Slides used by Dan Barron, PEACH Big Local at the Big Local Better Homes and Building Homes learning cluster on Monday 24 September 2018

1. The Alternative Regeneration Plan
Overview of the Alternative Regeneration Plan
I will run through a timeline of what we have done, and then look at how we’ve
approached the regeneration here and what the successes and challenges are

2. PEACH
PEACH Founded in 2013 - 5 years this year
At Founding Assembly - 4 key areas to work on voted on by the community: Jobs &
Education, Housing & Regeneration, Safety, Health
From the outset a commitment to Community Organising - That means building
Power & Investment in people

3. Canning Town and Custom House Regeneration Project
The Regeneration, first conceived of and made public pre-crash in the early 2000s,
residents in regeneration areas have been in limbo since. Covers around 2000
properties in total across Custom House and Canning Town

4. Custom House
● 550 houses
● Health Centre
● High Street
● Station
IN Custom House the regeneration covers around 500 houses, the high street and the
local GPs surgery. The station is also to become a Crossrail station when that opens
in the near future, providing quicker toutes to Canary Wharf and central London.

5. What to do?
Housing was not originally our main priority - but was clear it was the biggest issue
and we couldn’t ignore it as it is ripping through the heart of our area. The
regeneration will be the biggest change to our area since the closure of the Docks
and will have huge knock on impacts across the community.
We reseached other groups and the impact regeneration was having on other
communities, such as looking at the displacement after the regeneration of Heygate
Estate.
We also noted how although there were groups resisting, few groups were winning!
We knew first we had to get organised though

6. PEACH Housing Club 2015
We set up the Housing Club in Summer 2015, weve been meeting every 4-6 weeks
since then and have around 140 members now, who have all paid £1 to join up and
show there support. Its the place where people in the community come together to
talk about regeneration and local housing issues.

7. The beginning - 2015
We began to have conversations with residents in the Housing club and other
communities. We hosted a regeneration conference in 2015 with some councillors
including now Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz who was at the time our ward Councillor and
some community led housing groups

8. From these discussion the Alternative Regeneration Plan was born and our Housing
Club voted to start working on an idea to do our own community-led regeneration plan
- we wanted to come up with our own plans, that were viable but that reflected what
the community here wants to see for the future of the area. We knew we needed to
hire some new staff so we went back and forth with the PEACH steering group who
would fund the project, to make sure everyone was happy.

9. Launch - Sept 2016
We launched this at a fun day in September 2016 and about 150 people came out,
we advertised that we were recruiting for a new team of people to help us with this
project

10. Our
Team
We hired a team of 10 people who would each work 1 day a week (equiv to 2 x full
timers), 4 architects/urban designers and 6 community organisers.
At the point of hiring the team we made some Key decisions:
-Architects were hired as individuals to work for us, not as a practice, so they worked
in our office
-Local knowledge treated and valued equally (all paid the same)
-Trained in the basics of each others work and expected to do it - architects expected
to door knock and have 121s with residents
-5 of the 6 organisers were from the local area

11. Door Knocking to workshops
We then took to the streets, knocked on 1000 doors and had hundreds of 121
conversations and built up to hosting workshops in early spring 2017

12. Knocked on 1000 doors, has around 300 121 meetings, and got people interested in
the workshops

13. Workshops
We held 6 workshops with 3 themes, and had 180 people attending
Housing, Community and Public Space, Economy and services
We also held smaller workshops at the old peoples home, churches and youth club so
that more people could feed in.

