Green Party London Assembly Member Zoë Garbett is calling on the Mayor to rethink his decision to demolish the Lesnes Estate.
Infested with mould, mice and cockroaches, the Lesnes Estate – situated on the south bank of the River Thames between Greenwich and Bexley – is in desperate need of rectification. However, instead of addressing these issues, the Mayor of London currently plans to demolish the estate and build almost 2,000 new properties.
It’s safe to say that these plans, which were granted planning permission in October 2022, were not met with open arms. Zoë Garbett has claimed that despite the estate being partially empty, 200 residents still call it home.
During a meeting at the House of Commons, Zoë said: ‘You’ve got residents living next to boarded-up houses, When the people move out, the kitchens are torn out and they are sometimes just left on the estate. The walls have been knocked down, there’s lots of fly-tipping and littering. There’s also mice, cockroaches, damp and mould but all these issues haven’t been picked up and looked at.’
Zoë added that residents ‘feel like they’ve been left to rot with this stress and uncertainty that’s hanging over them as well.’
Maria Ivanova, who is 72 years old, is one of the residents that currently lives on the estate, and she has previously detailed the experience to MyLondon as extremely ‘stressful’.
‘I’m not getting younger, although I’m trying to take care of my health…I don’t know what I will do when they decide to demolish the house,’ she said.
In a bid to address the situation, Zoë handed over a petition from residents of the Lesnes Estate which detailed that Sadiq Khan should consider retrofitting the current properties that populate the site instead of evicting tenants and tearing them down.
‘Estate regeneration is displacing Londoners, ripping communities apart with no accountability for the developers and landlords tasked with improving housing across our city,’ Zoë remarked. ‘Refurbishment should always be the default option.’
‘Estate regeneration can drag on for years, decades even. There are very few safeguards to make sure this doesn’t happen. It’s a lottery – and the Mayor needs to listen to residents to prevent more councils, housing associations and developers embarking on more disastrous regeneration schemes,’ she continued.
In response to the issues raised and the petition, Sadiq Khan said: ‘I’ll undertake today to get my Deputy for Housing to look into this issue, but also to work with you, Zoë, to try and ameliorate the circumstances [residents] are living under.’
A full link to the meeting held between Zoe and the Mayor of London can be found here.
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