Hope SE1 doesn't come all Royston Vasey

Phoney
It was a bit hard for locals to get mortgages in the early to mid 80s. Not many people owned there own property.
How can I forget LDDC they were the sponsers of Millwall. I bet there are not too many on here that knew that!! (No offense to Millwall fans that post on here)
By the way the name change of Surrey Docks reallly did upset a lot of locals and I for one could not understand the problem with keeping the original name.
Suppose thats one of the things I am speaking about, locals liked the name and had no issues but developers did not so it changed!!

I just read this piece of writing:

At June 1993, the number of residential units completed in Surrey Docks on LDDC land was 3475. Only 27% of these were for rent and 63% were for sale. Housing for local people for sale at the magic 'affordable' LDDC figure of �40,000 or less made up only 875 units overall, although 75% of local people were low-waged at the time and would have been unable to afford even this amount. Two years later, the �40,000 houses were selling at double the 'affordable' price. As time went by, the notion of providing affordable housing, even if beyond the means of most locals, waned. In 1982, 99% of housing on LDDC land (inc. East London) had been below �40,000. By 1984 the figure was reduced to 43%, sliding down to only 330 homes by 1987. Most of these were studio or one-bedroom homes, often below council house building standards and far from suitable for local families. LDDC figures showed that only 12% of the buyers of the �40,000 or less homes were former council tenants. In Southwark, the figure for tenants buying new homes was 4%. By contrast, over 80% of private buyers in the LDDC Southwark area had not previously lived in the Borough, with 40% of these coming in from outside London.

Jam Tomorrow! Some history and notes on the regeneration and gentrification of North Southwark + Bermondsey Part One: 1900 - 1987

http://www.56a.org.uk/jam.html

The figures quoted above are taken from the book
'Developing London's Docklands: Another Great Planning Disaster?' - Sue Brownhill (Paul Chapman Publishing 1993)

Thanks for the fascinating link, even if it is a rather one dimensional, article, it does show how the decline in the traditional manual jobs in the Bermondsey and Surrey Docks area was so extreme after the 1970s that life would never be the same again for any of the existing residents in social or private housing. It may be that the schooling in this inner city area was also greatly at fault for not helping to promote learning more suitable to the workforce for the new industries moving into the city.

change is an inevitable part of life. The area discussed above - Downtown - underwent something of a renaissance from about 1990 onwards. WIth the exception of the old wharves, none of the riverfront properties were there. It is sad to see local landmarks replaced with, in many cases, tacky newbuilds, but it is happening everywhere.

The real point here as I see it is that when you start building houses with price tags higher than what thelocals can afford, new people will come in. Surely that can only be a win-win situation for all concerned, even if some locals aren't happy at the arrival of new 'locals'? With new locals, the local businesses benefit, the schools benefit (hopefully), the local authority does well by collecting even more council tax and it does make the area a better place to live. Taking Downtown as an example, the place is unrecognisable in comparison with a snapshot 20 years ago.

Surely it doesn't matter how long someone has lived in the area or which football team they support or whether they shop at East Street or have pie and mash at Manzes or, if you're down the lane anyway, at Arments in Westmoreland Road? (Arments is the better one BTW or at least I think so)

The common denominator here is that all on this site work, live or would like to live in SE1. That in my eyes makes them just as much a local as anyone else.

I think this whole 'LOCAL' business is getting out of hand!

For me the whole debate about 'locals' is a bit strange if measured by how long someone lives in an area. I've lived in The Elephant for 20 years but I'm not even sure if I can call myself a 'local'.

The real issue is what locals do in the area they live in, whether they've lived there donkey's years or moved in last week. For some, this debate is framed around the idea of what locals add to a community. The recent arrival of gated communities and more exclusive shops and eateries don't really add much to the older community that has been resident in parts of SE1 for longer. I suspect that this is what the 'locals' issue is more about and why older locals often write that they feel either invisible or excluded when newspaper articles report that an area is 'up and coming'.

An example of this is when some newly arrived artistic types moved to Peckham (not is SE1, i know), they were interviewed and called the area 'a blank canvas'!

“Peckham is the land of the free. It's like a blank canvas,” said Hannah Barry, an enterprising 26-year-old who founded her eponymous gallery last year in a warehouse of a former cricket bat factory.

October 15, 2009 NEW YORK TIMES - Emerging Artists Find a New 'Blank Canvas' in London
By ALICE PFEIFFER

lots of people moving into an area can be a good thing but when local people can no longer afford to live in the area and are forced to move away from families etc leads to resentment of the people coming into an area. It would help if the Council spent some of the extra money on affordable housing but this is not the case. The schools in the area have not seen much benefit with many having thousands of applications for their places-the only new secondary school built gives priority to people living in the City first and Southwark second.

yours is a valid point, Dee Dee, but this problem certainly isn't unique to SE1, London or even most of the home counties. I can't afford to buy in SE1 and I earn a decent-enough salary; to be honest, I couldn't afford to buy even if my partner was working. Property prices everywhere, even in the recession, are just too high for anyone under the age of 30 (unless you earn over �100k per annum, which I don't) to buy. That's not the fault (directly any how; possibly indirectly by driving prices up) of the newcomers. I don't attribute blame for that to the 'non-locals'; that's just life isn't it?

As for the council, all of the problems you raise could be attributed to the council. The problem with the City of London Academy are the first three words of its title - 'City of London' - Southwark was obviously too poor or tight to finance its own school. However, the problem with schools (or the lack thereof) isn't a new issue and when I was at primary school trying to get into secondary school, the problem was still as acute. The same goes for affordable or social housing - all local authorities do these days is sell off/transfer their stock. However, privatisation of public services (education/housing/etc) is for another post.

None of this is the fault of people who have/had only moved the area recently though.

dee dee wrote:

lots of people moving into an area can be a good thing but when local people can no longer afford to live in the area and are forced to move away from families etc leads to resentment of the people coming into an area.

Same scenario all over the UK. This is a common complaint in rural areas. If Mum and Dad were able to afford to buy a house a generation ago, they are probably now sitting on a big paper profit. However, their children haven't a hope in hell of buying a house themselves.

dee dee you are right. The people who live in council flats are forgotten. A lot of people on this site love the fact that they are in SE1 but dont want the (lower class element) that goes with it.
Supporting most things local (other than Borough market) is not really on there agenda.
I was born in a council property and lived most of my life in one. The way I see this site is that most (not all) of the luvvies who come on here dont like the old SE1 roots and would like it to change.
All I can say to them is this
No one likes us. We dont care!