St Mary’s Path estate

• ISLINGTON and Shoreditch Housing Association (ISHA) have just finished their “consultation” with residents on plans to redevelop St Mary’s Path estate, including an “option” to demolish
St Mary’s House and replace it with a new-build that would add just two new flats to the estate.

I have lived in St Mary’s House for 25 years. I know all my neighbours and we are very lucky to have a close-knit community here. If ISHA go ahead with demolition, it would be a lot more than just the building that would be lost.

Residents across the estate also suspect that if ISHA start with demolishing St Mary’s, the other blocks will gradually follow. We are frustrated to have been put through two years of very great stress without our views having had any bearing on ISHA’s plans.

Many here feel there is no justification for the huge social impact and environmental damage that demolition would have.

Like others, I am very concerned that the real reason we are being targeted to make way for a new-build is for the site’s lucrative potential just off Upper Street.

We have had it confirmed by a damp specialist that the damp would have to be far worse to justify demolition, so it is not about “damp” as ISHA claim.

It also doesn’t make any sense to say it’s about “providing more family-sized homes” since literally half the estate are three- or four-bedroom homes.

If it was really about this, ISHA would fit all the blocks with lifts so that these flats can actually be accessible to families. Residents have been requesting lifts as part of a proper refurbishment but ISHA will not agree to it.

Nor does it make any sense to residents to say it is about providing flats to “modern sizing standards”, as ISHA also say, since the bedrooms and living rooms in our block are actually a good size.

Even if they are slightly smaller than modern standards, it does not justify demolition of a sound block for such a negligible difference.

Finally, it is also not really about adding “two new flats”, because there are plenty of infill sites across the estate ISHA could build on. For example, they could build on the sheds, as was identified in ISHA’s own initial “options report” for the estate.

So I can only guess that the real reason for demolition is to do with meeting ISHA’s, Islington Council’s and the GLA’s “targets” to build “new homes”, alongside the high revenue stream that our beautiful views over St Mary’s Church Gardens could generate.

At the very least it is likely that the two additional flats would be for part-rent, part-buy, or private sale, and that the homes initially set at our current social rents would gradually get flipped to “affordable” rents, which nobody here can afford.

Given this, it is distressing to think about the very great health and social impacts that this “option” would unnecessarily cause.

The residents who would take the brunt of living on a demolition and building site for the coming years are those of us who are at home more in the day: people with young children, elderly people, and those with illnesses or disabilities.

Many will not be able to cope with the disruption and impact on their health demolition would have and would have to move off. Similar schemes show that once moved off estates being regenerated, residents are unlikely to come back, since people cannot put their lives on hold.

Many elderly and vulnerable people who have been living here for decades, if not their whole lives, will be driven off for good, regardless of any “right to return”.

Whatever promises are made to residents at this planning stage, there is no justification for this. It would not have to happen if a proper refurbishment programme was undertaken throughout the estate.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED