According to some nice people at an organisation called Vive Unique, who saw fit to write to me recently, the number of second homes in London is at a staggering quarter of a million, with 63,000 people owning TWO homes in the capital.
Vive Unique is a "specialist booking website for handpicked home rentals in premier destinations around the world" so, unlike those of us trying to forge living communities in real places, they think these shocking figures are rather a good thing, as they choose to believe it presents a business opportunity for them. They got their figures from the Evening Standard, which reported a few days ago that "nearly a quarter of a million people have a second home in London which they only live in part-time".
LibDem conference this week. Does anyone care? I normally look in at the party conferences if at all possible, but I am too busy in the day job this year. And last year it was all lobbyists and hangers on (like myself) at all the conferences. You see the same folk at all three, which is nice for me, but rather misses the point.
I was slightly diverted to read of the deal reached to "unlock the Ebbsfleet project" in the press on Wednesday morning.
Forgive the wry smile, but regular readers of this blog may recall that I was chief executive at Kent Thameside in 2004 and 2005, before I decided that I simply had to leave, frankly in a state of mental exhaustion, with a level of frustration that was seriously injurious to my health.
The press seems to think that the sainted Sir Adrian Montague is about to file his review for the Department for Communities and Local Government on the private rented sector (PRS). Sources "close to Sir Adrian" confirmed he would make five key recommendations to the government when it is published in mid-July.
I was immeasurably saddened by last night's (truly excellent) television programme on BBC2, "The Secret History of our Streets", which laid out the background to the so-called "slum clearance" of Deptford High Street. It was the age-old story. Row after row of perfectly serviceable terraced houses, in a legible street pattern giving space to a successful and prosperous community, had been CPO-ed and cleared, to make way for systems-built blocks of flats; destroying readily improvable houses in favour of these flats (notoriously incapable of being gentrified) and scattering families and communities to the four winds (in the main, the outer reaches of the new towns of Essex but - and this is key - with no regard to keeping folk together). Nicholas Taylor, a former Lewisham councillor of some 31 years standing (and clearly a very well meaning individual) attempted to make sense of it all for the viewer. He was defending the indefensible really. There was some charming footage of him as a young man bounding about the streets of Deptford, with reforming evangelistic zeal shining out of him. But his defence really fell right away when he recollected how a fellow councillor, who lived "in a big Victorian house up the hill, had been utterly bewildered that nobody wanted to live in these flats".
It is a serious period of transition for me as we gear up to go on site with the first UKR pilot. I am clearing the decks. This week I chaired my final meeting of the South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust, after nearly five years during which it has been my honour and privilege to serve that fine community.
And, though I say so myself, I think I leave SK in pretty good shape. And in pretty safe hands. With the amount of visible progress being made, South Kilburn is seriously becoming a "good news" story: multiple cranes can be seen swinging into action every morning and we have nothing short of a phoenix rising from the ashes of a crumbling 1960s council estate, with the decant programme now significantly underway, under the stewardship of the London Borough of Brent, as master developer and landowner.
