A special message from our new WKGGCH Chair

It’s with such great pleasure that this should be my first message to you as the new Chair of WKGGCH! I pay tribute to my predecessor as Chair, Keith Drew, for his commitment to our cause for resident control over our future.

I hope that by now you’ve heard we’ve defeated the terrible threat to demolish our homes, which we’ve fought against since 2008.

On 15 November 2019, our landlord, Hammersmith & Fulham Council, agreed to refund the £100 million, which the developer paid for the estates, in return for ending the legal agreement for their demolition.

Thank you to so many residents and to so many supporters all over the country who’ve helped us defend our community.

For eleven long years, we’ve fought for the right to determine our own future. We’ve struggled through thick and thin. We’ve plumbed the depths of despair, and we’ve climbed the heights of hope.

Above all, we’ve stuck together. United, we’ve proven strong.

Now we’ve defeated demolition, we must transfer our estates into community ownership. It’s the only way to protect ourselves. Never again should we have to fear or fight for our homes.

Once we’ve secured our homes into community ownership, it’ll be for us to decide the future of our estates, and it’ll be for us to choose which services we should provide for our community to thrive and prosper.

Back in July, the Government stopped our Right to Transfer application. At our AGM on 29 October, we changed our rules to deal with that, so now we’re back on track.

Enjoy the holidays and we’ll see you in the New Year!

Linda Sanders

His Royal Highness, Prince Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud (above), the Saudi Arabian Ambassador, has offered to meet with us and our MP, Andy Slaughter, to discuss the contents of the letter we sent to His Royal Highness Mohammad bin Salman Al-Saud (below), Crown Prince and Deputy Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, Chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, and Chairman of the Public Investment Fund.

“Your Royal Highness

West Kensington and Gibbs Green Estates, London, United Kingdom

West Ken Gibbs Green Community Homes (WKGGCH) represents the residents of the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates, which occupy 25 acres of land in West London.

I understand that the Public Investment Fund (PIF) is part of a consortium led by Candy Ventures which is considering a takeover bid for Capital & Counties Properties PLC (Capco).

Capco’s Earl’s Court assets include a contract, the Conditional Land Sale Agreement (CLSA), for the redevelopment of 760 homes. Our homes.

We are a proud community of 2,000 men, women and children. For the past decade we have fiercely defended ourselves from eviction and protected our estates from demolition.

Our film, The Fight for The People’s Estates, tells our story. I would be most grateful if you could please watch it.

The extant permission for the redevelopment of Earl’s Court and our estates is unimplementable. So too is the CLSA.

The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham and the Mayor of London will not grant new permissions for any development which includes our estates.

We shall not be forced out of our homes; we shall transfer them into community ownership.

Please work with us to achieve our objectives. I invite you or your representative to visit our estates.

I am copying this letter to the PIF Board Members and Executives, Candy Ventures, Capco, Deutsche Bank, and our Member of Parliament, Andy Slaughter.

Yours sincerely

Keith Drew, Chair WKGGCH”

Postcards from Mayfair

WKGGCH Chair, Keith Drew, armed with our letters to the Ambassador and to His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al-Saud, Chairman of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Mayfair, London.

The Ambassador’s Office had told our MP: “the Head of Security has been informed to tell his staff to accept the letters from your constituents and these will then be passed to the Ambassador’s Office”.

What could possibly go wrong?

All we could find was a lone Gurkha patrolling the front. He knew nothing about it.

We headed round the back . . .

. . . where Linda Sanders, WKGGCH’s Company Secretary, was already deep in negotiations with the Saudis to let us into their Embassy to deliver our letters.

Julia, centre, wielded an extra-large version of our letter to the Crown Prince.

The Saudis wouldn’t let us in. But nor would they come out to accept our letters.

Round the front, the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Branch of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Operations Directorate arrived on the scene.

They read the letter from the Ambassador’s Office to our MP, Andy Slaughter, which had authorised the Embassy to accept our letters.

To break the deadlock, we authorised the male Officer, who asked not to be photographed, to take over our negotiations with the Saudis for them to accept our letters.

He went in. Armed.

Then he came out.

He confirmed that the Saudis would not come out. Nor would they let us in. But they would let him in to deliver the letters on our behalf.

