“A property developer masquerading as a local authority”

– Barry Quirk, RBKC Chief Exec 2017-2022, a rare moment of clarity & honesty.

Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) is pressing on with its plan to sell Canalside House to an international property developer that intends to demolish the community hub and replace it with a ‘green space’ next to the congested roundabout at the top of Ladbroke Grove. A vital building in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, Canalside is one of North Kensington’s last remaining publicly owned community spaces and is integral for numerous local African Diaspora groups. Here’s an update…

Managed Decline

Although it is unwilling to openly admit it has retained the asset-stripping approach of its disgraced former Deputy Leader, Rock Feilding-Mellen, the council still treats Canalside’s residents disdainfully, presumably calculating that they will give up hope and voluntarily leave the building, enabling RBKC to carry out a smoother bit of gentrification.

RBKC has not sent new licenses to the resident organisations, meaning all tenancies expired on 31^st March. Until late June, the council did not send the usual monthly invoices to any organisations for rent payments, possibly foreshadowing a claim by council lawyers of rent arrears to make evictions easier.

Since we broke the story of the secret deal to sell Canalside to Ballymore in early 2023, RBKC has refused consultation with residents, service users or local people. The council has made no offer of an alternative space for the 14 resident organisations, presumably because there is no such space.

Unavailable

The council continues the managed decline of Canalside House, but without causing loss of market value. According to Ballymore, RBKC insisted that Canalside had to be included in the deal for the wider Project Flourish development, despite it sitting outside its boundary in the original plans. They also insisted that Ballymore should pay far above market rate to obtain the building the developer described to residents as “the wall in the way.”

RBKC has jettisoned the building’s Manager, her role moved to the Town Hall and limited to making up excuses for not allowing prospective tenants to view the three vacant office spaces. Official RBKC webpages for the building are just scans of decades-old flyers. The phone numbers RBKC provides take callers to either a dead line or a repeated message “This person’s phone is currently unavailable….” If you email the named council officer, you get an empty message back from postmaster@rbkc.

Abuse

Having left Canaside House without heating or hot water during the freezing Winter of 2022/23, the council chose not to switch off the heat until mid-May this year. In a building where the communal radiators cannot be adjusted, the heat remains trapped in the corridors. There is no lift following the council’s still unexplained 2010 decision to spurn an offer from Tudor Trust to pay for one, thereby shunning the opportunity to make the building more user-friendly for its many elderly and disabled visitors.

Despite this abusive approach, RBKC’s policy of managed decline is failing. The building is in use seven days a week; 14 organisations continue to welcome hundreds, perhaps thousands, of service users every year, and the local community, including those campaigning against Project Flourish, are against the demolition.

Impact on Organisations

For the building’s residents, RBKC’s abusive strategies have taken them to crisis point. Attracting core funding is impossible for charities without tenancies and with no information on what the future holds.

For North Kensington more generally, the eviction of 14 organisations would add intense pressure on already scarce community spaces in a borough where the charity sector picks up much of the slack for a council with a minimalist approach to service provision.

What hope is there for the 14 resident organisations? All of them are Black-led and therefore already more likely to suffer from systemic abuses at the hands of a council they rely on for affordable space. It is notable that the organisations that were able to secure alternative offices when RBKC tried to evict the residents in 2016 were not Black led.

‘Little Africa’ Returns?

In the aftermath of the Grenfell fire, it was claimed that a council officer had refused to visit Lancaster West estate, referring to it pejoratively as ‘Little Africa.’

Are the residents of Canalside House – the supplementary schools; care agencies; youth groups; artists and advocacy organisations – RBKC’s new ‘Little Africa’?

Over the years the council has variously lied to the residents about refurbishing the building; downgraded their promise to consult to a promise to inform, and now the council simply ignores them.

The Leader of the Labour Group of councillors at RBKC, Kasim Ali of Dalgarno Ward, raised the issue of apparent racism regarding Canalside House at the most recent full council meeting. He told Urban Dandy that he has raised the racism issue again since then directly with the council’s political leaders and Executive Director.

A$$et Strip?

Despite Cllr Ali’s efforts, there has been no change in RBKC’s attitude in recent weeks. A member of staff at one resident organisation at Canalside told us: “It’s very clear the people in this building have protected characteristics…there’s a feeling, and there’s reasonable evidence, that white-led organisations have been taken care of. They were given more information, the council had more conversations with them.

“Non-black organisations were possibly supported to move away from the building, while the majority of the community organisations were not involved in any consultation with the RBKC and were kept in the dark about the sale of the building.

“The building is being left to run down. It takes three months of calls to get the heating switched on or off.”

We asked what they thought of the ‘Little Africa’ quote in relation to their situation at Canalside: “It’s the same attitude.”

Asset Review?

Whatever the council does or says regarding Canalside House will expose its true agenda. That’s why they won’t speak to the residents, and if you raise the issue at one of their “consultations” their officers plead ignorance.

RBKC has chosen not to reply to several emails from Urban Dandy regarding their community assets review, which started then abruptly stopped without explanation in 2018. Were they scared that Canalside House might be awarded a status that would make selling it more difficult?

££

“A property developer masquerading as a local authority” – they want to get the community out. Out of that building and out of North Kensington more generally.

For more information on the campaign to save Canalside House, click here.

By Tom Charles @tomhcharles @urbandandyldn

Photographs by Amaya Cavanagh Robern @aj_c.r