At Yacht Parties in Cannes, councils have been selling our homes from under us (14/10/2014)
Look to the Heygate estate for what is wrong with London's housing (6/11/2013)
Heygate Residents Forced to move out of London(2/8/2013)
Heygate Residents Moved from London (2/8/2013)- Selling Heygate flats to overseas buyers is an insult (22/4/2013)
- Southwark accidentally leaks Confidential Information (5/2/2013)
£1.5bn Revamp of sink estate reveals Social Cleansing Plan (5/2/2103)- Looks nice, but where's the Affordable Housing? (17/1/2013)
Investigation into Donation Declaration (29/11/2012)- Heygate estate residents fight Compulsory Purchase Order (29/8/2012)
Stressed residents offered £2,000 Happiness Therapy (9/10/2008)
Press Archive
Below is a small selection of articles about the Heygate estate. The numerous references to sink estates and crime served well to reinforce the council and developer's regeneration agenda, while erasing the real history of the estate. None of the articles mention the disinvestment by the council, which accounted for much of the negative perception surrounding the physical condition of the estate. Many press articles suggested that the 70′s architecture itself created poverty and deprivation, without taking into account the council's local housing policies - i.e. its decision to stop issuing secure tenancies in the late 1990s and use of housing allocation for its temporary housing obligations. Despite these policies, which undoubtedly had a negative effect on deprivation indicators, Met Police statistics showed a crime rate on the estate that was 45% below the borough average. A 1998 housing stock condition and options appraisal survey shows the estate in above average condition compared to the rest of the council's housing stock. The appraisal study found that 80% of residents did not want to move off the estate and recommended the refurbishment of around half of the estate's blocks.
- ‘Harry Brown was shot on the Heygate estate in Elephant and Castle, south London, not far from where Caine grew up…A few months before the film came out, in the summer of last year, a real-life gang – led by Callum Hall and Deniz Ozdil – was terrorising the nearby Aylesbury estate’.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10943044
- ‘Heygate was only built in 1968-69 and quickly became a sort of human dustbin. It exemplified the notion that if you give people sties to live in, they will live like pigs’.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/8010830/Brilliant-architecture-can-rescue-even-Basingstoke.html
- ‘The Heygate Estate, which housed 700 people in what looks like a medieval blockhouse, and the Aylesbury Estate, with its 2,700 homes stretching south for more than a mile parallel to the Walworth Road, became sink estates plagued by crime, drugs and prostitution’.http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/13f27f88-111e-11df-a6d6-00144feab49a.html
- ‘The Heygate’s generously sized flats were initially popular with council tenants, but the estate gradually struggled with a reputation for violence and deprivation.’http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/03/heygate-estate-south-london-hollywood
- ‘…dilapidated and crime-ridden Heygate Estate’.http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23854015-michael-caines-rotten-estate-to-be-transformed.do
- ‘Sir Michael Caine has spoken of his horror at returning to the ‘sink estates’ in the area he once called home.'http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1161469/Weve-left-children-rot-animals-Michael-Caine-speaks-returning-roots-make-new-movie.html
- ‘The infamous Heygate estate in Elephant & Castle, south London…‘http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/living-in-ghostland-the-last-heygate-residents-1930054.html
- ‘…that vision has largely ended in crime and deprivation, as the fate of the Heygate estate shows’.http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/new_homes/article7067417.ece
- ‘The area is characterised by its council estates and high- rise blocks …negotiating the subways frequented by meths-drinking weirdos can be scary…’http://www.thelondonpaper.com/life-style/property/features/so-you-want-to-live-in-elephant-castle
- ‘Completed in 1974 [the estate] never established any true sense of community and quickly established a reputation for violence and crime. ’Nicholas Boys Smith - Create Streets To what extent the media coverage has been affected by general prejudices towards brutalist architecture and to what extent by council and developer press releases remains open to question. Councillor Colley (Cabinet Member for Regeneration) once described the estate as a 'concrete fortress' and a 'blight on the landscape'. Council leader Peter John described it as "a by-word for social failure, for crime and anti-social behaviour". Subsequent press articles saw the estate labelled "Muggers' paradise" by the BBC and the Evening Standard, and a "human dustbin" where people "live like pigs" in the Daily Telegraph.
Filming
Filming was a bone of contention on the estate, ever since the Council starting letting it to film crews as a gritty urban crime backdrop. Besides its use as a regular backdrop for TV series like the Bill, Spooks, Law & Order, Hustle and Silent Witness, the estate was used by a large number of Films including Michael Caine's 'Harry Brown', Clint Eastwood's 'Hereafter', Brad Pitt's 'World War Z' and 'Attack the Block'. On average 22 productions a year were given permission to film on the estate.
The council has always argued that it ensures the films don't use the estate's name and that it provides much-needed income for the council. However, after years of complaints from residents about disturbance and persistent negative portrayal that filming was banned on the estate in 2012. It was recently disclosed that Southwark outsources its entire film department, and that around half of all revenue from filming in Southwark is paid to its outsourcing company filmfixer.co.uk.