On Wednesday the 4th of October the three Chairs of CRERA, CREst and One Norbiton individually invited all CRE residents to a meeting in Piper Hall to discuss the new Council’s decision to hold a Ballot on regenerating their Estate.
Holding a ballot is apparently not compulsory because Kingston has already received its donation towards Social Housing from former Mayor,Boris Johnston. However the fact that they are going to do so is very welcome because this Regeneration Project is likely to cost over a billion pounds and take ten to fifteen years to complete. it Therefore it would be foolhardy to proceed if it does not have the backing of the residents as well as the support of all political parties who could possibly be in power in the next decade or so.
The ballot itself, will not be taking place until the Autumn of 2019 when a Masterplan worked out with RBK’s (still to be chosen) development partner is ready to be shown to the Residents for their acceptance or rejection. The purpose of this meeting was to explain the Mayor’s current guidance on how such ballots should be held and to find out how much our residents agreed with his suggested process.
There were over seventy attendees including Cllr Emily Davey (Portfolio holder for Housing) Cllr Olly Wehring Council officers and the Three Chairs. The proceedings were very ably led by Tom Brennan who gave a Presentation Interesting the current estimate of the numbers that may be balloted is 705.
Following Tom’s formal presentation, all participated in a workshop to raise questions and issues that the residents had with these arrangements. These will be further discussed at a follow-up meeting on the 17th of October.