We agreed. He went in again. This time, fully armed.

Meanwhile, the female Officer, centre, stayed outside, flanked by Maria, left, and Linda, right.

Once the male Officer had come back out of the Embassy again, and reported the letters safely delivered, we thanked the Police,

and headed home.

On the way, we dropped off a copy to Nick Candy, whose company, Candy Ventures is fronting the takeover consortium with Saudi Arabia.

We are grateful to the Ambassador’s Office for confirming: “We will show His Royal Highness the letters when he returns from the Kingdom”.

We look forward to meeting with His Royal Highness, the Ambassador, as soon as possible.

In this eleventh year of our campaign, we are pleased to present a film telling the story about the fight for the people’s estates.

You can watch it here: The Fight for The People’s Estates

We held a test screening on 12 March 2019 at a special Film Night in the Gibbs Green Hall, which was attended by residents, neighbours, elected politicians, and professionals from the worlds of housing and academia.

From Campaign to Ownership set our fight in the context of struggles by communities in Glasgow in the 1970s and London in the 1980s to save their neighbourhoods from demolition.

They established community owned housing associations, which took ownership of their land and buildings. They refurbished and modernised their homes, meeting the needs of their communities, while also providing high quality low rented homes for those in need.

You can find a link to the programme for the night at the end of this web post, after the photos.

From Campaign to Ownership: Film Night Programme

In 2009, over a thousand residents from 83% of all households signed a petition saying no to demolition and demanding that residents should determine the future of their homes.

In 2011, residents from two thirds of all households became Members of WKGGCH, which is dedicated to improving the neighbourhood and to saving the estates by transferring them into community ownership under resident control.

In 2012, 80% of the residents who responded to the Council’s formal consultation on Capco’s redevelopment scheme said they were against demolition.

In 2013, residents from 60% of all households signed a petition to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government requesting that he should refuse consent for the Council to sign the Conditional Land Sale Agreement, which provides for the sale and demolition of the estates.

In 2014, 120 people attended a WKGGCH General Meeting at which 79 Members voted unanimously for WKGGCH to serve a Right to Transfer Proposal Notice on the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham proposing the transfer of the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates to a community-owned housing association.

In 2015, 150 people attended a WKGGCH General Meeting at which our Members voted by 100 to 1 for WKGGCH to serve the Right to Transfer Proposal Notice on LBHF, which WKGGCH subsequently served in August 2015.

In 2015, residents from 57% of all households signed a petition to the Secretary of State requesting that he should allow WKGGCH’s Right to Transfer Proposal to proceed to the next stage.

In 2016, over one hundred residents participated in the creation of The People’s Plan – a vision for improvements and additional new homes as infill and extra storeys to existing buildings.

In 2017, WKGGCH obtained responses to a survey from 502 residents living in 65% of all households. 91% said The People’s Plan was either good or excellent and better or far better than demolition.

In 2018, LBHF registered WKGGCH as the Neighbourhood Forum covering the estates, following our Members’ resolution at the 2017 AGM that WKGGCH should apply to become a Neighbourhood Forum and for the estates to be designated as a Neighbourhood Area.

In 2019, WKGGCH obtained grants from the Government’s localism and community led housing funds to work up proposals for new homes.

Residents prepare to storm the offices of Mr Ka-shing, one of the potential buyers for Capco’s Earl’s Court assets

The 760 homes of the People’s Estates and the futures of its 2,000 residents are being held hostage by a property speculator. In exchange for their release, it has demanded from the three planning authorities a preferential planning permission to build thousands of homes extra to its existing permission – a ransom worth billions of pounds.

Capco is a public company listed on the London and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges. It’s a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Capco is trying to hype the value of its Earl’s Court assets because it’s desperate to persuade potential buyers to pay as much as possible for what one of those potential buyers told our MP Andy Slaughter was “this stalled development”.

Capco, Hammersmith & Fulham Council, the Mayor of London and the Secretary of State all know that thanks to Capco’s failures, the planning permission for Earl’s Court is incapable of ever being implemented and that the agreement to sell the estates is incapable of ever being enforced.

