Strata: Inside the Marmite tower

Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Featured

Its supporters believe Strata’s affordable housing breathes new life into the Elephant and Castle. Opponents argue Strata signals the disintegration of a south London community. Paul Coleman investigates.

Ian Bogle, Strata’s chief architect, gazes across London through dark glasses from the tower’s 41st storey penthouse. “I feel like a James Bond villain,” says Ian. “All I need is a fluffy white cat.”

Many of Strata’s 408 apartments offer stunning unimpeded views of Westminster, St. Paul’s and Canary Wharf. Prices are equally stunning. Duplex penthouses command up to £2 million.

The 148 metre-high Strata looms over Elephant and Castle’s gaudy pink shopping centre and bustling southern roundabout. The menacing 43-storey tower also glares down at the nearby Heygate, a vast labyrinthine 1,212-unit council estate that dominated the Elephant’s housing for the past 40 years.

Strata residents took up occupancy in July just as a regeneration deal for the Elephant and Castle was finally signed between Lend Lease and Southwark Council. By 2020, this deal could change this south London hub beyond recognition. Plans to demolish the vast Heygate are already being finalised. The Aylesbury estate, the Heygate’s immense neighbour, seems set to go the same way.

Dick Mortimer, development director for housing association Family Mosaic, praises Brookfield and Strata’s original developers, Multiplex, for increasing the Elephant’s housing supply. “Strata kick-starts the Elephant’s regeneration,” explains Dick. “But Strata is like Marmite. You either love or hate it.”

Family Mosaic bought 98 units of Strata’s 408 apartments from the developers. These 98 comprise Strata’s ‘affordable housing’; the Section 106 ‘planning gain’ condition that secured Strata’s planning permission. All 98 are being sold on a part-buy, part-rent basis. Controversially, none of Family Mosaic’s units are available for local council tenants to rent.

Dick says it was decided to help decant some Heygate leaseholders through the shared equity element but there was concern about putting lots of socially renting people into a tower block. “Housing the very poorest continues a downward spiral,” he says. “Social housing has dominated the area, so why add more?”

Ian Bogle’s design shunned family homes. “The Elephant doesn’t need more social rented housing,” he echoes. “Southwark Council were keen Strata was not for families.”

However, Brookfield initially boasted 20 of the ‘affordable’ 98 flats were “reserved exclusively” for Heygate right-to-buy leaseholders. “But Heygate residents took up only five of these twenty flats,” admits Dick Mortimer.

Family Mosaic’s smartly decorated yet small one and two bedroom apartments did not suit many families who had lived in the Heygate’s large three bedroom family units. “Some Heygate people chose to move away from the area,” claims Dick. “But two Heygate neighbours now live next to each other in Strata.”

He says Family Mosaic helped three former right-to-buy leaseholders from nearby council estates to buy flats in Strata, even though the trio had failed to secure enough equity from their existing ex-council properties. “We took a hit on those on these flats. After all, we’re an affordable housing provider helping people in need,” he explains.

“Most of the units we’ve been selling are at 25% of their actual value,” adds Dick. “We charge a very low rate on the outstanding equity otherwise people on lower and medium incomes couldn’t afford to live in Strata.”

Family Mosaic’s ‘New Build Homebuy’ scheme “sells new homes to those who cannot afford to buy on the open market”. The RSL marketed its 98 units as ‘Esprit’ apartments, intending to sell all on a ‘shared ownership’ basis. Of these, 79 sit on floors 2-10 and nine in the adjacent Pavilion block.

The ‘Esprit’ offering consists of 51 one bedroom and 47 two bedroom apartments. For example, on August 16, Family Mosaic re-advertised ‘Esprit’ 806, a south-facing one bedroom, eighth floor apartment actually tagged as ‘under offer’ in July.

Full value for ‘806’ was quoted as £230,000 with a minimum 25% share priced at £57,500. To acquire this share, assuming a buyer puts down a 10% deposit, Family Mosaic estimate a monthly mortgage of £358.14 based on a 90% repayment loan at a guide interest rate of 6.64%. Monthly rent, amounting to 1.75% of the unsold equity, adds another £251.56. A monthly service charge of £163.08 amounts to a total estimated monthly payout of £772.78.

Family Mosaic says a single person seeking to acquire this apartment needs a minimum annual salary of £18,000, or £1,500 per month. Two people need an annual joint minimum income of £21,000, or £1,750 per month. Buyers must also have at least £4,000 to cover home-buying costs.

Is this affordable and value for money? “Frankly, paying £730 per month when you’re earning that little is ridiculous,” says one Walworth resident after studying the figures.

