Tidemill and Reginald Road #3 - Deptford Husting

As mentioned in our previous post, residents at Reginald Road handed in yet another petition to the Council last week saying they don't want their homes demolished. They also asked the Council to stop harassing them. This obviously fell on deaf ears, as officers from the Housing Strategy team were back door knocking again within a few days. Not only that, but last week a tenant was told by Lewisham Homes that they would not carry out any repairs and she would have to fund them herself. 

Lewisham Labour pledge to introduce balloting of estates threatened with demolition in their new manifesto, which is too late for Reginald Road, although since the development hasn't been fully signed off yet there's no reason why it should be. Of course there's no guarantee the officers in charge of balloting won't use the same manipulative (and now bullying) techniques that they're employing now, and twist a majority ballot against demolition into 100% consent.

Meanwhile, at the Deptford Hustings held in Old Tidemill Garden last Sunday (watch a recording  here), Cllr Joe Dromey repeatedly referred to a young woman he'd met on his campaign door-knocking rounds who is in dire need of re-housing. He wouldn't say which estate she was from but kept referring to her like a mascot (or a trope for his election campaign). Because she had cried in his lap, he was personally guaranteeing she be rehoused.

In a perpetual state of campaigning, usually in support of Council policy that goes against his own constituents, in March he was on Facebook saying the same thing: "When we were door-knocking on the Winslade on Saturday, I met a woman who is living in a tiny studio apartment, riddled with damp, with her two kids. All of them suffer from mental health problems, and they were in a really bad way. I'm trying to get them moved, but we have so few social homes, and there is so much need. They deserve a decent home, and this new estate in Deptford will make an enormous difference."

Candidates Joe Dromey (Lab), Jerry Barnett (LibDem) and Andrea Carey-Fuller (Green) just before the Deptford Hustings started on Sunday

While we agree that it must be truly awful for the young mother he met, our first thought is that the Winslade estate is owned by the Council and managed by Lewisham Homes. If the property is 'damp riddled', whose fault is that? 

The Winslade has recently had "Decent Homes" work done, but as with most of the Lewisham Homes project-managed Decent Homes work done across the borough in the past few years, damp was never tackled; the work was based on desktop stock surveys done by Savills several years ago, with no attention paid to the issues in individual buildings. As Lewisham Homes tenants know full well, complaints about damp are rarely adequately dealt with and tenants are often told it is their own fault (for drying washing indoors for example), when more often than not it's the result of long term lack of repair to gutters, loose roof tiles or chimney flashing, faulty communal walkway surfaces, inadequate ventilation or a leaking boiler from another flat. After 12 years in existence, Lewisham Homes still does not have cyclical programmes in place to solve repetitive problems, and their repairs service can be summed up in short term fixes that lead to long term nightmares – yet they are now in charge of building new homes! 

Our second thought was "What about the people in Reginald House?!" who have been living with the threat of demolition for ten years – living in fear of displacement and unable to plan ahead – while Lewisham Council have faffed around trying to up affordable homes quotas, chopping and changing their minds, lying to residents, failing to communicate with them properly, trying to pick them off one-by-one, and not once considering the impact of their plans on people. 

In the early days of so-called 'consultation', Housing Strategy officers reported to Mayor & Cabinet that the scheme had lots of support and the only ones who didn't want the scheme to go ahead were older residents who'd been living there a long time. Well yes, what a surprise! Pesky old people – the ones most invested in their homes, with the most to lose! 

As one campaigner responded to Cllr Dromey on Facebook, "you are riding roughshod over one disadvantaged community to serve what you perceive as an even more disadvantaged community. It is divisive."

This news report from 2017 by East London Lines captures how people in Reginald House feel:

Stress, a sense of loss, grieving, poorer mental health and a decline in physical health have been found to occur in individuals who are forced from their homes. Stress can also occur from the anticipation of dislocation and the lack of understanding from the authorities. Qualitative studies in the US have found the sense of bereavement that comes from being displaced is particularly acute among the elderly. 

