The Estate is a 1950s Council estate, owned by the local authority (the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) and managed by its ALMO, Kensington and Chelsea TMO.
On Wednesday, 18th of June, we learned that our homes had been selected for "regeneration" by the Council. We didn't learn that from the Council or the ALMO, who have quite simply not bothered to tell us, but from a leaked document.
The Cremorne Estate is located next to the Kings Road in Chelsea. For a very long time, a site half a mile up the road, next to Chelsea Fire Station, had been earmarked for the construction of a station on the Chelsea-Hackney line, now known as Crossrail 2.
Transport for London consulted on the proposed Crossrail 2 station at the Fire Station last year. Unknown to the residents the Council approached the Mayor of London directly asking him to consider an alternative site for the construction of a station. A site on our estate. The letter is linked to below.
Letter from Cllr. Coleridge to London Mayor Boris Johnson
Construction of a Crossrail 2 station on our estate would require its demolition. As per the Council's decant policy all of the tenants would be rehoused elsewhere (not necessarily nearby) and all the leaseholders would be bought out and sent on their way. All of the shops below our homes on the Kings Road would be demolished. The community on the estate would be destroyed. The local community would be irreparably damaged.
We're not going to take this lying down. We have started a campaign of opposition to what amounts to a grossly underhand move by the Council to destroy our homes and our community.
There's a right way and a wrong way to do anything. The right way involved engaging with residents and the wider community on any proposals which might affect them. The Council have clearly decided to do things the wrong way.
TfL is consulting on the Council's proposals. We're asking our residents, neighbours and the wider community to oppose them. We started with this:
Please support us.
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. And it shouldn't surprise The Powers That Be that emotions are running high given that the initial consultation was the very definition of stealth. And I'm sure residents of the Cremorne Estate are taking being branded "alarmist" with a pinch of salt. After all, any sane individual would rightly react at the prospect of his/her home being demolished on the altar of corporate big bucks. If I see the writing is on the wall for my home to satisfy some spurious need to build a station that nobody needs then I will happily take the flak for being "alarmist".
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