These blocks of flats alongside Waterloo Road in Romford are threatened with demolition as part of a so called ‘regeneration’ scheme. The ‘vision’ of what the architects, Conran + Partners propose, illustrated below, can be seen here in full: A new lease of life for Waterloo Estate.

It’s bullshit. For the tenants in the blocks shown above, it’s not a new lease of life. The plan talks about a ‘significant number of mixed tenure properties’ which generally means very few homes provided at current levels of social housing rent. Many of the tenants will be getting moved out and re-located. What really makes us livid is that according to the Romford Civic Society the tenants have not been shown these plans.

Conran + Partners and Havering Council need to be reminded in no uncertain terms that we’re talking about people’s lives here. We’re talking about an existing community effectively being destroyed to make way for a forest of apartment blocks being built to take advantage of the ‘Crossrail effect’. A number of tenants in the block are elderly, have lived there for a good few decades and in the autumn of their lives, they do not want the stress of being moved out to a new location.

As for the architects ‘vision’, compare that with the photograph below, taken as close as was safely possible to the viewpoint shown, and their bullshit will readily become all too apparent. Waterloo Road is part of the ring road system around Romford town centre. The architects visual appears to have taken a third of the width of the road away, cobbled it and made it look semi-pedestrianised in the process.

Are they serious? Do they think the people of Romford are mugs who are going to be taken in by this? The ones who have seen this visual are all asking pretty much the same question which we’ll paraphrase as ‘where’s the f***ing traffic gone!?’ We await with baited breath the answer to this from Conran + Partners.

Take a look through all of the visuals produced by Conran + Partners. As with every other regeneration scheme in and around London, whoever is producing these bullshit visuals must have some issues that result in them engaging in their own form of ethnic cleansing. Romford these days is an ethnically and culturally diverse town. They have an ethnically diverse football team plying their trade in the Bostik League North Division. What is portrayed in the glossy visuals for Waterloo Road does not reflect what Romford is like in any way shape or form.

It’s time these charlatans had their callousness called out and their bullshit shown up for what it is!