Redevelopment

LBWF, lobbyists, and ‘partner’ companies: greasing the wheels of commerce or corporate capture?

March 17, 2025 Mini Holland, Redevelopment

For the past fifteen years or so, LBWF has worked with a variety of private developers and infrastructure engineers to radically reshape the borough’s built environment. The formal relationships between these different parties of course are recorded in council minutes, contracts, press releases, and similar. But there has been plenty going on behind the scenes as well, and to shed some light on these less overt interactions, the following looks at two brief case-studies. The first is about lobbying, and its starting point is a short Linkedin comment that was posted by one Peter Bingle: Why is ... »

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The Mall tower blocks: Stella Creasy raises safety fears with Secretary of State Michael Gove, but there are other big concerns too UPDATED

October 2, 2023 Redevelopment, Stella Creasy MP

In the last few weeks, Walthamstow residents have been amused – possibly bemused – by the sudden appearance of a new tower block’s soaring central core right in the middle of the Mall redevelopment scheme (now officially called ‘17&Central’). As the Waltham Forest Echo reports, this startling vision has prompted numerous memes on social media, including ‘King Kong atop the tower’, and a ‘mockup of the structure as the Leaning Tower of Pisa complete with tourists pretending to push it’. All this is undoubtedly entertaining, but there is also a serious side to the story which ... »

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Local Democracy Reporter Josh Mellor exposes the botched refurbishment of LBWF’s John Walsh and Fred Wigg towers in Leytonstone

July 12, 2023 Fred Wigg and John Walsh Towers, Redevelopment

Local Democracy Reporter Josh Mellor has just published a terrific story in the Waltham Forest Echo about the botched refurbishment of LBWF’s John Walsh and Fred Wigg towers in Leytonstone, which has taken four years and millions of pounds, but for the most part remains incomplete: https://walthamforestecho.co.uk/2023/07/12/montague-road-estate-tenants-accuse-council-of-badly-mismanaging-refurbishment-works/ It’s all there: shoddy workmanship, cheap materials, haphazard job scheduling, spiralling costs, indifference to resident anxieties, and, as the programme failed, the coup d... »

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Leytonstone cartoonist Woox on LBWF’s housing policies

July 28, 2022 Housing, Redevelopment, Woox

(Reproduced by kind permission of Woox) »

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LBWF’s flagship Blackhorse Yard ‘affordable’ housing scheme teeters, as developer Swan Housing steps away

July 19, 2022 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Housing, Redevelopment

The future of LBWF’s flagship ‘affordable’ housing scheme at Blackhorse Yard has been thrown into disarray, following the withdrawal of one of its two developers, Swan Housing. Swan Housing and its partner, Catalyst Homes, originally had gained planning permission for Blackhorse Yard in February 2019, and intended to deliver ‘359 affordable homes for shared ownership’, together with ‘a creative hub for artisans, artists’ studios, new retail space and an exciting and vibrant public realm’, using a site that had been purchased expressly for their purpose by the Mayor of London. LB... »

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Property giant Long Harbour buys up the c.500 ‘build to rent flats’ in the redeveloped Walthamstow Mall, but will leaseholders be adequately protected? UPDATED

June 8, 2022 Housing, Redevelopment

In late 2017, LBWF granted developers Capital & Regional (hereafter C&R) and Mount Anvil planning permission to redevelop the Mall site in Walthamstow, that is, extend the existing retail space, add two new tower blocks with c.500 ‘build to rent’ flats, one third ‘affordable’, and re-model the surrounding public realm. The objective was to transform and so revive what the senior officers and politicians in the Town Hall liked to claim constituted a longstanding ‘focal point for the community’. Subsequently, the Mall scheme (now badged as ‘17&Central’) has steadily proceeded, t... »

LBWF housing scandal: just 5 per cent of the new homes built in Waltham Forest since 2012 were classified as ‘genuinely affordable’…and this from a Labour council!

April 1, 2022 Housing, LBWF spin, Redevelopment

As this blog consistently has argued, for some years now LBWF has overlooked its responsibilities to those with least means. Further evidence of this regrettable trend is revealed by examining how LBWF has performed when measured against its oft repeated promise to ensure, using its planning powers, that 50 per cent of the new homes which developers and construction companies complete each year in the borough are ‘affordable’. It’s worth emphasising at the outset that the word ‘affordable’ in this context often triggers confusion and cynicism, because, as veteran London journalist Dave Hill no... »

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LBWF tells a disabled tenant on a redeveloped estate: we are offering you a new flat, but you’ve got to complete the formalities, and move your stuff over…within four days

March 3, 2022 Redevelopment

Sometimes, LBWF’s behaviour really is beyond the pale. An example is the letter below. It was sent to a longstanding tenant, who is disabled, lives on an estate that is being re-developed, and has been waiting to be rehoused since 2018. On the plus side, the letter is the offer of a new flat. But on the minus side – and it is a very big minus – the offer comes with some stringent conditions.  The letter was sent by e-mail on Thursday 24 February 2022 in the late afternoon, states that the new flat’s tenancy will start on Monday 28 February 2022, and cautions that ‘unless you fail to view ... »

LBWF and faith groups: a ‘gay friendly’ council does business with a church that thinks same sex relations are ‘immoral and sinful’, and guess what gives?

November 3, 2021 Cllr.Sally Littlejohn, faith groups, Redevelopment

A recent post on this blog (see links), which broadly raised the question of how – if at all – LBWF should interact with faith groups that do not subscribe to its social cohesion and equity policies, brings to mind another troubling episode, which was briefly mentioned here in 2019, but in the light of events perhaps deserves a little more coverage. The bones of the story can be summarised thus. In 2015, LBWF announced that, as part of a broader plan to improve Cann Hall and Cathall wards in South Leytonstone, it was going to build a café, with glazed extension, at the Wesleyan Church on... »

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Ex-Leader of LBWF Cllr. Clare Coghill joins the board of private sector housing provider Square Roots: cue furore

October 29, 2021 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Redevelopment, register of interests

A couple of weeks ago, Cllr. Clare Coghill, the ex-Leader of LBWF, amended her Town Hall register of interests form to acknowledge that she has joined ‘Square Roots One York Road Uxbridge UB81RN’ as board vice chair. To seasoned Waltham Forest watchers, this development is perhaps not unexpected. Square Roots (or Square Roots Registered Provider Ltd., its full name) is a recently incorporated ‘affordable housing provider’; has what Housing Today describes as ‘a raft of senior public sector housing figures’ as directors; and aims to build ‘“much-needed new homes across all tenure... »

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