So, how can a public company demand an unacceptable planning permission in return for the release of our community from the endless menace of forcible displacement? And, how could any democratically accountable public authority possibly agree to such an exorbitant demand under that sort of duress?

Last year, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea Councils said no. Now, on 13 February 2019, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has issued Capco with a stark warning:

“We inherited a totally untenable situation at Earls Court, and as I made clear in November last year, I want to see the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates handed back entirely to the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham ahead of alternative plans being progressed and determined.

I understand that since then Capco have suggested they would make the transfer of the estates conditional on a performance agreement and receipt of an acceptable planning permission. This is not acceptable – and my patience is wearing thin. TfL have therefore made very clear on behalf of the GLA group that progress [with the joint venture development]depends on Capco transferring the estates back to LBH&F unconditionally.”

Hammersmith & Fulham Council, meanwhile, is considering compulsory purchase of Capco’s land interests so it can ensure not only that development actually happens, but also that the proportion of affordable housing is significantly increased.

We warn Capco, and we warn anyone thinking of buying Capco’s Earl’s Court assets: the community of the People’s Estates has stood together through ten long years. From highs to lows, through thick and thin, we’ve defended our neighbourhood. We’ll never give up.

Capco! You’re beaten. Surrender now and hand back our homes immediately!

Andy Slaughter MP explains to ITN London why residents of two West London council estates have travelled to the Battersea offices of a Hong Kong property developer

On 20 November, West Kensington and Gibbs Green residents went on a coach trip to deliver a message: Capco must hand back our homes before it sells its Earl’s Court assets.

Currently, these include a contract with the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham  to demolish the 760 homes of our 2,000-strong community.

First stop was the Battersea office of CK Asset Holdings, a Hong Kong property developer registered in the Cayman Islands, which is in talks with Capital & Counties Properties PLC (Capco) to buy its Earl’s Court assets.

Left to right: Person who barred entry to the reception area of Hutchison House; another person; person who refused to say who he was; Andy Slaughter MP

Our MP, Andy Slaughter, explained he wanted to deliver a letter to CK Asset Holdings’ founder, Mr Li Ka-shing (see below), and to the company’s directors, warning they would be ill-advised to buy Earl’s Court should our estates be included. He wanted to be reassured that the person he was entrusting with the letters was a bona fide representative of Mr Ka-shing.

Left to right: Astrid, Rita, Faisal, Maria

Front: left to right: Sally, Julia, Dioscore, Teresa

Centre: Teresa

Stella

Residents looked on for 20 minutes as our MP tried in every way he could, but failed to extract the name of the person promising to pass on the letters. That person was, however, keen to stress that CK Asset Holdings is only one of several companies talking to Capco about buying its Earl’s Court assets.

Left to right Faisal, Baghdadi and Dioscore

Harry displays our petition to the Government against demolition and in favour of community ownership

Left Rita, right Maria

ITN London interviews Wajiha

Next, we went to visit PR company Jericho Chambers in Charterhouse Square to deliver letters to all of its 27 partners and associates. We wanted to debate the ethics of them supporting Capco at the same time as it’s hawking our estates around the world. (see letter below)

The contact page of Jericho Chambers’ website states: “It’s easy. Phone or e-mail us directly. You will be pleased to discover how straightforward it is. We are proudly bullshit- and bureaucracy-free.”

The Officer Manager for Jericho Chambers told Andy Slaughter MP that not one of the 27 partners or associates was in the office. Nonetheless, she kindly agreed to receive the letters.

We then travelled 35 miles north of London to the village of Aldbury, in the Chiltern Hills, to draw attention to the demolition of what the Victorian Society described as a “charming and attractive house” modelled in Arts and Crafts style, yet dating back to the 16th Century.

Its demolition and replacement with a mock Georgian executive mansion, which is close to completion, was ordered by its owner, Ian Hawksworth, the Managing Director of Capco, the very same company that’s trying to sell the contract for the demolition of our homes to CK Asset Holdings.

In the Valiant Trooper we ate a hearty cottage pie followed by apple crumble and custard. Locals we spoke to told us that although they regularly passed Barley End so knew it had been demolished, and some had connections with the old Barley End going back generations, they did not know what was going on there now, nor who the owner was, yet alone his connection with us.

