Public fatigued by masterplan mania

The estate is in desperate need of regeneration, but four previous masterplans failed after lengthy consultation exercises.

News that Southwark Council has advertised for yet another masterplanner to come up with ideas to refurbish the estate was greeted with dismay by the residents, who said that the community is fed up with consultation and just wants action.

“People have had enough. We need something to start happening and not just keep talking,” Derek Way, a resident of the estate for 30 years, said.

“If they appointed another lot of architects, no one would be very happy. You can have too much of this [consultation]. It costs money, and we haven’t seen anything yet.”

The Aylesbury estate has become a graveyard for ambitious masterplanners. In 1999, Levitt Bernstein Associates [LBA] and Pollard Thomas & Edwards drew up a masterplan that never came to fruition. HTA Architects then took on the estate, but was dropped in favour of Alsop Architects.

Alsop’s typically spirited plans bit the dust in 2002, when the estate’s residents voted against the required housing stock transfer. Since then LBA has come back on board to work on simple security and access measures for the south-west corner of the estate.

A consultation event held on the estate by LBA last Thursday attracted interest from just 15 of the 250 residents affected. LBA director David Levitt eventually resorted to approaching people in the street to ask what they thought of his proposals.

“It is hard to engage the residents at the moment. They have been consulted so many times before and they want us to show them we will actually do it this time,” Levitt told BD.

“You can’t blame them for feeling a bit punch drunk… The failure of the Alsop scheme has contributed to the general suspicion and apathy.”

David Foreman, physical environment co-ordinator for Aylesbury New Deal for Communities, insisted the latest masterplan was needed to research ways of raising new revenue from unused land on the site and to orchestrate refurbishment after residents voted to retain the existing estate.

But HTA Architects managing director Bernard Hunt warned that practices would be reluctant to bid for the new masterplanning work.

“If it keeps on coming round again, there is a credibility gap as to whether whoever wins will get to see it through,” he told BD. “Aylesbury has a history that everyone is aware of. It is the last-chance saloon here. Do we really believe anything will be different this time?”