In her recent book about the "financialisation of housing" Big Capital–who is London for? Anna Minton documents, among other things, the effects of demolition and displacement on residents at the Heygate, where some people are thought to have died as a result of the upheaval.  

Academics refer to the 'phenomenology of place' to distinguish 'space' (ie a unit of housing) from 'place' (home). Both home and hometown are intimate places, full of memories, and to dismiss the 'emotional geography' of place simply reduces neighbourhood and home to a spatial commodity or just mere numbers. 

Lewisham Council are offering the Reginald House tenants new homes in the new development. "Look!" they say, "you'll have a lift, you'll have a brand new home!", but fail to see the difference between opening your front door to the outside world as you have done for years and opening your front door onto a corridor – let alone the extra costs incurred in service charges for maintaining a lift. Or the difference between knowing exactly where your neighbours are, then finding them transferred to a strange new block – or even another town.

At the Deptford Hustings Cllr Dromey (son of Harriet Harmen MP and Jack Dromey MP) accused members of the audience of "nimbyism" – he twice muttered under his breath "It's never here though, is it, it's always somewhere else" and "Never in this spot, though, is it" as if no one wanted to see new housing built. As we have previously noted, campaigners have shown it is possible to build more housing on the site without demolishing homes and the garden. So he obviously missed all the relevant points and insulted everyone in Reginald House at the same time (not that they were ever going to vote for him anyway)... 

Managed decline

The exterior of 2-16A Reginald Road has been allowed to become run-down (while the insides have benefitted from Decent Homes work) in what is usually referred to as "managed decline" – or deliberate neglect, as film-maker Paul Sng describes in his film Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle. 

At Reginald Road, service charges and rent are being paid but no repair work is being done. It's not as though the money isn't there to refurbish homes, it's just being spent elsewhere. An FOI request revealed that in the time that £104,000 was taken from Reginald House residents in rent and service charges, only £126 has been spent on repairs.

At Achilles Street in New Cross where 87 homes and 15+ businesses are under threat of demolition in Council-led estate regeneration, the residents made an FOI request to find out whether any money was being spent on their buildings. They discovered that whilst £2,601,009 had been collected in rent and service charges in the past six years, only £248,899 had been spent on repairs and maintenance. 

The way Lewisham Homes is managing the Council's current stock leads one to suspect that the Winslade estate – where Cllr Dromey met the desperately unhappy mum – is next in line for demolition and "regeneration". Meanwhile, residents at Achilles Street refer to Lewisham Homes as "slum landlords". 

Tidemill & Reginald House update #2 – affordable rents and alternative plans

Following on from our previous post, we wanted to take a further look at that 'key decision' made by Mayor & Cabinet on March 15th 2018: "to change 43 homes from private sale to London Affordable Rent (social rent)" and Cllr Dromey's claim that there will be 117 "socially rented" homes on the new Tidemill development.

There seems to be some confusion. The minutes have "social rent" in brackets after "London Affordable Rent", but the two are not the same. For verification, we asked a friendly councillor in another ward to find out for us and he came back with the following from the Head of Housing Policy (our bold):

‘Social Rent’ and ‘London Affordable Rent’ are both considered types of affordable housing and have very similar rent levels, however they are not the same product.

Properties let at ‘Social Rent’ have long been the most affordable housing product available, typically known as council housing. These properties are allocated to applicants in priority need who apply and are accepted to Lewisham’s Housing Register. The formula for calculating the rents is set by Government and since 2016, rents have been subject to a 1% rent reduction, to last until 2020, when the intention is to return to CPI plus 1% rent rises. 

The Mayor of London introduced ‘London Affordable Rent’ in 2017. London Affordable Rent refers to rents for genuinely affordable homes aimed at low-income households. The benchmark rents have been set by the Mayor and are very similar to social rents. As with social rents, ‘London Affordable Rent’ will also be subject to rent setting guidance and the 1% rent reduction will apply until 2020. Allocations to these properties will be made in the same way as social rent properties mentioned above.

