Wornington Green demolition and development gets the go ahead

In March, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea approved Kensington Housing Trust (KHT) plans to demolish and rebuild the Wornington Green estate. The redevelopment of the 30-year-old estate is due to start in autumn 2010 and will last for 12 years, split into a series of phases. The first phase will take 18 to 20 months and involves numbers 1 to 28 Munro Mews and 87 to 101 Wornington Road.

Estate owners Kensington Housing Trust has guaranteed that the current 538 social housing units will be replaced by the same number, although there will be a decrease in bedrooms overall. Three hundred private homes will be added to the estate plus 30 shared ownership homes. Sale proceeds will be used to fund the development.

KHT has also promised that Athlone Park will be replaced by one at least equal in size. Wornington Road and Portobello Road will be re-joined to Ladbroke Grove and the plans include 20 new shops on Portobello Road and the reinstatement of a traditional street pattern.

Writing in the Wornington Green Newsletter, Manpreet Dillon, Kensington Housing Trust Managing Director, said, “We want to reassure you that we will continue to listen and take your views into account – before, throughout and even after the regeneration – in addition to rebuilding some of the trust that may have been damaged over the last few months as a result of misinformation about our plans.”

There has been strong opposition to the plans from some residents and neighbours of the estate. A flavour of that can be found on the internet by putting 'Wornington Green Estate' into Google and clicking on some of the links that come up.

Golborne Forum Chair, Susie Parsons, said, “It is disappointing that the Council and Kensington Housing Trust have not seized the opportunity to provide more much-needed social housing rather than building flats for sale. Nor have they properly listened to the very real concerns of local residents about the quality of the proposed design for Wornington Green and the need to increase community facilities if the population density on the estate is to double.

“It is crucial that people living on the estate have a say in the design – we have just heard, for example, that they have been told that they can’t have gas in their new homes, only electricity, and in our view this is something that residents should be consulted about.

“Wornington Green is important to the whole area and we want a focus on how the developers can contribute to the wider good of Golborne to justify years of upheaval and inconvenience from the building work.

“In particular, we will continue to campaign for the replacements for the Venture Community Centre and Athlone Gardens to be better than what is there now. The Wornington Green development needs to boost Golborne Village as a great place to live and work.

“The Golborne Forum Board will continue to work with local residents and Kensington Housing Trust and the Council to press for improvements to the plans.”