Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Housing Benefit Cap Impact on Haringey
This article is a few months old, but still relevant considering the benefit cap is yet to be implemented. It is a bit concerning given the article suggests around 1,200 families are estimated to be displaced from Haringey... (to where?). (Click here for inside housing article)
There is also discussions right now that housing benefits for under 25s will be scrapped (this is just an idea at present) (Click here for Guardian article)
In addition the rate for under 35s as of Jan 2012 will be a 'shared accomodation rate' (Click here for Shelter article) Shared accomodation could grow the number of HMOs we have in the borough.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Hi Seema
There is much in your (2) I agree with. The problem of housing shortage isn't a Haringey problem or a London one: its a national one. It needs to be addressed with that in mind.
If every free square patch of London is built on, London will simultaneously become less liveable and yet have the perverse effect of even further concentrating economic activity (esp. jobs) in this one city, encouraging more here and forcing up rents and property prices yet more. There's an over-concentration of most things here already and I suspect there's resentment outside London of this. There ought to be policies in place that encourage more even development (and opportunity) over the country as a whole.
The last London Mayor had a mania for building over everything, I think which policy lay behind our local council's intention to build housing over one third of Down Lane Park. This kind of thinking is not a permanent solution but would likely exacerbate the problem. In the short run, lets have some equity and morality between those who could move out of council housing and those who are waiting for council housing. And a longer term solution may lie along the lines of John D's reference above to New Towns.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Depends on the function of the new towns. The nightmare scenario is something along the lines of the banlieues around Paris which ended up as dumping grounds for those who could no longer afford to live in one of the arrondissements. They lack infrastructure, jobs and decent educational opportunities. Here in the south east places like Harlow New Town come to mind.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Clive, can I once again give the wider context for your statement that the Council intended "to build housing over one third of Down Lane Park".
One of your favourite targets is the Haringey People Magazine which you call "Pravda". The word - meaning 'truth' is the Orwellian name of the former Soviet official newspaper, renowned for propaganda. But the best way to fight propaganda is not by spinning and weaving an alternative partial truth. (A "narrative" as politicians now call it.)
The proposal to develop at the southern end of Down Lane Park was part of a planned land swap. The aim by Cllrs Claire Kober and Lorna Reith (then Deputy Leader) was always to add an equivalent area to the park on the northern side - site of the present Reuse & Recycling Centre in Park View Road. (Relocation of the R&R Centre didn't go ahead as funding didn't stack-up.)
Both I and Seamus Carey, secretary of the Park's Friends Group, were pretty sure that the "swap" was based on a miscalculation. We'd measured it with Google Earth! With Claire and Lorna's agreement, we went to the Planning Office and they helped us check. We discovered the planners had included an area of green space inside the proposed development - and were counting this as part of the park.
There were several other reasons why I and hundreds of other local people rejected the plan. (Some of which - I regret to say - were due to the usual incompetence by our Planning and "Regeneration" service.)
Faced with strong local opposition and the evidence, Claire Kober and Lorna Reith scrapped the scheme. You know the key facts about this, Clive, because you read and commented on my Flickr page.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Yes Alan I accept these qualifications that you've also mentioned before. I also accept that there is incompetence in the Planning Service.
My point in bringing it up again (or yet again as you'd probably say) is to suggest that the Planning Service were probably put up to this dopey idea by others. And that is the background to the Down Lane Park fiasco.
It seems to me that representatives of the residents - including yourself of course - were not taken into the confidence of the PS until late in the planning and this poor development of policy led to much waste of time and money.
Did not all local authorities in London come under pressure from the previous Mayor to build housing over any land that could be possibly be found? Including public parks, if necessary?
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I do wonder about the demonisation of the people working in planning sometimes. They spent time gaining a degree, then trained as planners and ended up working to 8 and 13 week targets to make decisions on applications. I worked in planning for a number of years and all of the planners I dealt with, without exception, were honourable and professional people. Their problem was that they were expected to churn out decisions at a rate that I doubt any of us would put up with. From what I saw they were in at 8am and out at 8pm. Maybe the fault is with the planning system rather than the individuals employed within it.
