Zac Goldsmith announces 'residents development guarantee' for council estate tenants

Pledge: Zac Goldsmith said all existing council tenants would return to a better home in the same estate
Rex
Pippa Crerar11 January 2016
WEST END FINAL

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Residents on some of London’s most rundown council estates would be offered a legal guarantee of getting their home back under Tory regeneration plans announced today.

Zac Goldsmith promised to ensure that all existing tenants would return to a better home, in the same estate, at the same price as now after redevelopment was complete.

Under his ‘residents development guarantee’, building work would be phased so the majority of residents would only ever move once - from their old to their new property.

It comes after David Cameron announced plans to tear down and improve more than 100 of the country’s most dilapidated estates through a new £140 million fund - saying “brutal high-rise towers” had contributed to a rise of poverty, gangs and anti-social behaviour.

New figures from estate agents Savills show that developing just a fifth of run-down estates in the capital could deliver up to 360,000 new homes - as well as improving existing ones.

London’s 3,500 high-rise estates have relatively low levels of density and the Tories claim there could be 73 per cent more homes if tower blocks were torn down and replaced with mid-rise apartment buildings and terraced housing.

Any newly built council homes would be exempt from the Government’s plans for town halls to sell off high value council homes to fund the extended right to buy.

Mr Goldsmith said: “This programme will deliver hundreds of thousands more homes that Greater London needs over the coming years as well as dramatically improving quality of life for people who live on estates that are in urgent need of improvement.”

However, Green mayoral candidate Sian Berry accused the Government of a policy of “social cleansing” and pledged to oppose the bulldozing of estates.

“Unless an estate is beyond repair, it’s much better to work with the community to improve housing stock than to demolish it completely,” she said.

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