We delivered the Aldbury News (see below) to houses in the village and left copies at the Valiant Trooper and at the Greyhound Inn

Finally, we drove our message home outside Ian Hawksworth’s house.

Back in 2011, our community put on the boxing gloves. We’ve not taken them off since!

Capco’s audited preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2017, published on 21 February 2018, admit the company is reeling from “economic and political uncertainty”, which has “impacted the residential market resulting in a further valuation decline”.

In just 12 months, Capco’s Earl’s Court portfolio has reduced in value by £135 million. The cumulative devaluation since January 2015 is £378 million which is 28%.

Sales of apartments in Lillie Square, Capco’s joint venture with the Kwoks, whose leading family member is gaoled for corruption, have plummeted from one per week in the first half of 2017 to one per month between July and December. The disproportionate sales costs of £6 million a year contributed to a loss for Capco in its Lillie Square joint venture of £32 million over the past two years.

Meanwhile, in its preliminary results, Capco continued to relay its woes, bemoaning its “disappointment [with] the statement released by LBHF regarding the deliverability of ‘the proposed level of density and affordable housing’”, and how “the political environment has made discussions on enhancing the Masterplan more difficult”.

Capco blamed political and macroeconomic conditions for its troubles along with a difficult environment for large-scale residential development, worrying justifiably that “there will remain a risk of protests and legal challenges” to its Earl’s Court development. Curiously though, it put the latter down to “the scale of the Earls Court Masterplan” rather than to its deeply immoral plan to destroy our homes and displace our community.

Capco’s rush for the exit was further evidenced on 15 February, when Property Week broke the story that rather than implement the planning permission it had obtained to convert the Empress State building into luxury flats, Capco instead was close to completing the office block’s sale to the Mayor of London for continued occupation by the Metropolitan Police.

Then, on 28 February came the news that Hammersmith & Fulham Council had revoked the Earl’s Court & West Kensington Supplementary Planning Document, the statutory planning brief for the area, which the previous administration had produced to support demolishing the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates. Ignominiously consigning the Plan to the dustbin, the Council announced that “all physical and digital copies of the documents will be removed from Hammersmith Town Hall, public reference libraries and the Council’s website.”

Not to be left out, on 6 March, Transport for London’s top lawyer, General Counsel Howard Carter, announced to TfL’s most senior staff, the Mayor of London, TfL Board Members and the Deputy Mayor of London for Transport that with respect to the overall consented masterplan for Earl’s Court: “There is no requirement to demolish any of the Estates in order to develop the land owned by ECPL.”

Real estate specialist David Parsley summed it all up on 23 February in a comment piece for the leading trade journal Property Week. Describing the Earl’s Court scheme as a “sorry mess” he observed: “The Company has been fighting a bitter battle with residents of the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates since buying the site eight years ago, a battle it is losing.

Instead of continuing to fight, Capco should see [Housing Minister Dominic] Raab’s hint that government will make life even more difficult for it if it continues as an opportunity to finally rid itself of this impossible project.

I understand that Hammersmith & Fulham chief Stephen Cowan has written to Capco offering to pay back the £70m the council received for the estates and take the homes back under his control. Capco should bite Cowan’s hand off and give the estates back, finalise the deal to sell Empress State and then get to work offloading this troublesome project.”

Wise counsel, which Capco would be well advised to act on immediately.

Upstream solution for downhill exit 

Before the debate: West Kensington and Gibbs Green residents turn out in force to hear MPs discuss our campaign to save our homes 

At a special debate in Westminster Hall on 20 February 2018, called by Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter, Housing Minister Dominic Raab said: “Regeneration should have the support of a majority of the residents whose lives will be directly affected”. The statement brings Government into line with the Mayor of London and the Labour Party who have said that demolition of council estates should only proceed with majority resident support.

Social Housing and Regeneration: Earl’s Court and West Kensington

Here is the full transcript. The hour-long debate can be watched here starting at 13.30.

A precis of the debate is reproduced below.

Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)

Last Thursday, Property Week carried the story that Capital & Counties Properties plc, the promoter of the Earl’s Court development, is about to sell the Empress State building to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime for around £240 million. Throwing in the towel on Empress State is the clearest sign yet that not just the master plan, but Capco itself is in serious trouble and is seeking to cut and run to save its own skin.

In 2013, Hammersmith and Fulham Council made a deal to receive £90 million for the estates, plus space in the new development to replace the homes lost. Uniquely, however, that sum was not index-linked. Moreover, the council needed to deliver vacant possession of the land. That meant buying out 171 leasehold and freehold homes, which is normally the developer’s task. The maximum needed to acquire the homes was budgeted as £60 million, although valuation experts assessed the true figure as between £150 million and £174 million. The council has already purchased 26 homes at an average price of £552,000, excluding compensation, which is well in excess of the estimated £350,000.

The true value of the land is not recorded, but reading across from the valuation of the exhibition centre site, which is, suggests that a more accurate figure is around £1 billion. By accepting no more than 10% of the land’s value and by underestimating the costs of acquiring vacant possession, the council could now be left with a zero receipt and a maximum of 672 replacement homes for residents of the estates, having sold 88 homes to cover its shortfall.

Residents have done everything they can to make it very clear what they do not want: demolition. In December 2009, a year after learning of the possible demolition of their homes, residents from 83% of households on the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates signed a petition to oppose it. In March 2012, 80% of residents who responded to the council’s consultation on the scheme said no to demolition. Residents have also been very clear about what they want instead: community ownership. In March 2011, they formed West Ken Gibbs Green Community Homes, a community-controlled not-for-profit organisation with membership from more than two thirds of households on the estates. It was set up with the intention of exercising council tenants’ right to transfer.

Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his powerful speech. Does he agree that residents could do a lot worse than learn from the community ownership experience in a neighbouring estate? Walterton and Elgin Community Homes was set up in the face of a threat from Westminster City Council in the late 1980s. It has proved to be one of the most successful and popular models for social housing in the country. Does he agree that that experience shows exactly the approach we should take when estates are threatened?

Andy Slaughter

The right to transfer allows council tenants to choose a different landlord for their area. The objective of West Ken Gibbs Green Community Homes is to become the community-controlled landlord for its members’ homes. For four years, it lobbied the Government to implement the necessary legislation to enable it to use the right to transfer under the Housing Act 1985, as amended by the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. The necessary regulations came into force in December 2013, and in March 2015 members voted 100:1 to serve a right-to-transfer proposal notice.

Residents came up with the people’s plan, which shows the professionals how new development ought to be done. At the outset, Community Homes brought more than 100 residents into workshops and site visits with architects. Residents and architects together identified space for up to 327 new homes and devised plans for improvements to their homes, streets and community spaces. The plans were costed and valued. Residents from 65% of households provided written feedback on these proposals, and 90% of respondents said that the plans were “excellent” or “good”, and “better” or “far better” than the Capco scheme.

I thank everybody in the community at West Kensington and Gibbs Green, and their supporters and advisers, for the struggle of the last 10 years. It has been gruelling, and 2,000 people have had their lives on hold, unable to move on with everything from modernising their home to planning their family’s future. However, it has created a fantastic community spirit and inspired people to create their own vision for the future.

I have only a couple of simple requests to put to the Minister. First, will he please determine the Community Homes application for the right to transfer, which his Department has been waiting to determine for more than two years? When he does so, can he please heed the residents’ call for him to uphold their legal right to take back control—a phrase I am sure he is keen to hear in this Chamber—of their community, so that they can deliver the homes that we need?

Secondly, I ask the Minister to get the Government, including his Department, to work with the residents, the boroughs and the Greater London Authority—they are all now of one mind, a very different mind from the one of 10 years ago—to provide decent, genuinely affordable homes across the Earl’s Court site.

Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)

Let us hope that the days of cosy relationships between developers and planning departments are well and truly over. How the world has changed. Three years on, Capco is on the ropes, its share value plummeting due to the local luxury housing over-provision, and the heat has been taken out of the market, by, among other factors, fears over Brexit. Capco’s recent half-hearted attempt to intensify the provision of units at Earl’s Court—to provide more small housing units that it thought it could sell, rather than the huge and unwanted super-prime units of its dreams—seems to have hit a brick-clad wall.

