20160518 Alma
This was originally published in EYESORE issue #3 in May 2016. The Alma estate regeneration is not due for completion until 2028.
The four towers of The Alma Estate, in Enfield, North London, will soon be demolished. Built in the 1960s, and at 23 storeys high, the blocks loom over the low-lying neighbourhood of semi-detached houses, overgrown underpasses and boarded up pubs.
Much of Enfield’s industrial past stems from this area. Munitions, transistors and light-bulbs were all manufactured here. I grew up here in the 1990s. I remember the falcons circling above the rusting gas holders. As the last of the local industry died, the estate itself - barely 30 years old - stood there defiantly.
However, a generation later the residents were beginning to feel fed up with the state of housing. Their complaints were mounting. Broken lifts, leaks and faulty heating systems were being regularly reported. Swarms of wasps would appear in the building each summer, flying up the ducts.
Speaking to Trisha, who has lived on The Alma Estate for 23 years, the frustration is clear: “they can’t even keep the park open for the kids,” she says, gesturing to the chained up playground at the heart of the estate.
“They have to break in and climb over the fence to play. Three years it was shut and they blamed it on rats. That’s a long time for a kid,” Trisha tells me.
Trisha also feels there is less community now: “no one wants to talk to their neighbours or make eye contact. It’s not like it was then, all that’s changed now.”
On the estate there is a sense that the area has been left behind. Shockingly, on average the residents in this part of Enfield, Ponders End, can expect to die ten years earlier than people elsewhere in the borough. It’s one of the most deprived areas of London.
In 2011 plans for the £150 million regeneration of the estate were announced. Nearly 1,000 new energy efficient homes were to be built where the four towers stand. This was all thanks to the support of 84% of residents.
However, a year later the 84% figure was revised when independent tenancy and leaseholder advisors were contracted for a second survey. This time informative booklets were distributed before the consultation and multilingual surveyors were employed (in 2011 almost 1 in 10 people in Ponders End spoke little or no English, double the London-wide average).
This time 78% voted for demolition. But only 67% responded to the survey. This means only a slim majority of 52% of the 717 households on the estate expressed an explicit desire for the regeneration to go ahead.
Additionally, freedom of information requests indicate that responses were taken on a per household basis. This lends weight to the views of single and dual occupancies as opposed to larger families.
To Trisha, the ends justify the means: “I’ve got friends and family, like myself, that are happy to wait for a new build, that are happy to stay and wait as long as it takes.”
For others the regeneration is more controversial. Monty, a council house tenant in his 70s, insists that in all his years on the estate he has never been invited to take part in a consultation about the future of the blocks.
“This regeneration,” which he says like a dirty word, “it is a joke. I pay my rent and my bills here for over 40 years. They have the same benches and things for the pensioners to sit, but no more than this.”
It’s clear that this overhaul of the estate has come at a convenient time. Ponders End is prime real estate on the now-confirmed Crossrail 2 route, a new rail route which will better connect the area to central and south London.
It’s no surprise to Monty that just 20% of the new development has been set aside for social housing. The current stock is closer to 75%. Last year The Telegraph published an article titled ‘House prices: is it too early to get rich from Crossrail 2?’ which mentions Ponders End. When Monty talks with authority about the new flats not being for council tenants, I’m inclined to believe him.
The scale of the project is such that the Kestrel House tower in The Alma Estate now stands completely empty. Its inhabitants have been moved into temporary accommodation or permanent homes further afield.
On the surface, those who remain have little incentive to stay. A condition of the regeneration was that the council would not allow the housing blocks to fall apart while people still lived there. Yet the past two winters have seen repeated failures to spend money on things like basic heating maintenance.
It was also revealed by independent journalist George Turner earlier this year that secure-tenants who had raised concerns about the compulsory purchase order issued by the council had been subject to blackmail. Writing on OurCity.London, Mr Turner detailed the contents of letters sent to leaseholders on the Alma estate warning residents that failure to withdraw their objections to the terms of the compulsory purchase order would result in them having their offers of shared-ownership on the new estate withdrawn.
New developments are all too attractive for policymakers and too readily hijacked as a vehicle for profit. Since the Olympics, the Lea Valley in North East London has seen huge development. There are 20,000 new homes forecast for the region by 2036, at least half of which are expected from the Meridian Water development about a mile south of Ponders End. The question then, is who are they being built for?
Those who ought to know better, such as Cllr. Ahmet Oykener, Enfield’s Cabinet Member for Housing and Regeneration, appear more comfortable with this macro approach despite the people it risks leaving behind. Trisha remains happy for change on the estate. In her eyes her son, who works in Cheshunt, now has a future on the estate. But when the levels of council-owned and affordable housing are falling, and with nearly 1 in 5 people claiming unemployment benefits, the question of whether he will want to remain on the estate is one with no obvious answer.
Walking around Alma, I saw that the gasworks had been turned into a school. By removing the only nesting site for nearby falcons, the pigeon numbers skyrocketed. Unchecked, they destabilised the towers’ cladding and made the balconies unsafe. Being that there’s nothing much anyone can do to fix this, it ended up being cited as a key reason for regeneration in the council’s initial proposals for the project. The new estate will probably be good for the area, as the new school has undoubtedly been too. But there’s no guarantee that it won’t lead to some displacement, and the impacts of that might only be known in retrospect.
