Housing Renewal in Westminster

Each of the regeneration areas focuses around four key activities;     it's about provision of more homes and improved existing homes, about improving the environment to make the neighbourhood safer places to live in, it's to provide job opportunities for local people and it's to provide enterprise opportunities for local businesses. So we have five regeneration areas within the Housing Renewal Programme at the moment. Tollgate Gardens, which is close to the north of the borough, the proposals there are to keep a taller building on the site and then redevelop the lower density housing. Church Street is a much larger area and the challenge there is improving the existing housing and improving the market and the retail facilities. Paddington Green just has a single site within the Renewal plan there looking at how to redevelop housing on the top of a car park site. The fourth regeneration area is Westbourne Green. It has some fantastic public realm, how can we link all of those green areas into the housing estate? Ebury Bridge estate in the south of the borough, just close to Victoria train station. It's right next to railway lines so some of the housing is very noisy, also it's not felt by residents to be as safe as it could be. We need definite improvement in the housing, we just haven't got enough big flats. I think it's good if they're going to be able to give families bigger places. There's three of them sleeping here,     my eldest is 18 and then 13 and then she's 5.     If you hold back development, you're holding back progress. They ask the public, the people that live around the area, what they want to change and we've got a say in it basically. The Renewal Programme is about delivering improvements to the total place. Within each of the areas there's very different areas of focus of activity, we're not just looking at the new housing that's going to be delivered it's about major improvements to the infrastructure and public realm which is everything from street paving all the way through to how to improve heating systems. So the challenge here is about creating safe, vibrant neighbourhoods that the local residents own and are really proud of living in. I've been a resident of Church Street neighbourhood for almost ten years,     recently I was engaged in the design team.     First we visited various developments across London to have a look at examples and then we met with the architects that were appointed to develop and we were involved in selecting materials for the interiors and exterior of the showflats. "Oh it's lovely...it's really nice."     "When can I move in?" I'm one of the first properties due for demolition     to start the first phase of the works     which obviously means I'm going to be uprooted and moved.     I'm just a bit apprehensive of my new place and neighbours.     Just the specifications, it's nice, there's space, the rooms are of a good size, they're not tiny, I think if my neighbours saw this... ...I think they'd be impressed... they wouldn't be so anxious perhaps. So right at the beginning of the Renewal Programme we work with the residents to understand some of the challenges the area has. So that might be about the quality of their housing, the quality of the environment, opportunities for jobs. The next stage is then to create a brief for architects to work on design options and then it is for the architects to work with residents to make the case that those design options will start to address some of the challenges that the residents have identified. The council has made a commitment that it will only proceed with regeneration projects where the majority of voters support the Renewal Programme. Once there's been a vote, if that's positive, then we would start on the procurement of a developer partner and the residents will be involved in that selection process. They'll then put in planning applications for the schemes, get planning consent, and then construction will start on site. During all of that process we'll be seeking to deliver employment opportunities for local people and involving residents in the whole process We work with the local Job Centre, to see whether there's any residents that can work with us.     We employ sixty-nine different nationalities at the Landmark,     we have our own English lessons in the hotel to help our staff and we keep two places available for the Job Centre to recommend clients from the residents that actually have the right skills, but poor English and we keep two spaces for them. I think it's a really good area, really multicultural. It's a very good community, everyone's together and stuff. Living in a diverse area you meet different people. It's just amazing how they all come together. It's important because we're spending money not just for one lifetime, but several lifetimes, so we want to really, really improve the place on a sustainable basis. It's no good banging plans at us, it's really more consultation at ground root level with the people that will be ultimately affected. I encourage people to get involved in this new programme, because it will be good for the area, but they need to say what they want. Westminster Council have created these opportunities for us to express our views, use them, that's supposed to be democracy at work isn't it.