‘London Affordable Rent’ can be confused with ‘Affordable Rent’ which the Government introduced as a form of affordable housing in 2010. The ‘Affordable Rent’ product allows Registered Providers to charge rents of up to 80% of local market rents. Rents at this level are rarely affordable to residents on low incomes and the product is considered to be widely unaffordable in London; thus it is not supported by the Mayor of London. Allocations to ‘Affordable Rent’ properties are also made via the Housing Register, but there is a reliance on Housing Benefit to meet the high cost of the rent.

Finally, ‘London Living Rent’ is a rent which is affordable to households on median incomes, as the rent is set at one third of median local incomes. It is a form of intermediate housing and is aimed at low to median earning working households who are priced out of home ownership and yet have no realistic opportunity to qualify for social housing. A number of the properties at Besson Street will be let at ‘London Living Rent’ levels, offering a range of ways of meeting a genuine housing need in Lewisham. They will enable lower income workers to benefit from lower rents and greater security, and will be priced at a level that means the group of potential beneficiaries is very broad.

Going forwards, homes built using GLA funding in the Affordable Housing Programme 2016-21 are expected to include properties for ‘London Affordable Rent’ and properties for ‘London Living Rent’. 

A rent comparison table was included with the explanation (prices per week) as follows:

Click to enlarge

What is clear from the table is that "London Affordable Rent" is not at all similar to "social rent" (here described as 'Lewisham Stock – Average Rent'). In fact, London Affordable Rent is 63% more than Social Rent (based on a 2-bed flat), and would cost the tenant an extra £3,000 per year. 

Click to enlarge

Although the terms offered to Reginald Road residents may now be to keep them at the same rent levels (real Social Rent/Council rent) how are we supposed to believe Joe when he says all the Tidemill "affordable" rents will be "social rents" if the Council considers the two different rents as "similar" (when they quite clearly are not), and when the development is dependent on GLA funding which is offered only for London Affordable Rents?

We finally managed to get hold of the report for the 15th March Mayor & Cabinet meeting, but all figures are redacted. Nevertheless it refers to how in 2017, the GLA's "new London Affordable Rent model clarified the rent setting process and created rents that were effectively social rents" (p.6). Then in 2018 (p.7) para 5.5 states "...This new offer would increase the proportion of new homes on the development that are affordable – defined as either London Affordable Rent (i.e. social rent) or as Shared Ownership...".

Cllr Dromey is utterly convinced that the rents will be "social rent" and seems to truly believe they will be the same as Council Rents – which actually are genuinely affordable for people on low incomes. For those earning the London Living Wage (£10.20p/h) whose annual salary might be £19,890, they would take home around £326 p/w after tax and national insurance, so the "affordable rent" of £144.25 p/w for a one-bed flat is actually, at 44%, far more than a third of their wages.

Most people on the housing waiting list that Cllr Dromey says will get homes in this new development will be earning £20k or much less. But if he is using the Tory re-definition of social rent as London Affordable Rent (as the Council seem to) then he has either fooled himself or is fooling us.

Alternative plans

We hope Joe is right, because there is a lot of sacrifice involved in this scheme as it stands now with families being forced from their homes and loss of pollution-mitigating mature green space.

However, those sacrifices need not be made if this development was redesigned with the same amount of units without demolishing valuable green space and sixteen sound council homes. The campaigners have already demonstrated to the Council how this might be done, with an alternative plan that shows denser building on the northern side of the site, saving both 2-30A Reginald Road and the garden.

Click to enlarge

But there was a flat refusal from the Council and its partners to work with local stakeholders (aka the community) to reconsider the layout of the site (which was set in stone four years ago when the contractual agreement stipulated that any redesign would have to come out of the partners' pockets).

Architects for Social Housing got the same response from Lambeth Council after working with residents for a year at Central Hill Estate to show how new homes could be added (infill) and the older ones refurbished without demolishing them. Lambeth said the fully budgeted ASH plan was "unviable", despite it costing less. The decision was based on a feasibility study that was only made available to ASH with all the figures redacted; Lambeth refused to give the financial reasons for why they'd rejected the proposals. 

