When you’ve just put in a 56-hour week you could do with putting your feet up. But Donna C Henry gets little time for that. On top of her daytime work she spends her extra hours as chair of the Clapham Park Project and a board member of Clapham Park Homes.

Far from being exhausted, though, she bubbles with enthusiasm, because the area is about to take its next leap forward in the transformation from a forgotten corner of south London to a place where people will move mountains to get in.

In April Clapham Park Homes took over almost 2,000 homes from Lambeth Council and is now undertaking the massive task of refurbishing half, demolishing the rest and facilitating the development of 1,500 new homes. Some £20 million towards the cost will come from the Housing Corporation, which must also register and regulate the new housing association landlord.

The overall goal is a thriving mixed community in which some people will rent, some lease, some live in supported housing, some buy outright and some part-buy under shared ownership. For that to work, leaders like Donna know that current residents must feel they are creating the new community.

That is why she has spent so much time in meetings and events over the last five years. It began with Clapham Park Project, a pioneering New Deal for Communities scheme that is pumping £56 million into community projects on health, law, finance, youth activities and more.

“I was not a community activist at that time,” recalls Donna of the beginnings in 2000. “By chance a resident got me to go to a meeting. She saw potential – you don’t see it in yourself – and eventually I was elected to the board.”

She had, though, been a resident of Clapham Park for some 30 years. Like others living there, she knew what was wrong and had ideas for how the place could be made better. One basic thing was to stop calling Clapham Park an estate – bad connotations – and start calling it an area. With more than 7,000 residents it is hardly the traditional idea of an estate anyway.

The ten-year NDC project is allowing many new ideas to blossom. The education and youth group makes learning fun, by working with parents, pupils and teachers to empower young people. On community safety, which is where Donna started out by attending small meetings, a group is also working to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour.

The health and social care group is helping to tackle some of the more glaring inequalities within London. Life expectancy for someone living in Clapham Park is 76 years – but five Tube stops away in Kensington and Chelsea it is 81. The group is trying to understand why, and through partnership working trying to do something about it via projects providing advice, support, exercise, health checks and access to health services for residents.

Finally, a neighbourhood management group is working towards the transformation of Clapham Park through the realisation of a masterplan for the area. Drawn up by residents, this is the lynchpin of Clapham Park’s next phase. The group’s community development work will help build confident, capable and sustainable networks in the area and identify areas of support for residents to develop their own activities, services and assets.

Donna believes having the project firmly embedded before the start of the building work is a crucial advantage. “The masterplan is very resident-led. The architects listened closely to changes we wanted,” she says. One hot item on the agenda was the mature trees that form a well-known landmark. Residents wanted to keep them, so the designers worked round them as far as possible and most will be preserved. An urban design code ensures high standards and many ‘green’ features.

It has been a steep learning curve for residents getting involved, but that too is seen as positive. For Donna, switching from her work in optics to sorting out the housing transfer is an enjoyable challenge. “It’s a refreshing change,” she says.

Too often in the past, regeneration has not achieved long-term success because the process was too impersonal, or because residents lost heart. Clapham Park Homes is part of Metropolitan Housing Trust, which has a long track record in regeneration and housing management. By drawing on that expertise, the new association aims to avoid pitfalls.

It has divided the work into separate phases, with refurbishment in the early stages. That means residents will be able to see the fruits of the work quickly, and will not have to spend years living in the midst of a building site.

Where residents must be temporarily moved out, they will be able to stay within Clapham Park, and will have the option of eventually moving to their permanent new or refurbished home, or staying put. There should be a strong incentive to return – each refurbished home is to have an average of £62,000 spent on bringing it well above standards. Residents know which phase of the work their home will be in and when it is due to happen.

Keeping people informed is another vital aspect of the project, and one novel idea is set for lift-off in June. A local radio station, City Radio Clapham Park, with residents already being trained up to run it, will keep everyone in the loop as the construction work develops.

Donna has a clear vision of what Clapham Park is going to become. “It will be so different from what my eyes are used to,” she says. “It will attract people wanting to have businesses, rent or buy. People will want to live here. It will be over and above excellent!”

Find out more
www.claphampark.org.uk

Community-based housing
Five New Deal for Communities areas have already set up community-based housing associations, or are considering it.

These community-based bodies, usually supported by a parent housing association, can help develop a housing and maintenance strategy for the mixed communities in the area by:
• building an asset base for the local community, to ensure the long-term sustainability of the work the NDC has begun;
• providing an effective vehicle to deliver decent homes and secure the long-term regeneration of the area;
• building on the NDC work with local residents to tackle anti-social behaviour;
• enabling the association to develop a co-ordinated approach to housing, education and respect; and
• demonstrating the council and other partners’ commitment to devolve decision making through innovative governance structures such as stock transfer.