Britain’s great land grab

Amidst an affordable housing crisis of epic proportions, Britain will be playing host for the first time this year to the lavish private property trade show known as MIPIM.

Typically held in Cannes, the event attracts thousands of millionaires, private developers and estate agents, who cosy up to local authorities and negotiate secret deals, selling off public land for a song, while 1.8 million households across the country languish on council waiting lists.

MIPIM UK will commence in London tomorrow (October 15) and will continue throughout the week. London Mayor Boris Johnson, whose history of aggressively pushing for a city in which housing caters only to the rich and pushes out the rest, is to give the keynote address.

Usual suspects

The usual suspects will be sending delegations to the champagne-fuelled conference, including Wanda One, owned by China-based property tycoon Wang Jianlin, whose deal at Nine Elms, south London “has put the interests of property developers before those of local people,” according to a Wandsworth councillor.

The deal resulted in 9,000 proposed new homes, only a small percentage of which will be for social rent. What’s more, Boris Johnson allowed the developer to renege on its job scheme, letting the developer get away with halving the number of jobs it promised.

Other guests in attendance will be four of the “Big Five” property developers, including Barratt, Taylor Wimpey, Berkeley and Bellway, all leaders of Britain’s great land grab, who dominate 35 per cent of the sector. These property developers are known for their shameless attempts to circumvent planning rules which seek to make sure local housing targets, based on need, are met.

The Berkeley Group-owned  St. George plc has repeatedly convinced councils that having larger affordable housing quotas would make development schemes ‘unviable.’

Shocking guest list

While there’s nothing surprising about greedy land-grabbers hobnobbing over cocktails in a massive hall in London, some on MIPIM’s confirmed guest list would shock you.

Leaders from cities across the country where social housing needs are particularly dire will be in attendance, including the mayor of Liverpool and delegations from Plymouth, Sunderland, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Manchester, Northampton , Leeds, North and South Tyneside and Leicester, among others.

Public authorities are given a discount to attend the trade show (ÂŁ295 instead of ÂŁ495), which reflects the increasing pressure local governments are under as they face onslaught after onslaught of cuts, often forcing them to sell off public land to big developers whose only concerns are profits.

And developers themselves are all too glad to wine and dine those who may grant them access to thousands of acres of public land.

In a fitting example of how the MIPIM model works, last year, the Australian-based Lend Lease paid for Southwark leader Peter John to attend the trade show when it was held in Cannes, personally shelling out £1,250 for his trip. Lend Lease then controversially bought Southwark’s Heygate estate for only £50m, after it cost the council £44m to move residents out for the redevelopment, according to Private Eye.

Earlier this month, Unite wrote to Labour-controlled councils in London, urging them not to attend. While many of these councils ultimately did decline to attend the event, Brent and Southwark are still slated to participate.

Housing crisis mounting

As MIPIM and its 4,000 participants descend into London tomorrow, in the background an affordable housing crisis is mounting.

A Unite briefing points to the scale of this crisis: 1.8 million households languish on council waiting lists, while this year alone has seen a 26 per cent increase in homelessness and a 75 per cent increase in rough sleeping, while over 50,000 households are in temporary accommodation.

An £80,000 salary is needed to rent a so-called “affordable” 2-bed home in London, where over 20 council estates are now under threat of demolishment. More and more people are being forced out of the city’s capital – there was a 129 per cent rise in the number of households placed outside London by local authorities in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the previous year.

And the contempt with which MIPIM views this crisis is as predictable as it is shameless – a MIPIM session tomorrow originally entitled ‘Investing in affordable housing: is it worth it?’ was later changed to the euphemism-charged ‘The case for investing in affordable housing.’

Commenting on the event, Unite deputy regional secretary for London Vince Passfield said, “There is a strong and growing movement developing around the housing crisis in the UK, particularly in London, with an increasing focus on the role of private developers and landowners in the ‘regeneration’ of  local authority social housing estates.”

“An overwhelming number of local authority estate ‘regenerations’ have had extremely negative effects on council tenants and leaseholders, as well as wider communities,” he added.

Instead of the failed partnership MIPIM model, Unite is calling for a massive council house building programme and the regulation of landlords with the emphasis on rent controls which work in Germany and Sweden.

Unite activists and other campaigners are meeting at 09.00 tomorrow (October 15) outside the Kensington tube station, Olympia Way, W14 0NE to protest the trade show.

Stay tuned on UNITElive for the latest on MIPIM.