Politically, culturally and in terms of local need, the scene has changed dramatically. The international appetite for buying flats to park money—sometimes dodgy money—has waned, and it seems that even Capco has accepted that. It had hoped its desire to intensify Earl’s Court could be agreed within the current planning permission, but that is not happening.

Let us not compound the litany of errors and developer greed with yet another round of international online poker, using our neighbourhoods as chips, to sell the site abroad. Local house prices are plummeting—or what the estate agents call “softening”—and there is no longer any taste for these super-luxury developments that have turned parts of London into ghost towns. The current plan is undeliverable; we need to start again. We need to curtail the developers’ rampage through our neighbourhoods and look to a future at Earl’s Court that does not offer empty units for international investors but instead satisfies local needs and provides homes for existing residents.

Let us show that change now by finding ways to realise our constituents’ ambitions. Let us leave the 2,000 residents of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) in peace to enjoy and manage the homes built with conscience and care over the past 50 years. On my side, at Earl’s Court, let us support a struggling area that has been decimated by developer greed, by working closely with the London Mayor and the Government to repeal the current planning permission where possible and work with the people of Earl’s Court to provide socially rented and truly affordable housing for those who need it, cleaner air, and a fantastic modern exhibition centre that will provide jobs and return vital business.

The Minister for Housing (Dominic Raab)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) on securing this debate. We have sparred many times on justice matters, and I look forward to an equally rigorous friendship on housing issues. He takes a close interest in those issues and I know how tenaciously he makes his case for his constituents and on matters of principle. I pay tribute to the residents who have come to listen to him and to hear the different views on this important matter.

I take note of all the hon. Gentleman’s points regarding the merits or otherwise of the development of the Earl’s Court and West Kensington area. He will know that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has been asked to make a decision on two specific matters submitted for his determination. The determination requests are currently being considered in the Department. The hon. Gentleman made some specific requests that I want to address clearly. As a lawyer and an assiduous local MP, he will know that that process precludes me, for legal and propriety reasons, from commenting specifically on the regeneration proposals for the Earl’s Court and Kensington area.

Social housing is a priority for this Government. Estate regeneration done the right way can create new improved homes and communities for the people who live there. It can increase the supply and quality of homes through densification and design. The best estate regeneration schemes make the community central to the project. Residents are clearly key partners in any regeneration scheme. They should have opportunities to participate from the start, developing the vision, design, partner procurement and delivery. Working with residents can help to build trust and consensus on regeneration.

It is particularly important that residents have the opportunity to express their views on the final options for regeneration, whether as individuals or through the democratic process more generally. The way that is done should be agreed locally. That is the template for the national policy that we put out. The regeneration should have the support of a majority of the residents whose lives will be directly affected.

Andy Slaughter

I appreciate the tone of the Minister’s speech and what he said about not giving a view on the regeneration scheme. However, may I press him a little? If he cannot say what his position is, can he indicate—this is not unreasonable after two years—when there is likely to be a decision on the right to transfer?

Dominic Raab

The hon. Gentleman has made his point in a constructive and reasonable way. I appreciate his frustration on the time issue. After the length of time and all the issues that have been churned over, no one will say this has been done in a rushed way, but we need to take the time required to get the decision right. I cannot give him a specific timeframe, but we will move as expeditiously as we can. I certainly will take back to the Department the point that he has made.

Andy Slaughter

I am glad we had a civilised debate, but that does not detract from the fact that what has happened, particularly to the tenants and residents of the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates over the past 10 years, has been an outrage. It would not have been tolerated were this not an area of social housing. Threatening to demolish 750 private homes in the same way simply would not happen. All we ask is that similar standards are adopted. That is why I am delighted with the Mayor’s new guidelines and his wish to use his own power and economic clout to ensure that tenants are fully consulted in future.

I end where I began by thanking everybody who has taken part in the debate. Most of all I thank the tenants and residents not only for giving up their day and being here—they have given up so many days—but for everything they have done for their community. By resisting the demolition that was due in the area, they have prevented it from happening to other communities in Hammersmith and elsewhere. For that we all owe them an undying debt of gratitude.