One of the reasons the ASH plans actually cost less was because it costs £50k per unit to demolish the buildings (and then the cost of rebuilding) whereas refurbishment cost £40k per unit (with no rebuilding costs)!

And that's without taking into account the environmental impact and carbon footprint of demolition and new construction, or the emotional and mental health impacts on those whose homes are demolished.

Tidemill and Reginald House update #1 – secrecy and lies

On March 15th, Lewisham's Mayor & Cabinet met in secret to approve further plans for the redevelopment of the Tidemill site that includes the demolition of Old Tidemill Garden and 16 council flats at 2-30A Reginald Road. This was one of two agenda items discussed behind closed doors that night (the other being their plans for Besson Street) due to "commercial sensitivity". While campaigners protested outside the town hall, Cllr Joe Dromey (New Cross ward councillor and  Cabinet member for Policy & Performance) tweeted the outcome of the Tidemill item:

“Great Lewisham Council meeting this eve. Delighted we’ve been able to increase the number of social homes at the Old Tidemill development. It’s now 54% social housing, and 75% affordable. There will now be 117 socially rented homes on the new estate, an increase of 104 social homes. I think that’s the largest amount of social homes delivered in any development in the four years I’ve been a Councillor.” 

While Joe's figures are a little inaccurate (see below) he's right to say it's the largest amount of social homes delivered in any development in the past four years, including any council-led schemes. For example, at Heathside & Lethbridge, the council-led "regeneration scheme" at Blackheath Hill/Lewisham Road, the two estates combined originally consisted of 638 flats (527 on social rents and 111 leaseholders). The Council estimated it would cost £29.3m to do a high quality refurbishment (beyond Decent Homes standards) on all the blocks.

But instead they chose to partner with Family Mosaic housing association to demolish all the blocks and build 1192 new flats at a cost of £272m. According to figures provided by G15 (the group representing London's largest housing associations), at completion of the phased redevelopment in 2020, only 17% will be 'social rents' (199). 21% (248) will be 'affordable rent', 11% shared ownership/equity, and a whopping 52% (616) will be for private sale. This represents a loss of 328 'social rents' – and decanted tenants take priority on the Council's waiting list, depriving others on the list.

So, there certainly a need for some rebalancing! Meanwhile, with no further info than Joe's tweets to go on, the Deptford Dame was able to report four days later that the Council had published some very short minutes of the key decision made on Tidemill (which can also be found here – look for Deptford Southern Housing Sites):

“to increase the amount of affordable housing through increased grant funding, to change 43 homes from private sale to London Affordable Rent (social rent) at a cost to the Council of £4,310,211, and 16 homes from private sale to shared ownership at no additional cost”.

That's more or less it. But let's go back to Joe's figures. If you add 43 additional London Affordable Rents to the original 61 (74 new builds minus 13 demolished tenanted homes) you get 104, as Joe said. But this is not 54%, it is under 50% (of the total 209 units). And if you add 16 additional ‘shared ownership homes’ to the original 22 (25 new builds minus 3 demolished leaseholder homes), you get 38. 104+38 = 142, which is not a 75% total of affordable housing. It is under 68%.  

Never mind, it's a great improvement on the previous quota (8% in 2016 and 41% in 2017) and in fact is well over the 50% required by the GLA to grant funding (at around £60k per affordable flat). Trebles all round. In fact, if there's that much subsidy sloshing about and quite a lot of it coming from the Council itself in previously unused Right To Buy receipts as well as selling the land at "less than best consideration" (actually about 25% of what Family Mosaic paid for its site at Sun Wharf), then why it is still necessary to DEMOLISH 16 HOMES and a much needed mature green space, when no one who actually lives here wants that?

The residents at Reginald Road certainly don't want it, but does anyone listen to them? They have been living with the threat of demolition since 2008 and have several times petitioned against the demolition of their homes. The latest petition was handed in to Lewisham on April 24th and was signed by 12 out of 15 residents (there are 16 homes, but one is presently empty).

