HC Deb 22 October 1976 vol 917 cc1933-44

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Thomas Cox.]

4.1 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Brown (Hackney, South and Shoreditch)

I should like to raise the problem of the derelict buildings in Shepherdess Walk, which is in my constituency.

I thank my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for being kind enough to attend the debate in order to answer it, but I am rather sad that, when his Department has three or four Ministers with London constituencies, it has been necessary to go to Manchester to find a Minister to deal with a London problem. Although I recognise that my hon. Friend will be as helpful as he can, I place on record my sadness that a Minister with a London constituency could not have been brought here.

I raise the problem because it is in my view a public scandal that good planning should be cast aside so casually, and because I find it somewhat offensive that local opinion can be so lightly dismissed, with such contempt.

Over 500 people living adjacent to the site signed a petition—I have it here—which was sent to the Minister. It is well within his knowledge. The petition calls for the open space to be provided. The strength of feeling is such that those 500 signatures were obtained within 1½ hours.

These are elderly people, and families with young children, for whom the open space would be an absolute god-send, not to mention the cost of repairs and maintenance, necessary because of vandalism—money which could be saved.

We have the extraordinary situation that the borough councillors representing the area, the borough council itself, and the constituency Labour Party are all unanimous that the open space should be provided. The Labour Member of Parliament is also absolutely behind the idea of providing it. We have this total accord between the people in the area and all the representative bodies, in support of the open space being provided, yet the Minister is prepared to accept the views of a handful of people who do not live in the area, who have never shown any interest in the area, and who certainly do not live in the same circumstances as my constituents.

I draw the attention of the Minister to the fact that my constituents are not housed. They are warehoused. They are way up in the sky. It is extraordinary that the report does not mention the fact that in this area people are housed at the density of some 200 persons to the acre, with no environmental facilities whatsoever. The planning of the area to this high density zoning depended upon the provision of this very small open space among others that were to be provided. Incidentally, these, too, still have not been provided. These small areas were intended to counterbalance the high density. We have, therefore, no environmental amenities available within the area of these huge blocks of buildings.

I refer to the Department's letter dated 28th September 1976, which says that only an unusually acute shortage (or total absence) of open space in special circumstances can justify the removal of scarce buildings of special historical or architectural interest. No such factors apply in the Shepherdess Walk area where there is only a minor local shortfall below the recommended standards". That really is an absolute lie. Let me tell the Minister how the lie comes about. In the inspector's report, at paragraph 4.22, he says: Hackney is well provided with public open space". That may be true. He is talking about the London borough of Hackney. However, I am talking about Shoreditch and about Shepherdess Walk. Hackney is well provided with public open space compared with other London Boroughs, having 3.per 1.000 people in 1966—very little short of the Greater London Council's recommended standard. With a declining population the need for open space is becoming less important. That is not true in the case of Shoreditch because we have no declining population. We are a built-up area. We were built post-1945. The houses are all municipally-owned, which means that every house has to have the right number of people in it. It will always be the same, come hell or high water.

Paragraph 4.23 says: The existing parks (particularly that to the north of Sturt Street…". There are no particular parks there, and the park "north of Sturt Street" happens to be a very small part of this planning agreement to provide the whole. It was the first phase of phase 2, which is to be numbers 9 to 67 Shepherdess Walk. Phase 3 is to be numbers 89 to 151, which is the other end.

For an inspector to put down misleading statements like that to my hon. Friend as if it were a separate park with its own entity is grossly untrue. I challenge my hon. Friend. This man needs sacking for making such misleading statements. It is not a park. It was never a park. It was part of the open space which was given to me in 1970 after I raised the matter in the House as part of the total concept, and it is for my hon. Friend today to say why the Secretary of State has decided to go against it.

But that is not the only odd feature of the report. Mr. Dodds seems to have been able to get up to some other interesting things. To my knowledge, of the people that he puts down as local residents, there is only one who might be so described, and that is Mrs. P. Silburn. There is a Mr. A. Millar down as a local resident. He is interesting because he was a speculative builder who started this business in the first place by claiming that he could "tart up" these properties to make homes. At that time he was doing a conversion, he said, at Nos. 117 and 119 Shepherdess Walk.

Mr. Millar was used by the Minister in another place as an example of someone who was protesting. Although his home is in Chingford, he portrayed himself as a local resident at 119 Shepherdess Walk.

