{"id":12072,"date":"2013-04-23T09:30:27","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T08:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=12072"},"modified":"2013-04-22T23:16:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T22:16:12","slug":"southwark-councils-shame-as-heygate-flats-are-flogged-off-to-overseas-buyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/southwark-councils-shame-as-heygate-flats-are-flogged-off-to-overseas-buyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwark Council’s shame as Heygate flats are flogged off to overseas buyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Southwark<\/p>\n

The story of the Elephant & Castle regeneration scheme<\/a>\u00a0has gone from outrage to sheer farce, as it’s been\u00a0revealed\u00a0that the Australian-based property group Lend Lease \u00a0have now begun flogging off the first of the new homes planned on the site of the Heygate Estate.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Heygate<\/p>\n

[CGI rendering of the sunny future promised to those with\u00a0sufficiently\u00a0deep pockets]<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks to a leaked document<\/a> it was discovered that the 15 year project will see just \u00a079 social rented units being made\u00a0available\u00a0out \u00a0a total of 2,535 new homes.<\/p>\n

The confidential documents also revealed a woeful\u00a0mismanagement\u00a0of public assets, with Southwark council spending around \u00a344 million kicking out the\u00a0residents\u00a0of the estate, gifting this enormous slab of prime location to Lend Lease for a paltry \u00a350 million.<\/p>\n

\"Southwark<\/p>\n

Primed for\u00a0foreign\u00a0investment<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Standard<\/a> reports that the first of the 235 new flats in Phase I, Trafalgar Place – made up of seven buildings ranging in height from 4 to 10 storeys –\u00a0\u00a0have already gone on sale in Asia.<\/p>\n

Agent Colliers International are reported to have been appointed to market the flats to overseas buyers, \u201cwith a particular focus on the Asian markets\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prices will start at a sky high \u00a3310,000 for a one-bedroom flat, with the\u00a0development due to be completed in 2015.\u00a0Lend Lease have claimed that twenty five per cent of the homes at Trafalgar Place will be affordable, although one person’s definition of ‘affordable<\/a>‘ can often be quite at odds with another’s.<\/p>\n

\"Southwark<\/p>\n

Insult to the community<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSelling abroad at very high prices the first homes to be built to replace the council homes is just a further insult to the local community,\u201d said\u00a0Liberal Democrat Southwark MP Simon Hughes.<\/p>\n

And he’s right. Southwark have acted disgracefully and the lack of accountability and\u00a0transparency\u00a0over these deals is deeply\u00a0troubling.<\/p>\n

Oh, and here’s the final kick in the teeth for locals desperate for housing: the council is allowing Lend Lease to start selling the private flats before any agreement has been reached for the construction of the affordable units.<\/p>\n

Outrageous.<\/p>\n

Read more about this whole stinking deal on the urban75 forums<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of the Elephant & Castle regeneration scheme\u00a0has gone from outrage to sheer farce, as it’s been\u00a0revealed\u00a0that the Australian-based property group Lend Lease \u00a0have now begun flogging off the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,193],"tags":[469,521,354,10],"class_list":["post-12072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-places","tag-elephant-and-castle","tag-heygate","tag-housing","tag-london"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/hotel-elephant-arts-project-02.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-38I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12072"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12082,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072\/revisions\/12082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}