Not only have the residents declared several times that they want to keep their homes, but the plans involve a stock transfer (from Lewisham Homes to a housing association), which by law, requires a ballot. Like Heathside & Lethbridge and others, they have never been offered one. Lewisham get round this by offering tenants rehousing in Council property in other parts of the borough if they don't want to move to a new housing association flat.

The Mayor of London (along with Lewisham's Mayor-in-waiting) is now proposing mandatory ballots of residents for schemes where any demolition is planned, as a strict condition of any GLA funding. Soon after consultation on the policy began, Sian Berry (London Assembly member for the Green Party) discovered that the Mayor of London had already signed off funding for 34 estates to dodge his own new ballot rules. Unfortunately, Tidemill is on that list because the GLA signed a contract for funding in January, despite not yet having approved the planning application in full.

We put in an FOI request to see the officer's report that led to the key decision made on 15th March behind closed doors. The answer is as expected – the Council are not required to oblige the request. This is because they are partnering with private companies – Peabody Housing, Sherrygreen Homes and Mullaley – who are not public bodies. This confidentiality applies to any regeneration scheme where Lewisham partners with housing associations and private builders.

Architects for Social Housing (ASH) spent over three years trying to obtain figures from Lambeth Council via FOI when working on alternative community-led plans for the Central Hill Estate in Crystal Palace. They concluded: "The desire of the private sector development partners to hide such information…should be an argument in favour of disclosure in any proposed housing development – let alone one based on the demolition and privatisation of publicly owned assets; let alone one that will receive millions of pounds of public funding…"

They go on, "In the wake of Grenfell, how can any council continue to hide its financial deals with private sector partners behind the cloak of commercial confidentiality?... Who can deny that it is not in the public interest to know the corners being cut by the kind of private deals that made the Grenfell Tower fire a disaster waiting to happen, when those same deals are being withheld from public scrutiny on every estate regeneration scheme that demolishes council homes and replaces them with developments built and managed by private companies?”

Housing associations are private companies. Even the Mayor of London says in the draft new London Plan (para 4.10.5): “Given the impact of estate regeneration schemes on existing residents, it is particularly important that information about the viability of schemes is available to the public even where a high level of affordable housing is being delivered.”

Surely £4+m of public money and the sale of public assets to a private company demands full transparency?

Reginald Road & Achilles Street – trying to be heard and seen

At the Birds Nest roundabout

We first noticed this banner at the Birds Nest roundabout on Sunday 28th January, but it was apparently one of five that went up around Deptford on Friday evening.

Protesters were trying to highlight the plight of Council tenants whose homes (and businesses) are due for demolition to make way for new developments planned by Lewisham Council. Publicly owned green space (Tidemill Old Wildlife Garden) will also be lost. The Council defends its policy of demolition on the basis that more social housing can be built in its place as a result of it partnering with private developers who will of course build even more private housing as well. Never mind that the tenants themselves do not want their homes demolished.

On the overpass at Deptford Bridge DLR

Such deals are common across London Labour boroughs, the most controversial being the Heygate and Aylesbury estate regenerations in Southwark where very little social if any housing has been achieved and so many people have been displaced. The most recent controversy is the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) which has resulted in the leader of Haringey Labour resigning after Councillors who supported the plan to go 50/50 with Lend Lease were voted out in local elections to be replaced with new Councillors who opposed the plan.

At Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Reginald Road

We've covered the Tidemill and Reginald Road story quite a lot on this blog, the last post being an overdue report in November on the September planning decision, surely one of the most undemocratic planning meetings in the present administration's history.

We also caught up in November with what is going on at Achilles Street in New Cross – just the other side of the underpass. Tenants and leaseholders as well as businesses are fighting to save their homes, shops and restaurants, while the Council drags its heels on its plans – without giving any indication that they will change them in any way. As with Tidemill (where the publicly funded subsidy for the affordable housing was not secured till the very last minute) such delays are usually due to the Council finding suitable development partners.

