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Click above for what became the consented plan, plus Transport page.

2013-10-23

The Guardian: "Unsocial housing? Gates within gates divide the 'haves' and 'have-nots'"


Link to web site

"The promotional blurb for High Point Village, a development of 600 new homes at Hayes, on the fringes of west London, claims it is a 'thoroughly modern mix of affordable and luxury accommodation ... carefully designed – engineered, almost – to offer an oasis of calm in an otherwise busy, driven world, and to give its residents a real sense of community that is sometimes lacking in more anonymous city developments'.

It's not quite how some of the residents in the development's 'affordable' homes section view it. Those either in social housing or in part-buy, part-rent accommodation claim they are treated as second-class citizens, citing the internal gates that divide them from their neighbours in the 'luxury' housing blocks. There is even a gate in the car park to divide the affordable residents from the other homeowners.

"... Adrian Gill, chairman of the High Point Village Residents Association, said:
"The difficulties we face within the development are, I think, a consequence of increasingly dense housing development – necessitated by the rapidly expanding population here in London – and simplistic and naive planning policy on the part of councils."

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