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Your point, Michael, has made me reflect on my increasingly negative comments. On other issues I quoted Benjamin Franklin's comment that "Blame-all and praise-all are two blockheads". Am I turning into one of the former when it comes to Haringey's Planning Service? Plainly I need to be self-critical and think hard about this.
But to come back to Seema's original question, and an earlier point you made, we agree about the danger of replicating something like the Paris banlieues. With London becoming even more divided geographically by class, race and ethnicity. With a well-to-do suburban outer ring; a rich core, and an inner ring with growing concentrations of poorer residents.
I realise that individual planning officers in their day-to-day work can't solve these problems. But the planning and regeneration service as a whole, led by its senior staff, should be making a significant contribution to identifying and raising such issues. So should the leader and her cabinet.
Maybe they are? But from my perspective all that's happening is that they are simply repeating the same mistaken and inadequate responses as before. In spite of the riots; and in the face of another tsunami of cuts on its way - this time on the housing of the poorest and most vulnerable people.
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Michael it's hard to make demons out of anyone, let alone planning employees. It might amuse you to learn that the first career I thought I wanted was not astronaut or fireman, but ... town planner. But this function must be hard in a dense, ancient city like London, subject to all kinds of pressures and inevitably unsatisfactory compromises.
But I think there may be a difference between making decisions on Planning Applications received from others that you mention, on the one hand and on the other hand, initiating grand (or not so grand) schemes. I won't list them here, but suffice to say the devil is not always in the detail. And of course, working in close (too close?) collaboration with private developers.
It's well and good to be qualified, honourable and professional, but that may not be enough. Wisdom, judgement and leadership, if absent, can lead to a hell, the road to which is partly paved with planning personnel. I'm sure your right about some fault lying with the planning system (i.e. legislation)
Demonise (together with 'literally') are two of the most misused and over-used words in the lexicon today. The planning service is not above criticism or being held to account. It's public money they are spending and its right they are held to scrutiny.
The planners might adopt Google mantra: Don't be Evil!
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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I don't think anybody is attacking the planning officers as such. Isn't the concern over political interference in the planning process ?
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Planning is always a political process. Every local authority has a local development framework of some sort and it is directed and decided by politicians.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Lots to think about but we cant relocate the businesses, especially The City. Businesses come to London because other businesses are here and they can hire employees relatively easily. The City is a major world finance centre with special laws governing it differently from the rest of the country, they won't move and if they got those rights they would not be able to attract the ridiculous amounts of capital that they can attract now.
Anyway, I'm after a sound bite response to the usual right wing whinging I have to put up with from colleagues, I don't think one exists.
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The BBC move to Salford Quays? Major Income Tax offices in Washington, Liverpool and Belfast. It can be done if governments want it to be done as they are the largest employer in the UK. I know I might get into trouble if I mention the G world but Germany has financial centres in Berlin, Bonn and Frankfurt (and probably other cities I don't know of)
Anyhow, back to the social housing thing. I grew up on a newly built council estate in the North East of England in the early sixties. My next door neighbour was the head teacher of my primary school and a GP lived a few doors down. There was no stigmatisation about living in social housing. The implication that if you don't own a property you have somehow failed in life has helped lead to that view.
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Permalink Reply by Michelle Lawson on
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People might be interested in this...
Haringey Housing Action Group take collective action around housing issues.
Housing Benefit been cut? Landlord not maintaining the property? Facing eviction? Problem paying rent? Insecure tenancies? We are a group of local residents who support one another to take action to solve each others housing problems and demand that rents are brought down, letting agents remove rip-off 'fees' and that everyone has the right to affordable, decent and secure housing.ALL WELCOME at the next meeting: Friday 27th July, 10am, North London Community House. email: housingaction@haringey.org.uk www.haringeyhousingaction.org.uk
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