Welcome to the 'Save Little London' campaign, a coalition of council tenants, residents and friends who are fighting Leeds City Council's attempt to demolish or sell-off 435 council homes in our neighborhood through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
We have been in existence in various forms since 2001 when it first emerged that the New Labour government and Leeds City Council had big investment plans - £35m back then - for our inner-city neighborhood of 'Little London' in north west Leeds, which falls right on the edge of the city centre itself.
At first we thought 'great' because investment is badly needed after decades of neglect and disrepair to our homes and area. But when we started to read about how the Council was proposing to finance the regeneration of our area, many of us were shocked and outraged.
Contracting private developers for 30 years to borrow the money, carry out the regeneration and manage the area, demolishing hundreds of homes and selling off or leasing hundreds more to the private sector, replacing council housing with private housing we could not afford to rent or buy...these plans did not meet the needs or wishes of the people who lived in Little London.
So we fought back. We held public meetings, got the local trade union branches to support us, did our research, leafleted every home on the estate, campaigned and raised awareness about what the nice sounding headlines really meant for people. And when the Council finally balloted tenants and residents in March 2002, we won! 54% said NO to the proposed PFI-regeneration on a whopping 67% turnout.
Leeds City Council, however, refused to accept the people's verdict and conducted a second ballot using hastily drawn up new plans that removed a large number of residents who voted No the first time. Unsurprisingly, they got the YES vote they were after. However, almost half of tenants eligible to vote did not do so (46%), giving the PFI scheme no serious democratic mandate.
Despite this setback for the campaign, between 2002 and 2005, the government blocked Leeds City Council going ahead with the PFI because of delays in another Leeds City Council housing regeneration PFI programme in Swarcliffe. In the meantime, another ballot took place to transfer the day to day running of council housing to an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) wholly owned by the Council,
Leeds North West Homes.
Finally, in May 2005, with
Swarcliffe PFI contract now signed, the Council were allowed to proceed with Little London PFI regeneration.
However, because of the delay, a high turnover of tenancies, a change in government policy and new plans for Little London, Leeds City Council had to 'consult' tenants and residents again. This time, we were given 'two options' for investment in our area.
Option 1 was called '
Decent Homes' but there wasn't too much that was decent about it. The ALMO would only be allowed to spend up to £20m to bring all Council-owned properties up to the government's promised minimum Decency Standard level by 2010.
Option 2 was called
'Comprehensive Regeneration', a proposed £85m Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme over 30 years. This offered much more money, but meant that around a third of the people living in Little London would see their homes demolished or sold off to private developers - 435 council homes to be precise- and be forced to leave the area. In their place, 125 new council homes and 300 private homes would be built, most of which was to be "affordable", although the Council's vague estimations of 'low cost' prices at between £55,000 and £110,000 was hardly reassuring. Despite waiting years for repairs, work would not start until at least late 2008 and major rebuilding would not be completed until at least 2013 with the Council unable to guarantee an end date.
Overall, the Council was offering the tenants and residents of Little London two unsatisfactory and unfair options, either substantial investment for the majority and eviction for a minority, or an under-investment for all that would recreate the need for regeneration further down the line.
Between June 2005 and February 2006, the Council spent in excess of £2 million of taxpayers money on 'consulting' Little London's 1500 tenancies. It was supposed to present tenants with the two options in a fair and balanced way. Yet in reality, the Council, councillors and the ALMO had already decided that they favoured the Comprehensive Regeneration Option and the aim of the consultation was not to 'consult' but to 'convince' enough tenants that the PFI scheme was what they really wanted.
Local residents and campaigners were so angered by the biased Council exhibition that they spontaneously conducted its own consultation exercise with a 'counter exhibition' with all the missing facts, and attempted to display it alongside that of Leeds City Council. However, on several occasions, these residents were refused entry to the foyer by council officials and ALMO officers.
In March, the Council announced that two-third of tenants 'backed the PFI scheme' and that they now intended to go ahead with the Comprehensive Regeneration subject to government and Council executive approval.
The Save Little London campaign, however, does not recognise the results of the consultation exercise and is stepping up the campaign. On Tuesday 14 March, a successful lobby was held outside Leeds Town Hall covered by Radio Aire FM; the following Thursday, Leeds Weekly News published a damning front page article on the Council's consultation. We are investigating a legal challenge, exploring tenant management alternatives, organising a city-wide meeting of residents and campaigners, and compiling a dossier of abuses of the consultation process.
On Saturday 1 April, community workers and local residents will be carrying out the first in a new series of Community Clean-Ups on the Little London estate. The clean-up is being organised by CALLS - Community Action Little London. For years, Little London has been plagued by Council neglect, leading to an intolerable level of rubbish, including dirty needles, across the estate. If the Council won't do anything about the mess then the people will have to do it themselves - and perhaps we should invoice the Council for a tax rebate!
