Peach alternative regeneration plan
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The document provides an overview of the alternative regeneration plan initiated by Peach, focusing on community-led efforts to address housing and local development issues in Canning Town and Custom House. After establishing a housing club and conducting extensive community engagement, the plans culminated in a masterplan that emphasizes local needs and aims to enhance the area's development while fostering community power. It highlights both the successes and ongoing challenges faced in collaborating with local authorities and the broader implications of regeneration on the community.
Peach alternative regeneration plan
- 1. The Alternative Regeneration Plan Overview of the Alternative Regeneration Plan I will run through a timeline of what we have done, and then look at how we’ve approached the regeneration here and what the successes and challenges are
- 2. PEACH PEACH Founded in 2013 - 5 years this year At Founding Assembly - 4 key areas to work on voted on by the community: Jobs & Education, Housing & Regeneration, Safety, Health From the outset a commitment to Community Organising - That means building Power & Investment in people
- 3. Canning Town and Custom House Regeneration Project The Regeneration, first conceived of and made public pre-crash in the early 2000s, residents in regeneration areas have been in limbo since. Covers around 2000 properties in total across Custom House and Canning Town
- 4. Custom House ● 550 houses ● Health Centre ● High Street ● Station IN Custom House the regeneration covers around 500 houses, the high street and the local GPs surgery. The station is also to become a Crossrail station when that opens in the near future, providing quicker toutes to Canary Wharf and central London.
- 5. What to do? Housing was not originally our main priority - but was clear it was the biggest issue and we couldn’t ignore it as it is ripping through the heart of our area. The regeneration will be the biggest change to our area since the closure of the Docks and will have huge knock on impacts across the community. We reseached other groups and the impact regeneration was having on other communities, such as looking at the displacement after the regeneration of Heygate Estate. We also noted how although there were groups resisting, few groups were winning! We knew first we had to get organised though
- 6. PEACH Housing Club 2015 We set up the Housing Club in Summer 2015, weve been meeting every 4-6 weeks since then and have around 140 members now, who have all paid £1 to join up and show there support. Its the place where people in the community come together to talk about regeneration and local housing issues.
- 7. The beginning - 2015 We began to have conversations with residents in the Housing club and other communities. We hosted a regeneration conference in 2015 with some councillors including now Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz who was at the time our ward Councillor and some community led housing groups
- 8. From these discussion the Alternative Regeneration Plan was born and our Housing Club voted to start working on an idea to do our own community-led regeneration plan - we wanted to come up with our own plans, that were viable but that reflected what the community here wants to see for the future of the area. We knew we needed to hire some new staff so we went back and forth with the PEACH steering group who would fund the project, to make sure everyone was happy.
- 9. Launch - Sept 2016 We launched this at a fun day in September 2016 and about 150 people came out, we advertised that we were recruiting for a new team of people to help us with this project
- 10. Our Team We hired a team of 10 people who would each work 1 day a week (equiv to 2 x full timers), 4 architects/urban designers and 6 community organisers. At the point of hiring the team we made some Key decisions: -Architects were hired as individuals to work for us, not as a practice, so they worked in our office -Local knowledge treated and valued equally (all paid the same) -Trained in the basics of each others work and expected to do it - architects expected to door knock and have 121s with residents -5 of the 6 organisers were from the local area
- 11. Door Knocking to workshops We then took to the streets, knocked on 1000 doors and had hundreds of 121 conversations and built up to hosting workshops in early spring 2017
- 12. Knocked on 1000 doors, has around 300 121 meetings, and got people interested in the workshops
- 13. Workshops We held 6 workshops with 3 themes, and had 180 people attending Housing, Community and Public Space, Economy and services We also held smaller workshops at the old peoples home, churches and youth club so that more people could feed in.
- 14. Principles We used the information gathered at all the workshops to come up with 4 aims and 6 principles for regeneration, we held a drop-in where residents could feedback and then vote on the principles
- 15. Then over the coming months, the archtects and organisers developed a masterplan with the Housing Club feeding in and checking on progress. This was the masterplan we produced
- 16. Community support was vital all the way through and Housing Club have voted at each key stage of the process.
