Creating hope in "hell" estate

Used by the national press as a real-life ‘barometer’ for the Government’s social policies and often providing a convenient backdrop for high-profile MPs when discussing issues such as housing, regeneration and crime, the Aylesbury Estate in south London has become accustomed to the full glare of the media spotlight over the years – and invariably for the wrong reasons.

But daily life on ‘the Aylesbury’ is very different from the sensationalist ‘Estate from Hell’ headlines and, as Jon Land found out, the New Deal for Communities (NDC) is making a real difference to the people who live there even before the massive physical regeneration of the estate gets underway later this year.

Jean Bartlett is seen by many as an inspirational figure on the Aylesbury Estate. Since setting up the pioneering Tykes Corner Parents and Toddlers Group 10 years ago, she has provided an invaluable pre-school learning environment for thousands of children as well as a meeting place for mums and dads who would otherwise experience little social interaction with other residents.

Today, however, things aren’t going well. The centre’s alarm system has been sounding for the past hour and Jean is beginning to look a bit frazzled.

“It’s not always like this,” she says as she puts in another call to the engineers. “I have no idea why it went off, but it scared the children and it’s doing my head in.”

Eventually the alarm is turned off and Jean is able to sit down and look back on what Tykes Corner has achieved over the past decade and how it filled a vital gap in affordable childcare provision for the estate community.

“When my grandson Jack was born, I looked after him while his parents had to go back to work. There was nothing in the area but fortunately I was in a tenants and residents association that allowed me to use their hall free of charge and we started from there,” Jean explains.

“We can have about 350 through our doors a month and that’s not including the parents. I don’t ask where they come from, they don’t even have to be from the estate. We not only get mums, we have fathers, grandparents, childminders and professional nannies. It’s a good mix.”

Jean is quick to point out that a large part of the success of Tykes Corner is down to the support it has received from agencies such as Sure Start and the NDC, which recently contributed the major funding to a £340,000 refurbishment of the centre.

It has allowed the centre to expand with new features including a Baby Zone and Jean’s pride and joy – a flower garden which provides some much needed colour to an area surrounded on all sides by concrete.

Throwing herself into Tykes Corner and the day-to-day running of the group helps to distract Jean from the realisation that life is about to change for her and thousands of residents of the Aylesbury Estate with the demolition of large tracts of housing and the regeneration work that will follow over the next 10 to 15 years.

As a resident of the area before the Aylesbury Estate was even built, Jean has a degree of affection for the place she calls home but she is under no illusion about what needs to be done.

“I live in a red brick in the middle of the area and watched this lot come up,” she says, pointing to one of the huge concrete tower blocks that overlooks Tykes Corner.

“I won’t be sorry to see it go under the current regeneration plans. It’s ugly. They’re not attractive or bright – you can never say the design was good but the maintenance of the estate went right down hill over time.

“But I think everyone needs to look and understand why Aylesbury was built in the first place, there was a need for housing then probably even greater than there is today. You’ve got to remember that people came from quite derelict homes, they didn’t have baths and there was lots of overcrowding. There was a real need for this particular type of housing,” she recalls.

“Now the problems are different – it’s caused through neglect, like the state of the lifts and the way refuse is collected. I don’t think there’s a lot of community spirit around. When you speak to people who live on long landings, they don’t even talk to their neighbours. That’s why the centre here is so important. It’s almost like a different world, people forget their housing woes and come just to concentrate on their children. People have become friends.”

While Jean welcomes the regeneration plans, she remains a little sceptical about whether the transformation of the Aylesbury Estate will really happen and is understandably concerned about the social impact of moving people from their homes.

“I think they’ve gone about it the right way. If you look at other regeneration schemes, the health, education, employment and community safety aspects have always been built in afterwards. The NDC is here doing that now.

“But the housing itself is a different kettle of fish. I think the decision to demolish was a brave one and I’m not totally convinced that the council (Southwark) can do it for various financial reasons more than anything.

“I am in favour, but I am a bit worried. I’m a council tenant and we’ve managed to secure a two-bedroom house even though we’re under-occupied but the thing I really don’t want to give up more than anything is my garden. My husband’s housebound and it’s his only outlook. The fear is I will lose my garden for a balcony.”

Jean also believes that for many Aylesbury residents the regeneration will remain a distant dream until there is some physical evidence that it is really happening.

“We’re used to false dawns round here. People still think that nothing’s going to happen and it means they don’t get involved with the NDC or the community as perhaps they should. There aren’t enough people like me on board, I’m definitely in the minority but people need to realise that they need to have a voice and fight our corners so that we may eventually get what we want out of this.”

Steve Pearce, Chief Executive of the Aylesbury NDC, is quick to reassure Jean and other residents who are uncertain about their future that plans for the physical regeneration of the estate are well-advanced.

“The council and the majority of residents have agreed that the only way to deliver the quality of life that residents have a right to is to demolish the estate on a phased basis and rebuild it. The master-planning process is almost complete. The first homes to be built off the estate (to enable blocks on the estate to be emptied, demolished and then rebuilt to provide homes for other estate residents) are ready for occupation.

