he London Borough of Brent has won approval from its own planning committee for the next phase of redevelopment across its South Kilburn regeneration scheme, NW6.
The Peel Precinct development will provide 226 homes, including 42 affordable homes, all for social rent tenures. There are 36 social rent homes on the site currently.
While the affordable housing provision reflects just 18.6% of total housing on site, Brent’s planning officers said that “the relatively high costs of assembling the site, the net £2.5m cost to the development of delivering the health centre, and all the affordable housing being delivered at social rents, are key factors that drag down the viability and overall amount of affordable housing”.
The Peel Precinct site is also just one of many across a multi-phased scheme and in major regeneration projects such as this – taking decades, not years – the process allows some phases to provide a higher proportion of homes for private sale to generate revenue for the development of more affordable homes in later phases.
Across the entire project, 2,400 homes will be built, 1,200 of which will be the re-provision of affordable homes at social rent for existing South Kilburn secure council tenants.
To date, phase one of the masterplan has delivered a total of 570 homes, 71% of which were either for social rent or shared ownership. Phase two will deliver 746 homes, many of which are currently under construction.
The Peel Precinct site forms part of phase three. Phase four will be split into two and is envisaged to come forward for planning between 2019 and 2023.
Estate regeneration often gets a bad name and is increasingly resisted by those living in estates earmarked for redevelopment.
Local authorities own lots of land with low-density housing, and see an opportunity to increase housing provision. However, the redevelopment of those assets often means breaking up communities resulting in the loss of secure tenancies and pitiful offers to leaseholders. It is easy to see why communities resist that change.
In recent years campaigners have become more organised and vocal in their objections. This was particularly notable last week in Haringey, where protests took place against the council’s £2bn joint venture with LendLease, and at the Aylesbury estate in Southwark, SE17, where the council is seeing fierce resistance against the use of compulsory purchase orders.
Brent’s success is proof that a doubling of homes to create a mixed and multi-tenure community can be achieved. Half of the new homes will be for existing South Kilburn secure council tenants. The scheme will also build new parks, a new local primary school and health facilities, as well as new retail and additional community spaces.
With so much resistance to estate regeneration taking place across the capital, local authorities could do worse than look at Brent and see how it is done.