- 17. Vote! In September 2017, a year after we started, the plans were completed and we voted to take them to the Council in our next meeting. At this point we are meeting with Cllr Ken Clark the Council’s lead for regeneration under Mayor Robin Wales
- 18. Working with Newham Since July 2017, PEACH have been meeting regularly with Newham Council, firstly with Cllr Ken Clark and since May 2018, with the new Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz, who has taken personal control of regeneration. Fortunately for us, Rokhsana Fiaz was previously our ward councillor and as such we had already developed a good working relationship. The challenge has been to develop the relationship with Newham, to get them to recognise the capability of the community and to get them to accept the community as an equal partner in regeneration.
- 19. 2018 2018 also marked 5 years of PEACH!
- 20. Latest In 2018 we have produced an evidence base for our Alternative Regeneration Plan, demonstrating where the ideas have come from, as well as commissioned a viability tool to enable us to work on the numbers to prove how much genuinely affordable housing can be put into our Alternative Regeneration Plan. We have also set up a COmmunity Land Trust called E16 CLT.
- 21. How? Community Organising That is the end of the timeline, I will now take a quick look and how we have done this. We have focused from the outset of PEACH on Community Organising, that means - Building the power of our community so that we can make or influence the decisions that affect us. This runs centrally in all our work and when we plan and deliver our work we think about how we can build power whenever possible. Community Organising is to me, a set of tools by which we understand what is going on and that we can use in our work to make change. There are lots of parts of it but the 3 key things which mark it out to me are as follows.
- 22. Relationships 1 Relationships Building and maintaining positive working relationships with people in the community and fostering good relationships within the community are key. We builds relationships through 121s, meeting lots of people in the community and getting to understand their interests and issues. We also make sure our meetings are fun and relational, and allow time for people to interact with each other, through games or small group discussion.
- 23. Learning and Developing 2. Learning and Development We are always looking into how we can develop members and improve skills, knowledge and confidence. We encourage people to take leading roles and to try things they have not done before, whether that is speaking in a meeting, helping plan an event or joining a negotiation team to meet the Council, there are lots of ways to get members involved and develop their leadership skills. We invest a lot of time in our meetings to finding engaging ways to educate each other on what is often very complex topics like regeneration.
- 24. Action! 3. Action The last thing that is key to Community Organising is action! This is the way that we as a community can show our power. We do this as PEACH, (although not so often during this project). Our actions may target a decision maker or someone in power who is letting the community down, they may be cheeky but they are always family friendly, involving children and aimed at getting a reaction, such as a meeting, where we can make further progress on the issue we care about.
- 25. Success How have we been successful? Well we are still ongoing, but the progress we have made so far we can put down to 7 things 1. A healthy cynicism towards the Council - acting in good faith while making sure you do your own research and verify what you are told 2. The Community Organising approach we have taken. Of course I am biased, but we have built significant power which has helped us get ‘in the room’ 3. Paid staff - we have been able to invest in building relationships in the community, a distant luxury for many grassroots campaign 4. Finding architects to come work directly for us, and not relying on a practice to work on our project somewhere outside of our area. 5. Making sure things are FUN 6. PEACH wins - and wins breed wins. Showing that we are making a real difference gets people on board 7. Meeting other community-led housing experts and groups, and learning as much as we can from them
- 26. Challenges Finally, what challenges have we faced? Well doing something on this scale is a new model and there are not a lot of recent successful examples in UK history to point to. Working with a local authority is hard too, because they are risk averse, mistrustful of communtiies and don’t know how to give up power, which are essential ingredients to what we are proposing We also faced the challenge of disillusioned residents, who have been waiting 15 years for this regeneration to come and some of who have been in various groups before that have not succeeded Time - there are no shortcuts to the way we work, it takes a long time to do things, meanwhile ‘regeneration’ can be like a juggernaut moving on in the background Resources - we are lucky to have the Big Local money which has made this possible, but we have other projects to fund and the money we have actually spent on this project is very small compared to the budgets of developers and Councils.