After the debate: Elected representatives Andy Slaughter MP (centre); Earl’s Court Councillor Linda Wade (left); and Emma Dent Coad (right) surrounded by residents.

Capco Director Gary Yardley is outgunned as the Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the Deputy Leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council join forces to challenge him over the Earl’s Court scheme, while the London Mayor says in future residents should be balloted about demolition plans

LBHF Council Leader Stephen Cowan says the Earl’s Court scheme is “unviable” and “undeliverable”. He has “called on Capco to return the estates to LBHF”

On 29 December 2017, further to the letter he wrote to all residents on 6 November announcing Capco was in talks to hand back the estates, LBHF Leader Stephen Cowan wrote again to residents.

The letter, headed “West Ken and Gibbs Green estates to return to council control – update”, said: “It remains the Council’s opinion that the CLSA scheme, as it stands, is unviable: Capco’s 2016 accounts reported a 20% drop in the scheme’s value, and the costs are known to be very high.”

The Council went further still in a press release dated 18 January 2018: “LBHF views the current agreed scheme as undeliverable and have called on Capco to return the estates to LBHF as this is the only viable way forward.”

Now, neighbouring borough, Kensington & Chelsea, which is the planning authority responsible for the former exhibition centres part of the Earl’s Court site has weighed in.

RBKC Council Deputy Leader Kim Taylor-Smith says the Earl’s Court scheme is “not right”. He told Capco “it is important that our communities take the lead in decisions affecting their neighbourhoods”

On 24 January 2018, replying to a question from Earl’s Court Councillor Linda Wade, the Deputy Leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, and Member for Grenfell Recovery, Housing and Property, Councillor Kim Taylor-Smith, told Full Council:

“Following the Grenfell fire, this Council, and its new leadership and I am now focusing on housing that is truly affordable, and social housing, and I want our communities to take the lead in decisions affecting their neighbourhoods.

And let’s be clear, this scheme is incredibly controversial. Businesses have been subject to compulsory purchase orders, and social housing in Hammersmith and Fulham is due to be knocked down and rebuilt. While new homes are being built, only around 10 per cent will be affordable. But at a discount of 20 per cent to market value, affordable housing in London is not truly affordable and none of these homes will be socially rented.

So, understandably, the London Mayor expressed his concerns about this development in his election campaign, but I understand that Councillor Stephen Cowan, the Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham, is also trying to find a way to pull back from the planning decision taken by his borough. So, in answer to your question as to whether the Council has been in contact with EC Properties or Capco on press speculation on Saudi interest, I want to go a little bit further.

On Monday I wrote to the Chief Executive of EC Properties, parent company Capco, seeking a meeting to consider the site’s future. In my letter I told him that on the 14th of June the facts on the ground changed in Kensington. I stated, and I quote, that it is important that our communities take the lead in decisions affecting their neighbourhoods. So, this Council has initiated a greater focus on social and truly affordable housing, as well as local democracy. I also told him that I want him to explore any opportunities to increase the level of genuinely affordable housing and social housing in the project.

 And I have also written to Councillor Stephen Cowan expressing my concern over this development, and I have offered my complete support to revisit these plans around the entire scheme, and I have copied this letter to the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.

We need to recognise that we don’t have the legal power to rescind our decision. The application went through due process and was agreed by both boroughs. But politically, I want to make it very clear that I do not believe the continuation of this development under the current terms is right. And, as a minimum, if this is to continue I want to see more social and more truly affordable housing included in this scheme.”

Meanwhile, on 3 February, London Mayor Sadiq Khan published proposals to require giving residents the vote to decide whether or not they support plans to demolish their homes.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan wants “to make sure people living on social housing estates are at the heart of any decisions involving demolition”

To enforce his new policy, the Mayor would make his funding for any scheme conditional on a yes vote. Those balloted would include secure tenants, resident leaseholders and freeholders, and any resident who has been on the Council’s housing register for at least one year, irrespective of their current tenure.

The Mayor said: “I will use my investment powers in a way they have never been used before, by requiring resident support through a ballot for new plans involving demolition where City Hall funding is involved. I want to make sure people living on social housing estates, who have the greatest interest in their future, are at the heart of any decisions from the outset.”