Fordham Park end of the New Cross underpass

Fortunately, another writer is keeping us to date with what is going on at Reginald Road and Achilles Street. PHD student Anita Strasser has just posted on her blog Deptford Is Changing. She notes how tenants' mental health is affected when they have no control over their own futures, and how (often family-run) shops and businesses risk losing their livelihoods. The Council refuses to ballot those affected.

Deptford end of the underpass

The banners remind us of how difficult it is for ordinary people's voices to be heard. A recent YouGov poll found that 71% feel they have no control over the important decisions that affect their neighbourhood and local community.

The campaign to bring back the Deptford Anchor is being hailed by some as a triumph of "People Power", but people's lives were not affected or put on hold while the Council took almost five years to capitulate to the campaigner's wishes. Reginald Road tenants have been living in limbo for almost ten years since regeneration plans for Tidemill were first mooted. Tenants and businesses affected by threats of demolition cannot afford the luxury of waiting so long to find out their fate.

https://www.facebook.com/nosocialcleansinglewisham/
https://www.facebook.com/oldtidemillgarden/?ref=br_rs
https://achillesstreetstopandlisten.wordpress.com
https://achillesstreetstopandlisten.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/fact-sheet/
http://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2017/12/lewisham-residents-fighting-save-homes-demolition-accuse-council-social-cleansing/

Welcome back, Deptford Anchor

The best pic we've seen so far, by CircusFit on Twitter

We haven't written about the Deptford Anchor since 2013 when a campaign began soon after it was removed. A petition was launched in late 2015 by the Deptford Society, which we linked to in our sidebar – but without any help from us the petition attracted hundreds of signatures within a few months.

Another week has gone by since this pic was taken – the installation of a plaque is awaited before the fencing around the site can be removed. 

Campaigners are already planning a celebratory 'sea shanty' procession down the high street this coming Saturday 3rd February, assembling at 12 sharp at Villages Brewery in Resolution Way and setting off soon after noisily singing shanties (song sheets provided) to head down to the anchor for a spirited toast to everyone who helped bring it back. (See the Facebook event). Expect a "salty sea farin' knees-up, all inclusive, home-spun, raucous fun Deptford Shanty Crew celebration".... 

Meanwhile, there are two exhibitions about the anchor in Deptford Does Art at 28 Deptford High Street, close to the anchor site. On the ground floor Deptford Is Forever are showing a 'visual campaign archive', which reveal their links with local community initiatives The Lenox Project and Sayes Court. Both those projects grew out of a previous campaign by Deptford Is to get the massive legacy of the historic Deptford Dockyard recognised in the plans for Convoys Wharf by site owners Hutchison Whampoa – a campaign which this blog covered extensively in 2013 and up until the developer got planning permission from the Mayor of London in 2014. 

In the downstairs gallery at Deptford Does Art is the final year show of (now graduated) MA Landscape Architect student Max Barnes, who was inspired to make work about the Deptford Anchor by visiting tutors at Greenwich University, Bob Bagley & Roo Angel – the founders of Sayes Court. Barnes imagines the anchor being dragged from its storage place on Convoys Wharf back to the high street, gouging out the tarmac as it goes to create a fantastical new environment. The show closes on Sunday 4th Feb so catch it while you can. 

There are also two talks this weekend in the basement gallery where Barnes has created the context for a new take on the redevelopment of Convoys Wharf, aka Deptford Dockyard.
• Friday 3rd Feb at 7.30pm The Lenox Project
•  Saturday 4th at 3pm, Sayes Court.  

From what we can glean on the Deptford Is Forever website, various 'artistic' street interventions over the years helped publicise the petition till it reached over 4,000 in November 2016. Deptford Is Forever seem to be the naughty artistic wing of an otherwise respectable Deptford Society. But it seems the Council had started to take notice when the petition hit around 3,300. At least that's the figure mentioned in the Feasibility Study they saw fit to commission a few months after the petition had already hit that figure. 

