2012-10-31

The Guardian: "Earls Court project: revisiting that 'social engineering' claim"


Link to Dave Hill, The Guardian

"The housing and redevelopment policies of the Conservative flagship Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) council first came to my attention in July 2009, due a campaign launched by a local Labour MP Andy Slaughter. Responding to the council's core strategy options document and its proposals for constructing what it called Decent Neighbourhoods and armed with the yield from a Freedom of Information request, he accused H&F of 'using the language of social cleansing' and of planning 'social engineering on a grand scale'.

"Slaughter has continued to accuse the council of using housing policy to alter the social complexion of the area to the political advantage of the Conservatives, and the administration has continued to strongly deny such claims. However, Slaughter has long cited a Conservative Home article from February 2009 co-written by the then leader of the council Stephen Greenhalgh as further evidence to back his claim that, as he put it to me for an article I wrote in March about opposition to the Earls Court project, the council has 'set out to gerrymander the electorate by reducing the amount of social housing in the borough and increasing the amount of high-value, mostly investment property'."

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