Council housing 1976 – 2017 – C4 News
July 6th, 2017
In a section about the CIH Conference last week C4 news included a few statistics …
… and two slides worth reproducing here the whole segment to be seen at:-
https://www.channel4.com/news/grenfell-fire-reveals-housing-divide
and the slides above at about 4m30s.
I think it’s worth reflecting on the fact that the amount of social housing remaining from the 1970s is on a one way journey downwards and if we’re not to say goodbye to it all there needs at the very least to be a change of Government soon and more than a major shift in policy.
Maiden Lane guest writer?
July 6th, 2017
I’ve just noticed it’s seven years today since I was last there. If you have lived on Maiden Lane for at least that period of time and want to write about the changes here, please get in touch.
A chasm at the heart of Labour
July 3rd, 2017
In the photograph above pictured with John Healey MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP is Cllr Matthew Bennett Housing Management Board Officers (Chair). The last being one of the people responsible for deciding that Cressingham Gardens must be demolished in favour of higher density housing or in my words to build expensive flats next to a park.
Stats
June 24th, 2017
Yesterday (23rd June) the page on scissor maisonettes overtook Crap Flats for the first time ever. I can only account for this by the interest in Grenfell Tower (which are not scissor maisonettes, it’s a point block) which has pushed several posts up the table in the last week.
Facts not speculation about Grenfell Tower
June 15th, 2017
Occupancy: I can only just square the media reports of 600 people in the block with the designed occupancy. Originally 20 residential floors additional flats were built in the four lower floors to make either 127 or 129 in total. The original floor layout was 4x2b + 2x1b = 10 bedspaces per floor but if we take the LHDG allowances of 4x2b4p + 2x1b2p = 20 bedspaces per floor, 24 * 20 = 480 people in the block.
That still leaves 600-480 = 120 people unaccounted for unless we assume one child or elderly relative per flat (more or less), which is what it must be. Actually I fear many more people were in block some in overcrowded conditions but I have no way of proving this.
The unanswered questions are: How many people lived in the block before the fire? How many people died in the fire? How many people survived? I don’t think we will ever know.
Drawing from Skyscraper City
Following text from Skyscraper City
“Grenfell Tower comprises 20 storeys of residential flats and four storeys of community/office spaces at podium level. It is roughly square in plan and the residential floors are identical: 4no. 2-bed flats – one on each corner –and 2no. 1-bed flats – one facing east and the other west. The north and south elevations are almost identical, as are the east and west.
The structural frame: columns, core, stairs and floor plates are in-situ poured concrete. Pre-cast concrete panels form the cladding to the residential floors: one panel type serves as a horizontal structural spandrel, spanning column to column and the other is a facing to the columns, each panel a full storey height.”
General Election 2017 – not the last this year
June 11th, 2017
“You’ve got the Leader of the Opposition coming on the programme as a kind of victor and you’ve got the Prime Minister who’s supposed to have won the election, in hiding.”
George Osborne speaking on The Andrew Marr Show
“Even if he hasn’t won, he has publicly destroyed the logic of neoliberalism – and forced the ideology of xenophobic nationalist economics into retreat.”
I am thrilled that Jeremy Corbyn did so well in last Thursday’s election and pleased that so many former Parliamentary critics of his have had the good grace to wish him well and say they were wrong about his prospects.
Vote Tory and kiss the NHS goodbye
May 29th, 2017
Following the “debate” last night which, incidentally, I think Jeremy Corbyn won hands down,
I found this. It makes chilling watching. I recommend you watch it and make up your own mind.
Subsidy II -> this from ASH
May 28th, 2017
Far from being subsidised by the state, the rents on most post-war estates paid off the cost of their construction and debt interest years ago, and are in fact making a profit for councils and housing associations. It is the Right to Buy council homes, the Help to Buy affordable housing, the housing benefit paid to private landlords, …
Read the whole thing, all the ten points. I know ASH have made enemies but they mostly get it right and I respect their intentions. The Guardian not publishing the ten points says more about the Guardian’s rightward drift than it does about ASH.
