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Dudley House residents Christian Saigal, Nicola Dillon, John Meredith, Abir Noureddine and Tariq Ellekhlifi outside the isolated block |
‘Sell us your Porter homes on cheap’
Council offers to buy Dame Shirley home-for-votes scandal flats for well below market rate
HOMEOWNERS who bought flats in Paddington during the Shirley Porter homes-for-votes scandal are being forced to sell them back to the council on the cheap.
Housing chiefs gave 22 leaseholders in Dudley House, North Wharf Road, a choice of accepting up to £280,000 each for their two-bedroom properties or face seizure by compulsory purchase orders. It is understood six leaseholders have accepted this offer.
Tenants say the spacious apartments are worth around £350,000, arguing their value has plummeted during a decade of botched attempts to regenerate the site in Paddington Basin.
John Meredith, the residents’ surveyor, said: “Selling up at a decent rate has been blighted because the council have been talking about redevelopment for years so no estate agent will go near it.”
The homes were sold to Conservative voters by Ms Porter, the former leader of Westminster Council, during the election-rigging scandal of the late 1980s.
But in 1999 the former council flats were earmarked for demolition.
A £300million private finance initiative to build a super-hospital on the site was approved in 2000, but four years later building costs rocketed to almost £1billion and the plans were shelved.
More than £25million was lost in consultants’ fees without a brick being laid.
High-rise offices have since been granted permission and now encircle the five-storey Dudley House.
Nicola Dillon, 36, a teaching assistant at St Mary’s Bryanston Square School, said: “They [the council] neglected it on purpose because they knew they were going to knock it down.
“It’s a good building that doesn’t need to be demolished. The way we’ve been treated is appalling.”
Tariq Ellekhlifi, a 30-year-old youth worker, who has lived in the block for more than 20 years, has watched the skyline become crowded with buildings that have sprung up around his childhood home.
He said: “We haven’t seen sunlight in three years. They’re not treating us like humans.”
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour Group, said the council was cashing in at the expense of Dudley House residents, and will profit from the development of the site.
He said: “This can’t be right or fair.”
Mark Field, the Conservative MP for London Cities and Westminster, is also calling for the council’s offer to be revised for the remaining owners.
But Westminster Council’s director of housing, Rosemary Westbrook, said: “Whether the financial package is considered low, fair or generous is a matter for individual judgment.
“The offers replicate what the council would be required to offer if the properties were made the subject of a Compulsory Purchase Order.”
Ms Westbrook guaranteed Mr Field that the council would assess the housing needs of those “unable to access suitable alternative accommodation” if they agreed to sell their flats.
Housing chief Councillor Philippa Roe denied the council had failed to carry out repairs or that a decision had been made to develop new housing on the site.
She said: “We believe the package offered to leaseholders is a fair and generous one.
“Those who accept will receive a home-loss payment amounting to 10 per cent of the market value of their flat and we will also reimburse stamp duty, legal and surveyors’ fees as well as removal expenses.” |
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