“The first 260 new homes on the estate will be constructed from September this year. The Michael Faraday primary school will be rebuilt later this year too. Plans for other new and improved social and community facilities to be built within the area to support residents during the redevelopment process are also well-advanced.”

If all goes to plan, the current 2,800-home Aylesbury Estate will be transformed into a 5,000-home high quality neighbourhood for 13,000 residents. It will feature a range of mixed tenure homes, including enough socially rented accommodation for everyone who wants to stay in the area, as well as private and shared ownership homes aimed at helping first-time buyers get a foothold on the property ladder.

“Over 70% of the population is from black and ethnic minority communities and that is celebrated,” adds Steve, who points out that a wide range of architectural styles is planned in order to ‘challenge the harsh architecture’ of the present area.

According to Steve, the key difference the NDC is making to this area unlike many others is the involvement of local residents in all issues that affect their lives from housing and education to employment, crime, sport and open spaces.

“They have been empowered to work alongside the agencies that have responsibility for delivering that change. This has helped the residents but it has also helped the agencies who at times find some of these issues difficult to deal with.”

Incredibly proud of what the Aylesbury NDC has done for the area over the past nine years, Steve singles out the establishment of a community development trust – called Creation – as his biggest achievement because of the legacy it will provide once the NDC has finished its work.

“Creation is a charity that will be run by local people to continue the regeneration activity well into the future,” he explains. “It will act as a continuing voice for the local area and will generate the resources to enable residents to positively influence the delivery of services and management of the new neighbourhood in perpetuity.

“But I won’t rest until we get to a situation where people here are able to say ‘I come from Aylesbury’ and other people reply ‘I wish I did – it’s great’. Hopefully that won’t be too long.”

While Steve is planning long-term, the day-to-day responsibility for the estate’s physical environment falls to David Foreman, the Aylesbury NDC Physical Environment Co-ordinator.

It is David who turns up at Tykes Corner to deal with the alarm system, much to Jean’s gratitude. He takes what he describes as a ‘cautiously optimistic’ view of the estate’s regeneration and is well aware of residents’ perceptions that things are not happening as fast as they could be.

“I am confident that as long as the council is keen to progress the regeneration of the estate then it will happen. But I do think it’s the funding to kick start the work that the council is struggling to lay its hands on and in particular the funding it needs to buy out the leaseholders.

“There are 500 leaseholders on the estate, some of whom are very keen to be bought out, others less so. I think this is going to be a long drawn out process, unfortunately.”

Cathie MacIver is in the unique position of being an Aylesbury leaseholder and the NDC’s Education Co-ordinator so she can see the issue from both sides.

“I’m very much in favour of the regeneration as people are living in crumbling homes with problems over the heating and hot water. But as leaseholder I feel a little different.

“Many of the leaseholders on the estate were the original white English council tenants who during the Margaret Thatcher era were encouraged to buy their own homes. The truth is that now leaves us with some very elderly leaseholders in their late 70s and 80s, many of whom have no significant savings who purely rely on their old age pension. They don’t understand that because they are no longer council tenants they won’t be provided with new homes. It leaves them very vulnerable and anxious about what is happening.

“Under the regeneration plans there will be different options for those who have different financial situations and for people like me who are working, who have years of useful employment ahead of them and will be able to get a bigger mortgage, it is an easy decision to take the money .

“But if there’s one thing you can guarantee about a regeneration programme such as this is that it causes anxiety amongst the elderly and vulnerable and that also includes people who speak English as a second language and don’t necessarily understand everything that comes through their door, or those with mental health problems.

“One thing that will help is the Reassurance Project, which has been set up to offer practical help and administrative support to residents who need it. It is essentially a bespoke removal service that helps take people through every aspect of the process and staff will even go so far as to make phone calls and write letters on residents’ behalf in addition to the physical removal process when it actually happens.”

When the time comes for Cathy to move out of her flat on the Aylesbury she is planning to use the money to return to her family cottage in Scotland. But she says she will always remember her time on the estate with great affection.

“I will be really sad to leave here. Despite the preconceptions of it being grey and foreboding, I love it. In the summer I can open my window and the first things I hear is the sound of children laughing and playing in the play area. I think people from outside are simply not aware that there are some really lovely things going on here.”

With so many positive things happening on the Aylesbury, Steve Pearce finds it frustrating that when the estate does make national headlines it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And he particularly objects to political point scoring.

“The residents of the area do not like the Aylesbury being used by politicians for political purposes because it nearly always contributes to making life worse for people living here. If the negative perceptions of the area are over-emphasised this all contributes to people here finding it harder to get jobs, to get a mortgage, to have people come to visit them and so on.

“This is just not fair. If people – politicians, journalists, other parts of the media, anyone – spent some time in the area with people who live and work here they would find out there are many, many good things happening.

“On the other hand, the area does need significant investment to improve the overall quality of life for residents. If the continuing attention that the area gets results in increased investment then residents will probably prefer there to be a more balanced approach.”