information Service part of their website – as a Bartlett student.
Given that it is difficult to interpret being an AHRC PhD candidate as meaning anything other than that the person in question is receiving funding from this body, we looked through the Islington Council website to see what Ward had listed as gifts, just in case it was there. This search only brought in three results: one for a £25 M&S tie; another for a pair of boots allegedly worth £74.19; and the decidedly odd one out, which was for a dinner offered but declined from Mount Anvil property developer Killian Hurley.
We don’t view it as necessary to list a gift you didn’t accept and this brought to mind the phrase ‘methinks thou doth protest too much’. A search for Diarmaid Ward and Mount Anvil brought up -among other things – a January 2020 ‘invitation only’ breakfast briefing featuring the former and hosted by the latter.
It is difficult to imagine Ward didn’t have so much as a cup of tea or coffee, let alone some food, at the breakfast hosted by Mount Anvil. Since he hasn’t included this among gifts listed with the council, we assume either that is the case or he was being paid for giving a briefing in his capacity as freelance consultant – which is listed on his RoI. That said, he is very much billed at the Mount Anvil event on the basis of his role as a councillor, while his RoI consultancy listing steers those reading it towards thinking such work is for local authorities rather than property developers and their friends.
Above property developers Mount Anvil and others use LinkedIn postings to demonstrate a networking affinity with Diarmaid Ward. Martin Arnold are a firm of chartered surveyors. It should be noted the demolition plan for part of the Barnsbury Estate is controversial and has met with local opposition, our own view is that the greenest building is the one that already exists and that refurbishment and retro-fitting should be the preferred option.
Returning to Ward’s register of interests, the entry for his partner may also be misleading since it states only ‘secretary (unpaid) Highbury Quadrant TRA (tenants and residents association)’. According to a local press source linked to here, Ward’s partner is Suma Surendranath. Surendranath’s Twitter profile also creates the impression she is his partner, since alongside retweeting Ward’s election as deputy leader of the council, there are more personal messages directed at him and about his immediate family, such as the one reproduced beneath.
The profile of this Twitter account lists Suma Surendranath as Education and Professional Development Lead @RCPCH (Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health) and this can also be found on her LinkedIn profile – where it is stated she’s been in this job for more than 5 years. Why Ward includes some voluntary work his partner does on his register of interests but not her professional employment is beyond us. Alongside the other issues we’ve addressed about the Islington deputy council leader’s RoI, it creates the impression he is not being transparent.
Such feelings are reinforced by the patronising way Ward deals with Islington residents and communities who object to his housing and development plans, brushing off their concerns and treating them as if they are beneath contempt. See for example the tweet beneath about the plans to destroy the much loved Braitwaite House podium and infill Quaker Court.
The fact that residents feel their views are ignored during consultations shows why Ward and Islington Council merit only a very low rating on Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of public participation. It isn’t even as if hundreds of residents haven’t made their views on what Ward is endorsing in the above tweet clear – the petition linked to here is just one example of that. One of Ward’s tweets on housing was slammed as misleading and disingenuous in the letters column of the Islington Tribune, while three months ago a story in the same outlet began: “Climate activists have accused the deputy leader of the council (Ward) of breaking a promise to hold a citizens’ assembly…”
Islington has a massive housing crisis and the entire world has a climate emergency, neither issue will be satisfactorily addressed until the bureaucrats at the local council recognise that our endlessly creative communities can better solve these problems than elitist mandarins at the town hall. There are many ways of dealing with the housing crisis without ruining our football pitches and sports facilities, and these start with returning power to the people and listening to them.
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