Regeneration - or Social Cleansing?

Private security guards prevent protesters entering Hendon Town Hall through a window

Barnet Council's apparent total disregard for the welfare of its less well-heeled residents continues to astonish. Yesterday, tenants who have lost their homes on Sweets Way estate in Whetstone, and tenants and leaseholders who face eviction when West Hendon estate is 'regenerated', were refused access to a council meeting in Hendon Town Hall.

Pretty much all services in the borough have been privatised, so handing over West Hendon to a consortium of Barratt Homes and Metropolitan Housing Partnership, and permitting Annington Homes to demolish Sweets Way, is very much in character. But failing to provide appropriate accommodation for the hundreds of households who have lost, or are about to lose, their homes of many years is inexcusable. All this is being done in the name of regeneration. The protesters call it 'social cleansing'. More pictures here, and more on Sweets Way here.

Esmaa Guernaoui, evicted from Sweets Way estate

Private security guards prevent protesters entering Hendon Town Hall

What Goes Up Might Come Down

As high-rise blocks are demolished on estates in South Kilburn and Barking (below), 2818 new homes in the skyscrapers of the former London 2012 Olympic Athletes' Village in Stratford are awaiting their first occupants (above).

The difference between those coming down and those going up is not so much architectural, as proprietorial. Private housing is replacing public: 1439 of the apartments in East Village, as it is now known, are being offering for private rent by Get Living London, a joint venture between the Qatari sovereign wealth fund and property company Delancey. The remainder are 'affordable' homes for sale, shared-ownership, or rent by Triathlon Homes, a public-private partnership.

Only time will tell whether ownership status is more important than architecture and the strength, or otherwise, of the local economy – or whether East Village is destined to become a densely packed, down-at-heel, buy-to-let opportunity earmarked for a future wrecker's ball.  More pictures here.

The People's Library

Local residents and a group of activists from Occupy London, who took over the empty Friern Barnet Library a few weeks ago, have already filled its shelves to overflowing with books donated by supporters. The newly restocked People's Library and community hub is open six days a week and hosts a range of events for children and adults, as well as running a trust-based book-lending service.

A court hearing in December will determine whether Barnet Council can evict the community librarians and sell off the building as part of its One Barnet £1 billion outsourcing programme. Until then, at least, volunteers and users have an opportunity to demonstrate how such a service might operate without local government support. A couple of months is one thing, but it's hard to see how it can survive in the long term without a regular source of income. In the meantime, it's a great advert for community solidarity and co-operative action. More pictures here (and more to follow).

The New Localism

Last night Hammersmith & Fulham Council agreed to sell West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates to developer Capital and Counties, who intend to demolish them to make way for an £8 billion Earls Court regeneration scheme.

A very large majority of the residents of the 760 homes on the two estates are strongly opposed to the plan, and have put in a rival bid through a resident-controlled housing association, West Kensington & Gibbs Green Community Homes.

Despite the council's approval, the plan requires the go-ahead from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Which way will Eric Pickles jump? It would be a good opportunity for him to showcase the new localism his department has been championing so vociferously for the last couple of years. Will he rule for the local residents, or for Capital and Counties? His decision will finally reveal whether localism means real new powers for communities, or whether it's just business as usual. If it goes against them, the residents won't give up. It could be a long campaign. More photos here and here.

Consultation, Hammersmith & Fulham Style

Residents of West Kensington and Gibbs Green Estates were last night turned away from a consultation meeting called to discuss proposals to sell their estates to a private developer and demolish them. Hammersmith and Fulham council officers refused to address the residents as a group, insisting they queue outside a small side room to be seen individually.

The council wants to knock down 760 homes to make way for a grand Earls Court redevelopment scheme. The Residents' Associations are totally opposed, and plan to use forthcoming legislation to take over the estates and run them as a resident-controlled mutual.

The meeting – held at a local Holiday Inn - appeared to be an attempt at divide and rule tactics, but many more residents turned up than could be dealt with one at a time. A letter of objection was handed over, and most left without speaking to anyone other than their neighbours.

More information is available on Dave Hill's London Blog.

Access All Areas (almost)

The photographs above and below, shot in Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast, are unusual. Not in the way they were taken, or for any exceptional artistic merit - but because they were taken at all.