We also note that the campaigners seemed to spend most of 2017 in delayed and protracted talks with the Council, because although the Mayor had agreed the anchor could return, the Deputy Mayor was very averse to it being installed in a position where it could actually be seen. A little bird tells us Cllr Alan Smith, who now seems to have quite a reputation for exaggerated and ill-founded expertise, also claimed it wasn't even a real anchor, and that the entire area was full of high power cables just waiting to explode on touch. It seems he expounded these fears on the basis that his wife once worked for UK Power Networks (and not because his own administration had a proper and authoritative conversation with the utility operator in question).

But all that is by-the-by now, as last week our bit of ol' iron was finally brought back and re-installed on a generous bed of cobbles – seemingly a bigger area than the visuals shown in the planning submission of July/August 2017. The old anchor (thought to originate in part from the 1860s) has been thoroughly cleaned up and the chain has been welded together, presumably for health and safety reasons. It can no longer be dragged out into the street by a passionately inebriated person as Ben Graville's pic shows here. 

©Ben Graville

There is no longer a plinth for the public to sit on, but it seems the campaigners acknowledged that the plinth could not be returned. The anchor was removed because of the anti-social behaviour of the street drinkers who congregated there in the latter days of its previous existence, so the Council were unlikely to allow it to happen again.

Meanwhile, 28 Deptford High Street is a Council-owned building that was originally part of the regeneration plans that saw the anchor removed in 2013, so it seems fitting that the anchor campaigners have found a temporary home there at the same time as the anchor returns. 

The 2013 street regeneration funding (from the Mayor of London's Outer London fund, not from Lewisham's own coffers) went to refurbishing the flats upstairs at no.28, but seemingly ran out when it came to doing up the shop, which had previously been a much-needed community Law Centre. The shop lay empty until money was found for refurbishment in 2016, then lay empty again until the Council put out a tender in 2017, having changed its planning use from A2 Financial to A1/A3 so that food and drink could be consumed in a retail environment. Unfortunately the refurbishment stopped short of providing a proper kitchen...

Deptford Does Art, who have been placing local artists' work in pubs and other venues in the area for a couple of years, fulfilled Lewisham's brief to provide a commercially viable community hub at No.28 DHS, but they weren't the first winners. Several groups applied, including a consortium of local community projects and activists headed up by the Deptford People Project (who have been providing free food to the homeless for some years). 

No one actually knows who won, but whoever they were, they pulled out, and Deptford Does Art were consequently invited to take on the premises, and do the best they could with a draconian lease, hardly any discount in rent or business rates, as well as no kitchen and no disabled access! They offer craft beers, wine, coffee and speciality teas, as well as vegan cakes and savoury bites, and are open Wed-Sun, 12-10.30pm. Local artists are queuing up to show their work.

Deptford Does Arts's rosta of artists is unlikely to include the kind of contemporary artist who used to show at Hales Gallery and Cafe, which older residents will remember with fondness, as the cafe had such a beautiful back garden; such lovely outdoor spaces are in limited supply both then and now. The gallery downstairs put on shows that Charles Saatchi was known to visit and buy from. 

Who can remember when Hales Gallery got too successful for Deptford? For some landlords on the high street, the continual promise of gentrification wasn't happening soon enough. Hales Gallery, for instance, needed to capitalise on the interest they had in the artists they represented and were desperate to be in a more fashionable location (and a larger space) to continue their ambitions in the international art market. Hales Gallery moved to Shoreditch in 2004.

They were not only ahead of the game, they had also benefitted from all the public funds going into the area. As a member of Shaftesbury Christian Centre (aka Bear Church), Hales owner Paul Maslin took advantage of grants and charity exemptions. Then he sold No.30 to Jennings the bookmaker who immediately sold it on to Corals, which precipitated a free-for-all for bookies wanting to take over the high street and a campaign we ran in 2011 against Betfred. Paul Maslin is one three Councillors for New Cross Ward (covering the area in question).