Penzance flats demolition: Fears the move to new homes will kill some elderly residents

'Most of them are aged in their 80s and have built up a lovely community in the building - now they're going to put them all over the place'

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/penzance-flats-demolition-fears-move-7730735?utm_

"James Reseigh, director of neighbourhoods for LiveWest, said: “Fountain Court was built in the 1960s and no longer meets modern building standards or energy efficiency expectations."

This decision requires careful, and if necessary independent examination, especially as the financial and other implications of it have to be ultimately borne by the public. There is no doubt that Fountain Court is one of the ugliest of Penzance's buildings, part of the Sixties civic obsession with modernist high rise - no town was complete without one - but it is also utilitarian, and serves a purpose that is regarded, obviously, with some affection by its residents. A huge amount of public money has been spent in the comparatively recent past, in upgrading the flats and it is unlikely they have suddenly become untenable. Both the human and financial cost of replacement is bound to be high, and this should be subject to proper auditing, as money spent on this project will not be available for badly needed others. As a high rise replacement is unlikely, there is bound to be a net loss of housing stock.

Yet another example how Conservative Government philosophy has worked on housing policy. As always by drip drip! First by selling off the publicly owned housing stock, a measure that was popular but also detrimental to public finances and provision. Then the transfer of the stock from Councils to Housing Associations. Then the amalgamation of Housing Associations into conglomerates and finally their privatisation and acquisition by global finance. The net result? Social housing is no longer locally controlled or accountable. The resource and management becomes a private asset predicated on profit and financial return, controlled not even by national entities but from tax-free locations or ethically questionable regimes as have so much of our critical infrastructure. In the end we have all been defrauded and disenfranchised. Real assets, paid for with public money, are transferred at a loss to the private sector. Those with wealth ultimately benefit. Those without, lose out.

UPDATE  17.12.2022

Yesterday I was stopped in the street by a resident of the flats, worried about her future. She has no complaint about hers and claimed they were some of the best available. Residents are under pressure to vacate which causing a great deal of stress, particularly for the elderly who have been there a long time. Alternative accommodation and a financial payment of around £7000 is being offered. She was told she could view them from the outside only.

Apparently various excuses have been put forward, none of them convincing. The intention is to demolish the block after rehousing the occupants of twenty two flats, and replace it with a number of affordable houses. Neither the housing rationale nor the economics add up, leaving aside all the emotional upset caused to vulnerable people.

In the last twenty years huge sums of effectively public money have been spent upgrading the flats, installing new windows and providing a high quality social area, all of which will be down the drain. The cost of the demolition and the replacement houses will cost additional millions, all to provide less affordable rental accommodation.

Whose brain-child was it? Was it a kneejerk reaction the Grenfell? Apparently the owning Housing Association, 'Live West' is deaf to all representations and not a Councillor or MP is interested.

Live West is the latest iteration of how to manage the housing stock, following a pattern and policy set by government, inevitably rolling towards wholesale privatisation no doubt and buyout by global capital.

Once the houses were owned by the local authority - Penzance Corporation, then Penwith District Council, now just one Cornish unitary authority - a process that ensures responsibility and accountability is ever more remote. The housing stock was first transferred to Penwith Housing Association. Then in the mid two thousands it combined with Devon and Cornwall HA. Now it covers an area all the way to Gloucestershire.

Note how local government and Housing Associations have followed a parallel path. Whether this is in the interests of the householder, tenant or those trying to find decent affordable accommodation, is open to question.

Having sold off most of the country's essential infrastructure, now marked by water shortage, rail stoppages, power outages, ambulance chaos, unprecedented NHS waiting lists, does no one question the philosophy behind it all and is the the housing stock the next to go the same way?