For almost two decades, politicians have promised to rebuild the Alton Estate. The Conservatives drew up a masterplan, chose a developer and watched it walk away. Labour scrapped the plan in 2022. On Wednesday night, asked whether they will build Labour’s replacement, the Conservatives dodged.
Every administration has said it was committed. In 2020, the Conservative leader, Cllr Ravi Govindia, said the council “remains completely committed” to the estate’s regeneration. In 2022, under Labour, the council said it “remains committed to investing in and improving the estate”. In July, the council quoted the Conservatives’ Cllr Matthew Corner, now in charge of housing, saying it was “more committed than ever” to new homes there.
On Wednesday, Labour’s Cllr Matthew Tiller, a Roehampton councillor who said there had been talk of rebuilding the Alton “for a large part of my life”, asked Corner to commit to the plan residents voted for a year ago. Corner said the council was “committed to supporting regeneration of the Alton estate as set out in our manifesto” and “fully aware of the commitments made in the ballot”. He did not agree to follow the plan.
The same night, councillors voted through a budget that takes £9.5m out of it. The money comes out of a new building at Portswood Place, meant to be the home of the Family Hub and a nursery. It was costed at £19.5m, so nearly half has gone, and the council has not agreed to spend the £10.0m that is left. The Cabinet, the councillors who run the council, agreed the cut on 12 October.
Corner told the chamber the plan relies on £120m of council borrowing and still has a £47m hole after counting income from rents and shared-ownership homes. In the latest round of grants from the Mayor of London’s office, he said, the council got only 40% of what it asked for. He did not say how much that was. If the council asked for the full £77m its own figures assumed, 40% would be about £31m.
Six months earlier, at a hustings weeks before the election, Labour’s Cllr Jenny Yates, one of Roehampton’s three councillors, was asked about the plan. “There is no funding gap,” she said. “All the plans are in the council capital programme.”
At the same event, the Conservative candidate Nick Austin said his party would scrap the plan if it won, because it could not commit to a scheme with a funding gap. His was the plainest forecast anyone gave. The Conservatives won in May, and they are doing what Cllr Austin said they would.
Much of Wednesday’s debate was about whose fault that is. Corner said Labour’s decision to tear up the earlier plan in its first year in charge “caused years of unnecessary delay”. He and Labour’s Cllr Aydin Dikerdem, in charge of housing until May, then argued over which of them had started knocking down Block A, down to a video of Dikerdem standing on the building in a hard hat. Just one more photo-op while Alton residents looked on.
It is “all too easy to propose ambitious regenerations but fail to explain how they will be funded and delivered,” Corner said, accusing Labour of chasing “positive headlines”. Just six years earlier, his own party’s council approved a scheme for the Alton that its own figures said was £73.7m short.
Residents voted yes a year ago. Of those who voted, 82.4% backed the plan, on a turnout of 41.5%: 1,158 of the 3,395 residents who could vote, about a third. A yes vote was needed to unlock grant from the Mayor’s office, and the council called it the largest ballot of its kind. On Wednesday, Cllr Graeme Henderson, another Roehampton Labour councillor, presented a petition with almost a thousand signatures asking for the plan in full.
The council has not said what will replace the Portswood Place building. At the meeting, the councillor in charge of children’s services said the idea now is to move the Family Hub into Block A, and possibly the GP practice and Eastwood Nursery too, if the designers can make it fit. Tiller said that “just isn’t going to work” and “just isn’t practical”, because the new building is already meant to hold adult and children’s libraries, a GP surgery, youth space, council offices and a community hall. This unbuilt building has become the solution to every other rundown amenity on the Alton; all except what residents really want: a decent supermarket.
Labour’s Cllr Annamarie Critchard, a governor of the nursery schools that include Eastwood, said nobody had consulted the nursery. The council says it will talk to everyone affected before making any changes final.
What is on the ground
Block A is the site at the entrance to the estate. It once held a Co-op supermarket, offices, homes and a youth club, and has stood empty for years. The council’s December paper said it would go ahead whatever the ballot result, “because of prior commitments by the Council”.
It won planning permission in March for 55 council homes and a new building with the library, GP surgery and youth space. The permission came with a £12.6m hole in the funding, and a leaseholder’s legal claim over loss of light that the council’s own lawyer told the planning committee must be settled before the work can go ahead.
That claim is still open. The leaseholder has held his flat in Hersham Close, beside the site, for more than 25 years, and his lease gives him a right to light. In April he complained to the council, asking it to change the design or pay compensation. In September, a council director replied to his complaint. No decision had been taken, the director wrote, on whether Block A would “proceed in its current form, proceed in an amended form, or proceed at all”.
Under pressure to show any progress at all on building new homes after four years in charge, the then cabinet member for housing signed a £359,690 contract to knock the old building down, just days before his power to do so disappeared because of the upcoming election. The new housing head, Cllr Corner, said the demolition will finish next month, and that the designs for what replaces it are still being looked at. In December, the council’s timetable had building starting in 2027, if the money was found.