I’ve written before about the ever-increasing privatisation of public space, the restrictions this imposes on our freedom of action, and how the public realm is becoming a smaller and smaller place. This modern day version of the Enclosures has not only handed control of our streets to private corporations, but also our hospitals, schools, prisons, sports centres and more. As a result, photography in many such workplaces has been almost impossible in recent years.

These photographs are evidence that the move from public to private can be, and is being, reversed. In Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales all contracting out of hospital cleaning and many other hospital ancillary services has ended. The relevant authorities have ditched ideology and realised that they are better off with directly employed staff.

It’s not the sort of thing that gets on the front pages, but it has had a big impact on the quality of services, and on the wages, terms and conditions of the workers who provide them. And it means that, almost for the first time since the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering in the mid-1980s, it is possible to record something of their working lives.

Private companies are accountable to their shareholders, concerned for their image, and unwilling to grant access to independent photographers or journalists who might provide the wrong sort of publicity – and overstretched workers on the minimum wage and lousy terms and conditions are unlikely to make good PR. Walking around hospitals in Belfast and Glasgow recently with a camera and a trade union rep from Unison, talking to directly employed staff proud to be back as part of the hospital team, was a pleasure I hadn’t experienced for nearly 25 years. I look forward to being able to do the same closer to home.

More pictures here. A video interview with Unison Branch Secretary Tom Hughes is here.

Back to the future

A three hour shift that starts at 5.00am is not for the faint-hearted, but the cleaning team that takes care of the offices, marble staircases and tiled corridors of Islington’s rather elegant Town Hall seem quite content.

Since the expiry of a 10 year contract with private company Kier Building Maintenance in October 2010, the 130 cleaners of borough’s 70 municipal buildings are once again directly employed by the local authority. The transfer back to an in-house service has seen the cleaners’ pay rise significantly to the London Living Wage level of £8.30 an hour, with improved conditions and no job losses. According to Council Leader Catherine West, the new arrangement costs less and, in addition to higher pay, offers the employees job security, access to the council pension scheme and the feeling of being “part of a team”.

It seems that the predictable consequences of the large-scale contracting out of council and other public services introduced by the Conservatives in the 1980s and 1990s, and left unchanged by the New Labour governments that followed, are finally being recognised in some quarters. Other council services in Islington are being reviewed, and further afield, hospital cleaners in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are now all directly employed, in an attempt to halt the disastrous spread of hospital infections. More pictures here.

Photography Not Permitted

Forbidden Territory from Philip Wolmuth on Vimeo.

More and more apparently public places in UK cities are in fact privately owned or managed developments, where photography is not permitted. Forbidden Territory, which introduced a talk by Anna Minton at the NUJ London Photographers’ Branch monthly meeting in January, documents some of the places in London that I have been asked to leave.

Troubles with Documentary (Part One)

Photographers go to enormous trouble to document the exotic or dangerous in far-off places. But working closer to home, although less risky to life, limb and wallet, is becoming more and more difficult.

Street photography, which has a long and fruitful history of recording life in our shared public spaces, is under attack from misguided policemen and over-zealous security guards. The powers-that-be appear threatened by any serious attempt at documenting how the world around us looks and feels in the 21st century.

Shortly after taking the photo above in Canary Wharf, part of a project on London's Other Workers, I was politely, but firmly, asked to leave the area by two security guards. Why? Because like many parts of London and other cities in the UK, large areas of apparently public space are now private property. On another recent jaunt I was stopped by a guard, after pulling a camera from my bag on the King’s Road, because I had inadvertently crossed an invisible line dividing the public highway from an (identically paved) area in front some glitzy shops. “You can’t take pictures here, mate, it’s private property”. You can spend your money here, and even tread all over it, but photography is out of the question. Unless you’re fooling around with an iPhone or some other terrorist-friendly gadget, in which case – no problem.

It is because similar problems have been encountered by so many other photographers, both amateur and professional, that the vigorous campaigning by I'm a Photographer, Not a Terrorist has been so well supported. There are signs that the authorities are taking note, but it will be a while before change filters through to the front line on the mean streets of the capital and elsewhere.