Dick Mortimer accepts many Elephant and Castle residents cannot afford shared ownership Esprit flats. “It’s not for people on housing benefit,” he says. “But the take-up shows they’re within the reach of significant numbers who live and work in Southwark.”

Dick claims “over 80% of the 98 Esprit units are going to people who live and work locally”. However, only 37 of the 98 apartments were ‘sold’, according to Family Mosaic’s price list of 14 August, with 49 still ‘under offer’.

Of the remaining 12 still for sale, six were on floors 2-4 and five in the Pavilion, a low-level annexe to the Strata tower. The Pavilion sits next to Draper House, a ‘brutalist’ 1965 London County Council block with 133 flats on 25 floors. Draper House missed out on much-needed refurbishment when Strata was being built between 2006-2010.

Brookfield boasts 306 of its swish 310 privately owned apartments between levels 11-42 were sold in 2007, three years before Strata was finished. However, reports persisted during August that Brookfield’s £113m Strata tower was only 31 per cent occupied, with some 280 flats still empty.

Brookfield claim the average sale was £615 per square foot of the net internal area. For instance, a two bedroom was sold for £292,000. One of the three bedroom duplex penthouses on Levels 41/42 was sold, it’s claimed, for nigh on £2 million.

Dick says Family Mosaic “would love to be involved” in whatever housing schemes eventually replace the Heygate and Aylesbury. But local community groups fear Strata’s tenure model – 75% expensive private apartments and 25% relatively expensive small flats under shared ownership – will dominate the Elephant and Castle’s regeneration over the next decade.

The Elephant Amenity Network, a “coalition of local groups, tenants, leaseholders and traders”, signed a regeneration charter in 2009 calling on Southwark Council to replace the 1,212 demolished Heygate council homes “with the same number of social rented units (preferably council housing) in the new developments”.

Some signatories believe developers are using RSLs, like Family Mosaic, to grab publicly owned land. Land and rental values are likely to soar as the Elephant and Castle, and the wider Walworth area, lie within walking distance of the West End and the City.

“The view that greedy developers are trying to screw everyone isn’t right,” retorts Dick. “Obviously developers are looking to maximise their position. But it’s incumbent on the council and housing associations to ensure we offer very affordable flats.”

Earlier this summer, Ian Bogle advocated breaking up concentrations of council housing to stimulate regeneration, citing north London’s Caledonian Road as another area needing this policy. Ian claims combining private and shared owners makes Strata a paragon of ‘mixed’ tenure. “The building doesn’t differentiate between private and shared equity owners,” he says.

Elephant residents say this “just ain’t so”. Yes, private owners and shared equity residents share a smart lobby, 24/7 concierge service and three lifts; but the smart-card lifts do not allow shared equity owners to access levels 11-43. “That’s a shocking division,” says Jacqueline Rokotnitz, a long-term Elephant and Castle resident. “And in a small way it shows how the Elephant and Castle, which promised to be one of the world’s great urban regeneration projects, has gone sadly awry.”

Jacqueline contends the prelude to the Lend Lease regeneration deal involved “yanking people from the Heygate where they’d lived for generations”. Elderly people, promised new homes, were stuck in temporary accommodation. “I’m incensed, they were disgracefully betrayed,” she says.

“The Heygate people were the Elephant but they’ve all been melted away. It happened on the Isle of Dogs in the 1980s and it’s happening in the Elephant and Castle now.”

Brookfield and Family Mosaic say Strata significantly increases housing supply in North Southwark. “But housing for who?” retorts Jacqueline. “Yes, 408 flats and 98 affordable look like impressive statistics but the affordable housing in Strata is so tiny Heygate families could never have lived there.

“Without a community spirit it doesn’t matter if a tower like Strata wins architectural prizes. Without families, our community is going to die.”

Strata: dividing opinion

London mayor Boris Johnson nicknamed the 148-metre high Strata, “the Lipstick”, praising London’s tallest residential tower for having “a bit of oomph”.

Developers Brookfield promised “in June, Strata’s three integrated turbines will gather wind…and electricity will flow into the building’s battery bank”, providing “8% of Strata’s estimated total energy consumption”. Two months later, Strata’s turbines remain static.

Local resident Jacqueline Rokotnitz looks up at Strata from her flat everyday. “I think Strata’s little pixie ears are cute but I’ve never seen the turbines turn.”

Strata ‘won’ the 2010 Carbuncle Cup, as the ‘worst new building of the year’, for its “Philishave stylings” and “sheer breakfast-extracting ugliness”.

Another Elephant and Castle resident said, “Strata glares over south London like Sauron over the land of Mordor.”

Photo credit: Yui Law