I S S U E N O. 4 7 3
'I'm absolutely fuming,' says Dave (not his real name) as he holds forth from his barstool in the Lord Nelson pub on South London’s Old Kent Road. 'We're never consulted on any of this… none of it's for us… Do they ever come and talk to us?… They promise us one thing then just do what the developers want anyway… What's the point? It just makes me really angry.' This is a condensed version of an actual conversation I had recently, but it's a refrain I've heard at every local Area Action Plan consultation session I've attended over the past two years while exploring the identity of the Old Kent Road for my MSc research. I've heard it at similar meetings around other regeneration schemes. I've read it in the media – national and social. I've seen it in reports by august organisations, and in the work of highly respected academics. In short, we have reached a monumental breakdown in trust between local authorities and local people, between the gatekeepers of London's neighbourhoods, and those who live in them. It goes in both directions: just as local people no longer believe their council is on their side, local authorities, and the developers they offer their land to, appear no longer to value local communities. A report in 2016 by the Centre for London, supported by Barratt, cites 'decline in trust' as one of the main reasons people oppose new residential development in their area. Of course there are multiple complex and deep-grained social, economic, and political reasons why we find ourselves in this predicament. One possible route out, however, is through community engagement. Getting engaged All developers and local authorities will tell you that they do 'community engagement'. Often what they mean is that they've pinned some plans up in the local tenants association hall for a couple of afternoons and got some of the suits from head office to come down to explain the plans and (not) answer queries. They've issued surveys with questions like 'would you like better quality homes?' and used 'yes' as a mandate for demolishing the lesser quality ones that people still live in without providing a replacement they can afford. They may hold 'consultation forums', which can provide an opportunity for local people to ask questions, but which can also be intimidating, poorly publicised, held at inconvenient times, and vulnerable to being hijacked by more vocal community members and lone activists with their own agendas (every neighbourhood has them). All this tends to take place to discuss existing plans. Which, at the risk of sounding pedantic, is technically 'presentation' rather than 67
LS Layout issue 473 SS 2019 final JCT edit 1.indd 67
26/02/2019 15:52:00