The new library, GP surgery and youth space would cost £16.65m. The council has not agreed to pay for them and has set no money aside this year. The 55 homes were priced at £25.2m in December, and £12.5m of that was meant to come from grant the council had not yet applied for.
On the rest of the estate, Corner said the play area at Downshire Field will open in two to three weeks, and the one at the Alton Activity Centre is on hold while a walkway is repaired. Focus Hall, the community hall, reopened in March. It has no lift, and no disabled access to its top floor. The plan also promised new shops and a supermarket at Danebury. Corner said the council is talking to developers and investors. He did not say about what, or when.
That is what four years of promises has produced on the estate: a demolition that finishes next month, two play areas not yet open, and a reopened hall that still has no lift.
Once the future of social housing
The London County Council built the Alton in the 1950s on Georgian parkland beside Richmond Park, as a model of how Britain should live. More than 2,000 visitors a year came by coach from across Europe to see it. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner called it “aesthetically the best housing estate to date”. Five of its slab blocks are listed Grade II*.
It also sits in a corner of the borough, at the end of the bus routes, with the nearest Tube station a 40-minute journey away. For almost two decades, politicians of both parties have promised to fix it, with plans bigger than the money behind them.
The Conservative-run council approved a masterplan in 2014 and in 2017 picked the housebuilder Redrow to carry it out. Redrow pulled out in August 2020, blaming costs and the planning system. That October the council’s planning committee approved the 1,108-home scheme anyway, with all but one member in favour, even though the council’s own figures put its cost at £550m with a £73.7m shortfall. Labour took control in 2022, and that September its housing committee voted to scrap the masterplan. The council’s newsletter called it a pause.
Labour’s own plan went to residents promising homes for about £100m: £84m the council had set aside, and £16m in grant from the Mayor’s office. Less than two months after the vote, a council paper put the whole scheme at £163m, up from about £123m, and assumed £77m of grant, nearly five times as much. None of it had been applied for.
The Family Hub building had gone from £11m to £19.5m, and the library, GP and youth building from £11.7m to about £17m. If the grant did not come, the paper said, the council would find another way to pay.
Each time a plan stopped adding up, the people in charge dropped it or cut it, and blamed the people before them. In 2022 and again in 2026, a new administration has scrapped or cut the last one’s plan, and the Alton has waited. Residents voted for a plan. Neither party has built it.
While the plans come and go
Denmead House is one of the listed blocks those visitors came to see. In May 2025, sewage leaked through its ceilings for more than two weeks, down a column of flats four storeys high. Families emptied buckets and threw away food. A contractor stopped the leak only after Putney.news told the council a story was coming. Days later, a crack appeared beneath the block.
The council’s own repair records showed years of patch jobs on the plumbing there. The council then refused to say what it did to fix the leak, and in July the information watchdog ruled it had broken the law twice over that refusal. Residents still do not know whether the cause was fixed.
At Kimpton House, leaseholders voted for new entry doors in 2021 on a promise that none would pay more than £1,500. The bills came to more than £6,000 each, and council officials would not explain the difference.
Residents have complained for years about mould, dark and damp stairwells, and poor cleaning of shared spaces. At one Roehampton housing panel meeting in 2025, they raised litter from split bin bags that the council’s waste contractor would not sweep up. Across the borough, the housing regulator found in 2025 that the council had 1,800 overdue fire safety actions in its homes.
The estate that coaches once crossed Europe to see is waiting on a demolition, two play areas and a review. Every administration has called itself committed, and each has blamed the last. A year after residents voted for a plan, the council’s firmest promise is that it will talk to them before it changes it.
What we know and what we don’t
What is confirmed
- Councillors voted through the £9.5m cut on Wednesday night.
- Block A is being knocked down, with 55 homes and a library, GP surgery and youth space planned, and the designs still being looked at.
- Corner said the council is committed to supporting regeneration of the estate “as set out in our manifesto”, and will talk to everyone affected before making any changes final.
What is not
- Whether the plan residents voted for will be built in full.
- Whether Block A will be built as approved. A council director told a resident in September that no decision had been taken.
- What the commitment “as set out in our manifesto” means.
- What will replace the Portswood Place building, beyond the idea of moving its services into Block A.
- Whether the new library, GP surgery and youth space have the money to be built, and when.
- When the review of the scheme will finish.
- What, if anything, will be built to replace the shops.
What residents can do
Roehampton’s three councillors are Graeme Henderson, Jenny Yates and Matthew Tiller, all Labour. Cllr Matthew Corner, who is in charge of housing, is at cllr.m.corner@wandsworth.gov.uk. Corner said residents will be able to comment on the Block A designs before they are finished, and the council says it will talk to people before changing the Family Hub and nursery, so families who use either can ask to be included. The council’s main number is 020 8871 6000.
