Pat Semaine

Pat Semaine spends much of her free time pottering in her garden – now that she has one. She swapped her flat on the 15th floor of a tower block for a house with a garden when Southern Housing Group redeveloped the area she’d lived in for many years.

“I’m near retiring now and I wish I’d had a garden 20 years ago,” she says.

All the residents on the Nightingale Estate in Hackney, east London, were encouraged to get involved in drawing up plans to transform the area. Built using tunnel-form concrete, their new homes are more spacious, better insulated and cheaper to run.

The Housing Corporation has provided substantial funding for the redevelopment of the estate and backed the involvement of specialist black and minority ethnic housing associations, with their management expertise for minority communities.

The estate was one of the least popular in the borough until Southern Housing Group took it over.

“But now the place is buzzing,” says Pat. “You can go out at any time of the night round here".