My hon. Friend may be interested to know that the two houses which Mr. Millar was converting were not houses at all. He was converting them from houses into offices, and those offices are still empty after nearly two years. My hon. Friend might care to look into how Mr. Millar came to get authority to convert listed buildings into offices.

My hon. Friend may also care to look into another matter which is rather interesting. There is no house numbered 115. My hon. Friend refers to Nos. 115 and 117. Perhaps he will attempt to discover why this speculative builder to whom I have referred was able to convert 119 Shepherdess Walk, when I have evidence that it was a property known as 115–117 Shepherdess Walk which was allowed to have office use. As far as I have been able to gather, 119 was not. Perhaps my hon. Friend can tell me whether that is so and what he proposes to do about it.

Another interesting feature concerns No. 121. My hon. Friend received a letter from a resident of No. 121. There has not been a resident in No. 121 since heaven knows when. Certainly he is not on the register. No. 121 is a factory. Perhaps my hon. Friend will tell us why housing was allowed to be converted into a metal finishers in this rather desirable area. There was never a resident to whom my hon. Friend was prepared to listen, urging that things should be done in the other end of the road. No. 131 is a factory, but it should be a house. All these buildings should be houses.

What sort of effrontery, what sort of insufferable impertinence, do these people have that they write to a Minister, when they are using housing property for factories and making life miserable for people in the surrounding area, and suggest that my hon. Friend should take action on their behalf? They are suggesting that these worn-out slums and dilapidated places, which have given me concern for 12 years and which should be pulled down because of the deplorable conditions in which people were living, should have £400,000 of the ratepayers' money spent on them to convert them into third-rate homes while they use residential properties as factories.

And what of those slums which Mr. Dodds claims can be rehabilitated? The basement rooms have a seven-foot deep front area, 3 ft. 6 ins. wide with iron railings enclosing the area, offering some protection against extraneous matter. What a thing for my hon. Friend to design for the working class of 1976—iron railings one way, iron railings another way, to stop people from wee-weeing through the front window and dogs from fouling the place, since the distance from the basement window to the pavement is only 4 ft.

Even if one allowed for the efforts to rehabilitate these rooms, the public health officer has said that the front basement rooms cannot be made fit for human habitation because the proper angle of light cannot be obtained, having regard to the proximity of the public footways and the retaining walls of the area. This represents 300 sq. ft. out of a total house area of 900 sq. ft. Yet my hon. Friend has decided that someone can live in such places.

I do not know what Manchester, Gorton is like but I will bet it is nothing like this.

The other interesting thing is the situation with vehicles going past the door—and I should know, because my rooms are just opposite and I watch them passing every day of the week. The filth and dirt go directly in through the windows. Who on earth wants to live there? I bet that does not happen in Mr. Dodds' home. My surgery will packed tonight as always. Anyone living over there will be across to my rooms in two minues flat. demanding that certain things be carried out.

To suggest that we can allow a conversion of this nature to take place is ludicrous. I could spend the whole evening reading from the report of the public health inspector. I am sure that Mr. Dodds' home does not look like this. Who is he that his report is so sacrosanct? In 1972 the owners of these properties put a far more powerful case than this professional "Rent a Crowd" has done. The inspector at that time, having considered all the evidence, was of the opinion that the overriding factor was undoubtedly the open space, and his view was that the buildings had no great architectural merit. Why is it that the report of Mr. Dodds is more important than the report of the previous inspector? Is it the influence of the "Rent-a-Crowd" group? Where is the land coming from? According to Mr. Dodds, other land should be found. I will take my hon. Friend in my car and show him the area, and if he can show me another square inch of land I shall love to see it. The whole concept of planning arrangements over the last 30 years in this area was to finish with a buffer zone between the housing sector and the industry sector.

To the east of Shepherdess Walk is housing and to the west is industry. What better, then, than to provide a piece of greenery to form a barrier between the two and to give people a recreation area where children could play, where old people from the geriatric hospital could sit and where young mothers could go? Yet my hon. Friend takes the view of these trendies that this is not what he wants. He is presumably prepared to accept that the high density sites can be provided, but no open space.

Who will pay for it? I have already talked to the Secretary of State about the problems of Hackney. We are in a deplorable state. I shall be broadcasting on the radio tonight to explain why the Government's cuts in my area are wrong. Yet my hon. Friend is asking that the council should be forced to pay £400,000 or more to resuscitate the slum properties in order to satisfy the whims and fancies of a handful of trendies.

