A High Court judge has ruled that a London borough’s decision to stop consulting on refurbishment options for a housing estate and focus on regeneration alone was unlawful.
The case of Bokrosova v London Borough of Lambeth [2015] EWHC 3386 (Admin) (24 November 2015) concerned the Cressingham Gardens estate in Lambeth, which was built in the 1960s. It has 306 homes, of which 213 are council homes.
In February 2014 five options were put forward for discussion. The first three related to refurbishment, while options four and five involved regeneration with either partial or full demolition. Lambeth’s Cabinet member for housing wrote to residents on 26 February saying that even using a best-case scenario the lowest cost for refurbishment was still three times what the council could afford and 9 March 2015 Lambeth’s Cabinet resolved that there was then no provision for the cost of a refurbishment-only programme in the council’s programme, and that the council had a duty to say what was feasible within budgetary constraints.
The claimant, Eva Bokrosova, subsequently successfully challenged the decision to remove the refurbishment options from the consultation.
