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Who will win and lose in this regeneration game?
• EC1 New Deal chairman Matthew Humphreys declares that he wishes “to be judged on his record” (Champion of estates: Things are a lot better, June 27). Such a politician-like declaration would normally indicate this would be put to the test before an electorate.
But under Mr Humphreys’ leadership, elected EC1 New Deal board members were thrown off the board, for daring to voice opinions of the community that had elected them, in opposition to the infamous St Luke’s Framework. Their expulsions were rapidly followed by the abolition of board member elections and replacement by selection.
Having disenfranchised the electorate, Mr Humphreys has only his fellow hand-picked board members, the Lib Dem council and government officers to pass judgement on him. Undoubtedly, they will continue to flatter him for helping them to bring about the changes required to pursue their agenda, not the community’s.
That agenda is not about addressing high levels of deprivation through projects determined by the EC1 community, but about facilitating demographic changes in the area.
In other regeneration areas where this agenda has been followed to the letter and where more middle class residents have been enticed into the area, it has necessarily produced a change for the better in terms of overall statistics relating to levels of deprivation, but, at the same time, a deterioration among those the funding was apparently designed to help in the first place.
Attempts at repackaging Mr Humphreys as a council estate resident who understands “the problems” first hand won’t produce anything more than a middle class academic who couldn’t be further from the people he apparently represents. His sights are firmly on his CV and a better quality of life for those of his ilk in Bunhill and Clerkenwell, at the expense of those surviving on around one seventh of the money he takes home a year.
PHIL COSGRAVE
Finsbury estate, EC1
• SPA Fields, the only open green space in Clerkenwell was gifted to residents over 100 years ago as a leisure facility and play space. It is remembered by most of us older residents as a park for every age group, with special emphasis on providing facilities for children’s play. This was complemented by tree-shaded large green areas and the rose garden used by families, older people and dog lovers.
Years of failure by the Lib Dem and the previous Labour council to properly maintain and care for our park resulted in it falling into disrepair.
Nonetheless, the park was still loved and used daily by the community and in the evenings by Clerkenwell Detached Youth Project, which successfully assisted in reducing anti-social behaviour suffered by residents of surrounding streets and estates. I presume this is what Matthew Humphreys means by his derogatory description of the park and its users as a “former no-go dumping area”,
Following wide local consultation, tenants’ representatives had for a decade lobbied for improvements and even worked with a local architect to come up with designs of what they wanted, with the work to be carried out in phases, if and when funding became available.
Local Lib Dem councillors, with EC1 New Deal funding, had different plans for the park. A steering group dominated by a highly-paid EC1 consultant, Lib Dem councillors and council officers was set up by EC1 New Deal. Residents, including representatives of Finsbury estate, Greenwood House, Wilmington Square and Farringdon Street, rapidly found the plans formed by the residents’ consultation were dismissed as secondary to the EC1/Lib Dems’ “gentrification scheme” that was being pushed forward.
It became obvious there would be little left of the park and play scheme local people wanted and this led to the final disengagement of local input with the EC1 Spa Park group.
An entirely separate site (away from the main park) beside the polluted main thoroughfare has now been designed for Clerkenwell’s children, but I suppose that is what “gentrification” means – a final division of the community.
Mr Humphreys’ claim to having provided a “People’s Park”, which in fact is now dominated by wealthier and rather exclusive “people from surrounding luxury flats with no gardens” rather than the tower blocks and estate residents that used it previously is certainly something he will be remembered for, particularly as the EC1 regeneration £52million programme was awarded by the government to improve the lives of the poorest sections of this community.
In this case I believe it is proved he has failed dismally.
One can only wonder what Andy Murphy and the Lib Dems can still destroy in Clerkenwell/ Bunhill in the last five years of this programme, as their plans for “regenerating” the leisure centre and Ironmonger Row Baths are now in full swing (another plan previously rejected by the community). I forecast a similar “dismal failure” of no benefit to the poorest members of the community, but it will encourage developers to build more luxury flats, which will have their own private green to overlook.
HELEN CAGNONI
Address supplied, EC1
• “IN the bad old days we had people jumping off towers”. Is Matthew Humphreys seriously inferring that EC1 New Deal has reduced the suicide rate in the area?
KATHLEEN FRY
Pleydell estate, EC1
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