Let me remind my hon. Friend that the passing of motions at our annual conference to give people democracy in their work, in the National Health Service and everywhere else, is not enough. Here we have a democratic situation in which the people of the area, including all the councillors and the Member of Parliament, are saying what they want but in which the Minister is saying "Go to blazes. I do not want to listen to you. I will do what I think is right." And all that is because someone came into the area for 55 minutes and wrote a stupid report which was full of misleading errors. The Minister is satisfied with that.

This is an important issue for my constituents. It may not mean much to others, but to us in Shepherdess Walk and elsewhere in my constituency open spaces are of fundamental importance. We do not have any. Let the Minister consider his own area. How would he feel if there were no open spaces in which people could walk? What would he do if his area were told that it ought to have an open space, that it was planned to have an open space, and that it could have an open space but suddenly it was told that it could not have it after all, although all the problems of high density housing had been provided?

4.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Kenneth Marks)

I am glad of this opportunity to pay a tribute again to the tremendous devotion of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) to the interests of his constituency. The last time I appeared at this Box was in defence of the Government on the question of the Winchester Bypass so I have not always sided with the trendies as my hon. Friend says.

My hon. Friend mentioned that some Ministers in the Department were London Members but that they were not here for the debate. Ministers in the Department of the Environment have to travel around the country a great deal. It is difficult for them to plan ahead to fit in conferences and visits in various parts of the country with the week-to-week programme of the House.

I have a great deal of sympathy with my hon. Friend, because my constituency is not so different from his. During the past eight or nine years, no fewer than 10,000 people's homes have been bulldozed down in my constituency. We have managed to rescue a few of the older houses. They were not all that brilliant at the time, but they are now.

My hon. Friend has raised detailed points, especially the evidence received from nos. 115, 117 and 121 Shepherdess Walk, this last address having been a conversion, according to my hon. Friend. I do not know whether the person there who submitted the evidence did so as a resident or as an occupier of property. If there had been a conversion from residential to commercial use, it would have been done under the jurisdiction of the local planning authority.

I am aware of my hon. Friend's special interest in the continuing efforts of Hackney Borough Council—I know of his long membership of that council in its former state—to provide adequate housing and public open space in its area. I understand his concern that unnecessary obstacles should not be placed in the way of its plans. For reasons which I shall give, however, I think that the recent decision to retain these properties in Shepherdess Walk was not only right in the light of our present policies but probably also in the best long-term interests of Hackney.

To make the issues in the case of Shepherdess Walk clear to the House, I shall begin by describing briefly the statutory duties of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment with regard to buildings of special architectural or historic interest. My right hon. Friend has a duty under the Town and Country Planning Acts to compile lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest. These lists are primarily for the guidance of local authorities in the performance of their duties—that is, to enable them to take account of such buildings in new development plans. Before compiling a list, my right hon. Friend consults the Listing Committee of the Historic Buildings Council for England on the standards he should adopt for national application.

The Department's investigators have been instructed in these standards and they have to identify the buildings that meet them. Few local authorities at present have the special knowledge needed to judge buildings for listing. The GLC's Historic Buildings Department is now helping on London's listing, but its officers are working to national standards and their recommendations are vetted by the Department's Chief Inspector of Historic Buildings.

The standards for listing have been revised in recent years, largely to bring on to the list for the first time buildings of quality from the Victorian era and later periods, as well as buildings of group value. The whole country is gradually being resurveyed and the original lists, some of which are more than 20 years old, are being revised. After an area has been resurveyed, local authorities sometimes try to have buildings affected by redevelopment proposals deleted from the draft lists which are prepared. They sometimes see listing following a resurvey as an arbitrary decision —as I am sure Hackney does in this case —wrecking well-laid plans. But this is not the purpose of listing.

Listing is not the same as preservation. It merely puts a marker on a building and requires that listed building consent be sought for demolition or alteration affecting the special character of the building. The procedure gives the public the opportunity to comment and to have their views taken into account before a decision is reached. A local authority seeking to demolish a listed building has to submit a listed building consent application to the Secretary of State who seeks professional advice on the degree of importance of the building before reaching his decision. If the building is of sufficient interest or public concern, he will hold a public inquiry.

