11 May Regeneration or gentrification?
Delancey have made announcements to delay the regeneration project for elephant and castle shopping centre until 2019
The Elephant and castle shopping centre regeneration has been placed on hold. The plans to change different parts of elephant and castle including the shopping centre have been put on hold by Southwark council. The plans were to include the demolition of the shopping centre which has been open since 1965 and replace it with the construction of over one thousand homes.
However the Southwark council planning committee have recently voted against it with many issues being acknowledged at the planning committee meetings. This includes issues to do with affordable housing and potential plans with local traders who are currently resident in this area. Although the committee have not completely rejected the scheme they have decided to delay the date until 2019.
The developer’s, Delancey limited have been advised by southwark council that if they wish to continue with the demolition that they will have to increase social housing, which was one of the conditions set in a bid to save the three billion pound scheme. Delancey have had the issues highlighted by Southwark councils and reviewed them.
They have told the council that they are willing to increase the number of affordable homes in and around the site and have also stated that they have plans to build a much more modern and new shopping complex, university of the arts London campus and around nine hundred and seventy nine new flats. The new plans also included a new cinema and northern line entrance which is part of the elephant and castle station attached to the shopping centre.
The council had set up a meeting where councillors were meant to formally reject the current plans to demolish the shopping centre. Demolition has now been pushed back to 2019 in recent reports from the council have been announced. This comes after it was initially reported in October 2016 by a company called elephant and castle properties co limited indicated that they wanted to demolish the site in 2018. However the update came about after the Southwark council cabinet meeting on May 9th 2018 which focused on work that needed to be done by the developer before anything can proceed or any planning permission can be considered.
The council stated that delancey limited would need to provide what they consider a ‘package of measures’ to support the 27 small businesses inside the centre which are among the 86 businesses that will be affected by the entire redevelopment scheme, to relocate them all into the local area.It was agreed that a relocation strategy would be put in place and was to include a relocation fund that would help small traders to cope with the potential higher rents in the surrounding areas. The developer was set to publish a database of vacant shop units which traders can apply to that local area. After a seven hour meeting councillors voted four to three against the planning application and it was said that it ‘failed on a number of significant policy grounds’. The main concern being the lack of enough social rented housing and the developers limited protection for traders already in the shopping centre.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-42719607
Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre demolition now due in 2019
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/more-cheap-homes-pledged-to-save-3bn-elephant-and-castle-regeneration-scheme-a3755216.html
Factors to be considered;
In this package the role I had taken on was that of the presenter, I had to research what it was i was talking about and made sure to add relevant and current information. I collected vox pops from the public and also from my expert interview which was the local shop owner who was going to be affected. I had to inform my audience correctly about this particular topic whilst remaining professional by speaking clearly and being informative.
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