14. Principles
We used the information gathered at all the workshops to come up with 4 aims and 6
principles for regeneration, we held a drop-in where residents could feedback and
then vote on the principles

15. Then over the coming months, the archtects and organisers developed a masterplan
with the Housing Club feeding in and checking on progress. This was the masterplan
we produced

16. Community support was vital all the way through and Housing Club have voted at
each key stage of the process.

17. Vote!
In September 2017, a year after we started, the plans were completed and we voted
to take them to the Council in our next meeting. At this point we are meeting with Cllr
Ken Clark the Council’s lead for regeneration under Mayor Robin Wales

18. Working
with
Newham
Since July 2017, PEACH have been meeting regularly with Newham Council, firstly
with Cllr Ken Clark and since May 2018, with the new Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz, who has
taken personal control of regeneration. Fortunately for us, Rokhsana Fiaz was
previously our ward councillor and as such we had already developed a good working
relationship. The challenge has been to develop the relationship with Newham, to get
them to recognise the capability of the community and to get them to accept the
community as an equal partner in regeneration.

19. 2018
2018 also marked 5 years of PEACH!

20. Latest
In 2018 we have produced an evidence base for our Alternative Regeneration Plan,
demonstrating where the ideas have come from, as well as commissioned a viability
tool to enable us to work on the numbers to prove how much genuinely affordable
housing can be put into our Alternative Regeneration Plan. We have also set up a
COmmunity Land Trust called E16 CLT.

21. How? Community Organising
That is the end of the timeline, I will now take a quick look and how we have done
this.
We have focused from the outset of PEACH on Community Organising, that means -
Building the power of our community so that we can make or influence the decisions
that affect us.
This runs centrally in all our work and when we plan and deliver our work we think
about how we can build power whenever possible. Community Organising is to me, a
set of tools by which we understand what is going on and that we can use in our work
to make change. There are lots of parts of it but the 3 key things which mark it out to
me are as follows.

22. Relationships
1 Relationships
Building and maintaining positive working relationships with people in the community
and fostering good relationships within the community are key. We builds
relationships through 121s, meeting lots of people in the community and getting to
understand their interests and issues. We also make sure our meetings are fun and
relational, and allow time for people to interact with each other, through games or
small group discussion.

23. Learning
and
Developing
2. Learning and Development
We are always looking into how we can develop members and improve skills,
knowledge and confidence. We encourage people to take leading roles and to try
things they have not done before, whether that is speaking in a meeting, helping plan
an event or joining a negotiation team to meet the Council, there are lots of ways to
get members involved and develop their leadership skills. We invest a lot of time in
our meetings to finding engaging ways to educate each other on what is often very
complex topics like regeneration.

24. Action!
3. Action
The last thing that is key to Community Organising is action! This is the way that we
as a community can show our power. We do this as PEACH, (although not so often
during this project). Our actions may target a decision maker or someone in power
who is letting the community down, they may be cheeky but they are always family
friendly, involving children and aimed at getting a reaction, such as a meeting, where
we can make further progress on the issue we care about.

25. Success
How have we been successful?
Well we are still ongoing, but the progress we have made so far we can put down to 7
things
1. A healthy cynicism towards the Council - acting in good faith while making
sure you do your own research and verify what you are told
2. The Community Organising approach we have taken. Of course I am biased,
but we have built significant power which has helped us get ‘in the room’
3. Paid staff - we have been able to invest in building relationships in the
community, a distant luxury for many grassroots campaign
4. Finding architects to come work directly for us, and not relying on a practice to
work on our project somewhere outside of our area.
5. Making sure things are FUN
6. PEACH wins - and wins breed wins. Showing that we are making a real
difference gets people on board
7. Meeting other community-led housing experts and groups, and learning as
much as we can from them

26. Challenges
Finally, what challenges have we faced?
Well doing something on this scale is a new model and there are not a lot of recent
successful examples in UK history to point to.
Working with a local authority is hard too, because they are risk averse, mistrustful of
communtiies and don’t know how to give up power, which are essential ingredients to
what we are proposing
We also faced the challenge of disillusioned residents, who have been waiting 15
years for this regeneration to come and some of who have been in various groups
before that have not succeeded
Time - there are no shortcuts to the way we work, it takes a long time to do things,
meanwhile ‘regeneration’ can be like a juggernaut moving on in the background
Resources - we are lucky to have the Big Local money which has made this possible,
but we have other projects to fund and the money we have actually spent on this
project is very small compared to the budgets of developers and Councils.