The decision whether to allow demolition is not necessarily a case of preserving the existing buildings and wrecking the scheme or demolishing the existing buildings so that redevelopment can proceed. Compromise can often be reached by amending schemes so that some buildings can be preserved or some of the new facilities required can be provided on other sites. It is not unusual to find that houses which in their existing state are unfit to live in are of special architectural or historic importance and interest. Poor condition does not detract from architectural interest unless the condition of the house is ruinous. For unfit listable houses a second look at rehabilitation as opposed to demolition is indicated, particularly in these days when all additions to the housing stock are useful.

The houses in Shepherdess Walk, Hackney, which are my hon. Friend's prime concern today, were recommended following the resurvey of the borough in 1974 for inclusion as grade II in the statutory list of buildings of special architectural or historic interest. Because of representations made about an alleged threat of demolition, they were listed in advance of the issue in February 1975 of the new statutory list for Hackney. They had been declared unfit for human habitation and a compulsory purchase order enabling the borough council to acquire them for slum clearance was confirmed in October 1973 following a public inquiry.

After the houses were added to the statutory list, the council submitted an application for listed building consent to demolish them in order to clear the site for inclusion in an area of public open space. This was in accordance with provisions of the initial development plan for Greater London. That plan had been approved as long ago as 1955.

As a result of the advertisement of the application in the local Press, a great many objections were put forward by local people and amenity groups who claimed that the houses were of particular interest and were capable of rehabilitation. In view of the importance of the buildings in the borough and the degree of public interest, a public local inquiry was held on 18th May 1976 by Mr. K. Dodds, a highly-qualified inspector from the Department of the Environment.

In his report, the inspector recorded the borough council's argument that while the borough had adequate open space overall the Shepherdess Walk area was deficient in public open space, as my hon. Friend has said. The council also contended that the houses would be expensive to rehabilitate, £10,508 for a two-bedroom house and £11,000 for a four-bedroom house, about the same as the cost of new accommodation.

The inspector concluded: … as these houses … are of exceptional quality, both intrinsically and in the contribution they make to a section of a largely undisturbed Georgian street scene, and when they are capable of rehabilitation at an acceptable cost, a cogent case needs to be established to justify the demolition of such an attractive and irreplaceable terrace. But the only reason advanced in support of the application for listed building consent"— that is, consent to demolish— is that the sites on which the buildings stand were allocated in the Development Plan and its Review for public open space purposes because there was and still is a local deficiency of this amenity land use. The inspector concluded that the council was attempting to implement a long-standing commitment in the Development Plan and considered that the public interest would best be served by increasing the amount and distribution of local open space, despite the fact that no overall deficiency exists within the Borough. That the buildings possess architectural interest and rehabilitation is feasible is not in dispute—although the preservation societies rate them higher than the Council … in the present climate of opinion on the importance of preserving listed buildings, only an unusually acute shortage … of open space in special circumstances can justify the removal of scarce buildings of special historical or architectural interest". The inspector argued that no such factors apply in the Shepherdess Walk area where there is only a minor local shortfall below recommended standards and demolition would produce a long narrow half-acre strip of cleared land and having limited environmental value.

Mr. Ronald Brown

Either he is incompetent or—

Mr. Marks

I have only two minutes left. I want the House—

Mr. Ronald Brown

It is just not true.

Mr. Marks

The inspector concluded that listed building consent be not granted. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirmed that.

Mr. Ronald Brown

The inspector wants sacking.

Mr. Marks

The one thing that emerges from the public inquiry and the inspector's report is that these buildings are not derelict. Indeed, the borough council did not attempt to prove that they were. In the face of the inspector's conclusions and recommendations, my right hon. Friend refused listed building consent.

I hope that on reflection my hon. Friend will agree that in the absence of evidence that the houses were beyond repair, and in view of their special qualities, it would have been wrong to have agreed to their demolition. The decision was entirely consistent with our current policies on conservation and with my right hon. Friend's statement that the day of the bulldozer was over.

The houses in Shepherdess Walk are, in the council's own evidence at the inquiry, rehabitable at much the same cost as new development. If the council were to put them in its rehabilitation programme it would, of course, under the Housing Rents and Subsidies Act 1975, be eligible for the normal rate of housing subsidy at 66 per cent. It would be up to the council to determine within its financial allocation its priorities for rehabilitating these and other properties it owns.

Mr. Ronald Brown

There is no money.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.