When George Osborne announced the closure of Holloway Prison in 2015 as part of his £1.6bn prison rebuilding programme, it was met with shock in the local community.
‘It seemed that they saw a way they could get income in for their prison rebuilding programme from a high-value land site in the centre of London, where there is lots of development and speculation going on,’ says Will McMahon, head of the Community Plan for Holloway.
The idea behind the prison rebuilding programme was to close down out-of-date and ‘not fit for purpose’ facilities, yet Holloway was rebuilt as recently as 1985.
The Ministry of Justice was receiving bids on the site until November 2017, and a decision on a preferred bidder is due imminently.
‘It’s not an old prison, it’s not a Victorian prison. We thought it was a bit curious that they would close one of the most modern prisons in London, and one of the only women’s prisons in London as well,’ says McMahon.
The prisoners were sent on buses to prisons outside of London, and eight acres of land in fashionable Islington suddenly became available on the market. Arable land for developers, but following a mobilisation of members of the local community, the building of luxury developments was suddenly not a foregone conclusion. Its goal is to see much needed social housing built on the site.
The Community Plan for Holloway is a coalition of active local community organisations, faith groups, trade unions, political parties, and they were buoyed by other successful community-led projects in the capital such as StART in Haringey and Peach of Custom House.
‘We learnt you need to make it as wide and participatory as possible, and you need to find a structure that people can get involved in and is democratic’, says McMahon. ‘We learned from Peach not to overcomplicate things, engage on the basis of, what do you want to see? what do you not want to see? That’s what we did, and it produced a really big response.’
The group surveyed local people with the results showing strong local support for affordable housing, green spaces and for recreation areas for children and young people. Crucially, the survey also revealed huge support for the site to remain in public ownership.
‘If you look at what’s going on in Harringay or Walthamstow and other areas there is this struggle between developers and local communities,’ says McMahon.
‘There’s a big need for a cross-national summit or a London summit between all communities who are searching to get a better outcome for local people that are not just yet more luxury flats. We might be able to shift the political agenda on.’
Changing hearts and minds
One of the biggest challenges the group faced was persuading local residents that theirs was a fight worth fighting. They were understandably wary of the big developers who can quickly steamroll their way into an area, regardless of how communities may feel about it.
‘It’s not been easy,’ says McMahon. ‘One of the issues we faced was people ask, “can we make any difference?”
‘So our project was to persuade them through conversation that we could. That’s why we did the survey because thought we need to find out what they want to see and what they didn’t want to see. We had over 900 responses from people in the local area. It was a huge response.’
A packed Community Plan for Holloway event on March 2nd included a speech from North Islington MP, Jeremy Corbyn, who pledged that following the closure of Holloway prison, the land should stay in public ownership.
‘Up until 1980, it would have been impossible for the prison site to have been sold without it first being offered around the public sector,’ he said.
‘That surely is something that should come back and something I would want to bring back, so you keep within the public realm and public orbit the land that we already have, and it can be offered to the local authority for housing.’
Almost 20,000 people are on the housing waiting list in Islington, with the average house price at £350,000 over 10 times that of the average salary in the borough, so the spectre of luxury developments has loomed large.
‘What we are after is a project that does something different, that is premised on long-term value,’ says McMahon
‘Purchasing the land is a very expensive option but it’s not impossible for an equity pension fund or for somebody to work in collaboration with a local authority to buy the land and to actually produce housing which can produce a long-term income stream. It’s not a quick buck or a quick win, it’s a long investment for the community,’ he adds.
He also believes there could be a solution that benefits everyone, including the developers.
‘Housing developers expect a profit of 20 to 25% and their argument is that there is risk attached to that. We should take the risk out of it, we should just have a lock between pension funds, local authorities and the developer, where everybody gets a stream of income.’
The vision
Islington is one of the most densely packed areas of London, and a development which includes much needed green spaces is at the forefront of both the community plan and Islington council’s plan. The latter produced a report of their own, stating ‘the site represents a unique opportunity to address this deficiency by providing a space that can serve the local area. A site of this size is required to provide high quality, publicly accessible open space on site, which also includes formal play space and playable space.’
What is abundantly clear from both the council’s plan and the community survey is that people want to see a genuinely mixed development, with houses for families, single people and elderly people.
‘What’s also required is a masterplan which looks at the area around the prison as well because the roads around the prison are like motorways. It needs to be calmed down so it can become a much more human space. So, when the site is built upon it can be permeable and part of the wider community,’ says McMahon.
The community vision also draws on the history of the prison itself. Holloway housed the Suffragettes and has held several high profile female prisoners. Commemorating the struggles that women have gone through on the site is one of the key elements of the community plan.
Niki Gibbs, speaking at a Community Plan for Holloway event on March 2nd, said, ‘We believe that a women’s building is an appropriate commemoration of Holloway’s legacy. The women’s building should be community‑owned and dedicated to providing support for women and their families.’
Test case for London regeneration
The Holloway development may be a signal for what regeneration will look like across London. Sadiq Khan is a mayor who is in favour of building homes that people can afford to live in, it’s in Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency and there is a big community demand for housing that ordinary working people can access.
‘It’s a test case,’ says Will.
‘Theresa May and Sajid Javid were going on about land banking and not building on the site. The Holloway site is owned by the Ministry of Justice. The government can avoid land banking by being imaginative and coming out with a scheme that people can get behind and that social investors can get behind.’
‘Everybody understands the need but there must be a much more radical solution for this piece of land.’