New flats where the children of social tenants have separate swings is a reminder of everything that is wrong with housing policy
Our report about a housing development in south London with separate play areas for richer and poorer children has, rightly, provoked fury. What was presented as a family-friendly place to live with communal play areas morphed, after planning permission had been granted, into something else: an estate on which social housing tenants are blocked by a hedge from accessing the main playground. In a capital city riven with inequality, the decision to segregate children by income appears calculated to inflame the divisions that local authorities should be doing everything in their power to bridge. How the Baylis Old School plans came to be altered and approved by Lambeth council must now be unpicked.
Unhappiness has been expressed by residents of both tenure types, and it should be councillors’ and housing managers’ aim to reintegrate the two zones. The youngest residents of these 149 new homes do not deserve to be corralled in this way. But Lambeth, a Labour stronghold, must go further that this. At least one London council, Camden, already has guidance aimed at preventing segregated outdoor spaces following a campaign by Green mayoral candidate Siân Berry. Lambeth should now follow suit, as should the mayor, Sadiq Khan, in his guidance for the city as a whole. Whatever the details of the Baylis Old School deal turn out to have been, it is clear that the terms of engagement between London government and developers should be reset. Passive acquiescence to developers’ strictures has too often been the norm. When decisions are altered away from the public eye, after formal consultations have ended, it undermines local democracy.
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