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

Debate between Emma Dent Coad and Albert Owen

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

Like many Kensingtonians, I have a long history with Earl’s Court exhibition centre. As a child, I visited the Bertram Mills circus, when they had performing animals; it was the “olden days”. I also attended the Royal Tournament, countless Ideal Home exhibitions, and—of course—some of those amazing concerts. However, the site is not just part of my story. It was, and could be again, a thriving and well-used commercial centre, comprising a third of our country’s exhibition space, and providing jobs and customers all year round for our local hotels, restaurants, shops and pubs—remember pubs?

According to the Greater London Authority, Earl’s Court exhibition centre generated £1 billion of business a year. Now, however, it has been flattened and all that business has gone elsewhere. I remember those crazy days eight years ago when Hammersmith and Fulham Council was under a different administration, and the then director of housing and homelessness was exposed for vile racist views, including, in the context of the estates, expressing a wish to “bulldoze the ghettos”.

Enter Capco, the social cleanser’s friend. Its plans, promoted as being “sensitive” to local context and character, put on the Kensington side a forest of lumpen, bland, blocky chunks of real estate with brick cladding, where no one would ever live; shopping streets where no one would ever shop; and a “river park” without a river or, indeed, anything like a park, and where, despite the optimistic visuals, small blonde children would not play with red balloons.

Facing Warwick Road, in place of our beautiful and now demolished art deco facade, would be a bizarre pair of supposedly landmark buildings that I am sorry to say are reminiscent of Italian fascist architecture. Put simply, world-renowned architect Terry Farrell, whose work I have known for many years, had apparently transported a piece of one of his Chinese cities into our beloved borough. It was a cut and paste job, and was very disappointing.

In May 2015, I had the pleasure of speaking at a seminar at South Bank University, called—enticingly—“Politics with Planning”, which is my favourite combination. I was up against the chief executive of Capco, Gary Yardley. I expressed my misgivings about the proposals for Earl’s Court. How he sneered, because he was reimagining a chunk of our heritage. Who was I to question him? After all, the 14% social housing on offer, or 10% based on floor space, was all that the poor thing could offer, because he had consultants. And this is what Section 106 Consultants says to its developer clients,

“if a Section 106 viability report cannot entirely extinguish your liability to provide Section 106 affordable housing”,

then all is not lost. It says that much may yet be achieved, either

“through delivering…affordable housing of a type…that is more valuable to you”—

that is, to the developer—

“or identifying and prioritising those types of contribution that are most important to the Local Planning Department.”

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.

After the atrocity of the fire at Grenfell Tower, we have seen a dramatic change of heart at Kensington and Chelsea Council, which we need to consolidate and compound with a completely new approach to the development at Earl’s Court. We need to listen to our constituents, who are the experts on what is needed, now, at Earl’s Court. The Save Earl’s Court campaigners are relentless, intelligent and forward-thinking and have good and achievable ideas.

The UK is desperate for exhibition space and London lags dangerously behind in its offer to those who need large exhibition centres. Earl’s Court is struggling, with local shops and restaurants closing and hotels clinging on by their fingernails, ironically propped up by the council using them as temporary accommodation. The heart has been ripped out of Earl’s Court and we need to put it back.

The deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council has stated that communities must take the lead in future developments. Let us trust them, and listen to the knowledgeable and conscientious Save Earl’s Court campaigners, all our local residents and Councillor Wade. They have been working on proposals for an environmentally sustainable and very green exhibition centre with social rented housing on site, offering a green lung in an area of terrible air quality and with jobs on the doorstep. Demolishing estates of social housing is not the answer to deprivation; working with communities is the way forward. We must set the current undeliverable plans aside and start again.

The world has changed since the repellent comments were made by the former Hammersmith and Fulham director of homelessness; we are better than that now. The world has also changed since 14 June 2017, when the result of poor maintenance, lack of care and absence of social conscience was exposed to the world with the Grenfell Tower fire. 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. Let us get them out of those hotels.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

If there are no other Back-Bench speeches, I call the Front-Bench spokespeople. Tony Lloyd, usually you would have five minutes. I am sure that you will use your discretion and allow the Minister enough time to respond to the matters.