The Liverpool Kensington £62m New Deal for Communities bandwagon roles on

What you must realise about this New Deal regeneration initiative is, it is practically impossible to get any concrete information, especially information which would be construed as being controversial. The service providers, be they in whatever guise, and the hand full of crony residents including the ten resident board members, have shrouded everything in a veil of secrecy and uncertainty. In effect the latter mentioned are the only ones who really know what is going on and even the resident cronies don’t know everything. Only the dominant culture that exists at local government level, i.e. senior council officers, certain Government Office for Merseyside civil servants, the executive director of Riverside’s Community 7 and his operations manager, the chief executive of the Kensington New Deal initiative and her senior staff, the Housing Corporation, Newhaertlands, Bellway Homes, Lovels Construction and lets not forget the ruthless Liverpool Land and Development Company who path the way for the oligarchy elite, such as Grosvenor Developments, which is owned by the oligarch property developer the Duke of Westminster, really know what is going on because they are the ones who will profit from the misery that is being perpetrated on the unsuspecting residents of this so called 4,000 house New Deal for Communities area. What these people are up to is not just happening here in the confines of this New Deal area, it is happening right throughout Merseyside and there are people similar to them in other cities right throughout the UK doing exactly the same thing. These elitists are just using this £62m New Deal for Communities initiative as a smoke screen to hide behind as they decimate a whole community. A community, which just happens to be right on the doorstep of the city centre. Its no secret that at least a quarter of the Liverpool city centre is, or shortly will be, owned by the Duke’s Grosvenor Development, who will receive millions of ERDF funding from the mysterious £800m Objective One money that was given to Liverpool by the corrupt European Commission a couple of years ago. This means that the Duke will
get at least one pound back from Objective One funding for every two pounds that he spends. This is why he, along with all the other rich property developers, has jumped on the regeneration bandwagon..

Its not really difficult to guess what all the above are up to because they always use, near enough, the same oppressive tactics when they are trying to push their agendas onto communities. These tactics involve a certain methodology that incorporates an insidious gradualist oppressive approach, which always involves, gradualism and community training programmes, which lead to subordination, lethargy, demoralisation and eventual domestication of the hand full of decent well intentioned community members who bother to get involved. You see, the less people who are involved the easier it is for all the above to impose their agendas unopposed on to the wider community.

KEY FOR A KEY:

There is a lot of uncertainty about this key for a key thing. No one really knows what is going on in relation to this issue, especially the housing association tenants. It was believed that certain homeowners in the area that covers: Half of Marmaduke St, Royston St, Gladstone Rd, Martensen St, Cicely St, Winifred St, Janet St, Dorothy St, Plimsoll St, and Peet St, which is due for mass demolition, were secretly meeting with senior New Deal administrators, Community 7 and council officer from the housing department. They are supposed to have discussed proposals not to demolish some 200 houses in Thorburn St, Milroy St and Nutall St. It has been proposed that the RSL tenants in these streets (about 100 tenants) who leave through natural migration will not be replaced and that these former RSL houses will be refurbished at a cost of approximately £12,000 and sold to homeowners who’s houses will be demolished in the same area. It is also believed, but no one is really certain, that the latter arrangement is now being called, especially by homeowners, a “key for a key” arrangement. In simple language what the service providers intend to do is steal former tenants houses and sell them to homeowners in spite of the fact that there are now over 200 homeless families who are waiting for housing association properties living in miserable hostels in Liverpool. Most housing association tenants in the New Deal area now know about these plans and are not happy because they feel that the housing associations main priority and intended remit is to house the most vulnerable in society not in effect appropriate tenants houses and sell them to homeowners at a knock down price. The latter issue is now causing much resentment from tenants towards homeowners. Tenants are now asking questions amongst themselves as to why nearly all the structures that have been put into place by the service providers do not adequately reflect the situation of tenure within the community. i.e. out of the ten resident board members only one is a tenant and this majority homeowner presence is reflected in all the community structures that have been put into place by the service providers. Before this NDC funding came into the area the tenants were in a 60% majority and are still in a majority, yet structures were never put into place to encourage tenant participation. Some tenants believe that this was a deliberate ploy by the service providers so as to use the homeowners as yet another tool to subjugate the tenants with. Also the main housing associations Riverside deliberately avoided putting simple structures into place to address the issue of antisocial tenants thus allowing many of these tenants into the area so as to further encourage homeowners and tenants to leave the area. There is no stone left unturned when the dominant culture wants to impose its agendas onto a community. It will stop at nothing to achieve it goals. Bringing in antisocial tenants, creating inter-area rivalry for funding, turning tenants against homeowners and vice versa, dividing the community up into many different areas and keeping them divided, continually conniving and using the negative aspects of the communities cultural perspective as a tool to subjugate them with are all oppressive aspects used by the dominant culture that exists at local government level.

The situation of tenure in the Edge Hill area due for mass demolition is about 440 tenants and 200 homeowners. Over 100 tenants have already been moved out of the area, but there are still about 340 left. Most of these tenants will be moved out of the New Deal area altogether and ghettoised in areas which are not important to the city centre regeneration. This is disgraceful behaviour by the service providers because these people are supposed to be stakeholders in the New Deal initiative, in other words the £62m New Deal funding belongs to them, yet the service providers, with the full support of Government Office, intend to move hundreds of tenants out of the New Deal area thus disenfranchising them from the initiative.