Housing - The Dolphin clearances
WORKERS, DEC 2005 ISSUE
Westminster City Council is proposing to clear over 1,000 tenants from a protected housing trust in central London. The Dolphin Square Trust was built in the 1930s to provide housing at reasonable rents for Londoners. The council previously attempted a sell-off in the 1960s, but was headed off by the then Tory government. It now proposes to sell its lease responsibilities, due to expire in 2034, to a Jersey-based property developer.
Westbrook, the property developer, wants tenants to pay market rents, estimated at a minimum of £22,000 per annum, or face eviction. The site in Pimlico, bordering the Thames, is valued at £70 million. The bulk of the profits from the sell-off would go into Westminster City Council coffers with no responsibility to re-house the evicted families.
Westminster City Council famously gerrymandered its electoral base under Margaret Thatcher and Dame Shirley Porter, when it evicted tenants it thought would not vote Conservative and replaced them with the kind of tenants that it hoped would, the famous "homes for votes" scandal. Seemingly Dolphin Square is to get the same clearance strategy.
But unlike the 1960s, there is no Conservative Minister of Housing to ride to the rescue this time!