Meet the underdogs fighting to stay on the Isle of Dogs, East London’s island of opportunity

How a close-knit community of Islanders have come together and campaigned to ensure they aren’t pushed out of Canary Wharf’s housing revolution, but is it enough?

Redevelopment schemes promise that Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs will be the island paradise of East London real estate. However, the regeneration process can be risky for those already living on the island, especially as it prioritises a different market to the existing community of social renters.  

The uneasy question behind the billboards for shiny new ‘mixed-use’ communities is whether regeneration will meet the desperate need for affordable housing.

You can break this down into two parts: firstly, will developers meet the affordable targets they promise in their initial proposals? As we pointed out in the previous article of this series, the pressure on councils and the Mayor’s office to meet affordable housebuilding targets raises the likelihood of developers building housing that is not truly ‘affordable’ by the majority of the population’s standards. 

The second part of the question concerns existing affordable homes – where regeneration requires the demolition of existing housing, will current residents be able to move back into the refurbished building?

The tight-knit residential community living on the island’s former council estates is determined that they will, and know that it is up to them to protect their place on the island. Particularly when that place is next door to buildings such as Maine Tower, which in 2015, sold 200 flats worth a total of £140 million within hours of going on the market. Only half the buyers were based in the UK. 

Housing association hazards

Housing associations are a hybrid of the public and private sectors. When they take over housing stock, they take over the council’s role as the area’s social landlord. Yet their status as private companies allows them to be less transparent about their activities than if they were an arm of the government like Tower Hamlets Council. 

The Riverside Group is a national housing association which manages the island’s four largest estates. Riverside’s website claims as one of their values: ‘We put our customers first every time.’ But the key word there is ‘customers’. Housing associations can claim to prioritise people as much as they like but, ultimately, are accountable for good service only in the way an airline, a hotel or any other private company is – there are legal ramifications for their mistakes. However, there is not the same accountability to the public with tax-payer-funded bodies such as local councils. 

As an example, look at the prevalence of mergers; since the Council sold the island’s housing stock in December 2005, the stock has been managed by three different private organisations. Residents voted to transfer their council homes to a housing association after they were promised that Island Homes, the new board managing the estates, would contain a majority of elected residents.

In 2008, Island Homes’ parent company, One Housing Group (OHG), which is itself a merger of Toynbee Housing Association and Community Housing, removed all resident representatives from the board. In 2012, Island Homes merged with OHG, angering many residents, who saw the move as an attempt to reduce their involvement in managing their homes. 

OHG merged with Riverside in 2021, making it one of the UK’s largest housing associations. Mergers could be seen as an attempt to consolidate the disconnected social housing landscape that has emerged in the wake of privatisation.

These layers of mergers make it much harder to source information about the history of the estates and their management; to hold them to account. Most of the information about the four estates on the island available online still cites OHG as their provider. Riverside is effectively detached from past issues on the island because its name does not appear in searches connected to these issues. 

An unlikely local presence

Mike Tyrell is an Independent Advisor for the four Isle of Dogs housing estates under the management of Riverside. He explained how communication between residents and management companies has broken down since he began working in the sector 39 years ago:

‘There’s a lack of accountability locally. Riverside is run from its base in Liverpool, and even the council has done away with local offices – everything is run from the Town Hall,’ Tyrell told Poplar LDN. Before the council sold their housing stock in the early 2000s, its housing officers had outposts around the island near the local estates. ‘Yes, you can do things reliably online, but you don’t have people out in communities, nipping things in the bud. We’ve got to get local services working again.’

Tyrell, who lives just north of the island in Limehouse, gained the trust of the islanders whilst working for Tower Hamlets Council as local housing officer for the Isle of Dogs. It helps that many island residents were his classmates; between 1971 and 1977. The Isle of Dogs had no secondary school and teenagers had to be bussed off the island to St Paul’s Way in Bow. 

Tyrell’s position is rather unique. He works for the Four Estates Forum (4EF), an organisation founded by residents of the four Riverside estates in an attempt to have a say in how their homes were managed. Both the residents and Riverside (then still called One Housing) asked Tyrell to act as the local liaison for housing issues.

He was hesitant, having just retired from the council, but informally advised the housing association on how to deal with residents’ concerns. Under growing pressure from the 4EF, Riverside offered to pay him to be the Independent Advisor. 

‘Riverside essentially pays me to advise the residents against what they want to do on the island,’ Tyrell said wryly. 

Grassroots grit 

Isle of Dogs residents are used to standing up for themselves. History tells them that if they don’t, no one else will. In the 1970s islanders even declared independence from the government to highlight their neglected local services.

The island’s redevelopment since the Thatcher era has been designed to attract private investment – it has not been about improving public sector services. Long-time residents are used to the idea of fighting to avoid being driven off an island with the potential to become a playground for the rich. Tyrell mused, ‘This is the closest-knit community in Tower Hamlets. I think it’s because less working-class people have moved away from here than in other parts of Tower Hamlets, and their children have also tried to stay in the area. They’ve got a history of coming together.’

‘This is the closest-knit community in Tower Hamlets. I think it’s because less working-class people have moved away from here than in other parts of Tower Hamlets, and their children have also tried to stay in the area. They’ve got a history of coming together.’

mike tyrell

In 2015, the community’s tenacity saved it from a potentially lethal development bullet, known as “Project Stone”.

‘Ten years ago, One Housing announced, without any consultation, that they were going to redevelop all the estates on the Isle of Dogs,’ Tyrell told Poplar London. ‘Project Stone was about demolishing the whole lot and rebuilding.’ Besides displacing residents, the approach would have taken a huge toll environmentally.

The project outraged not only residents but also then-Councillor Dave Chesterton, who said One Housing was ‘unfit to run these island estates.’ There were calls for the association to be suspended and investigated. Reading their original proposal for Project Stone, you can see why. 

It is explicit about its target market of investors, high-earners in the financial sector and ‘wider geographical buyers’ as opposed to the local social renters who lived in the buildings they planned to demolish. They estimated the average rental yield for a flat in the new development at £3,500 per month – and that was in 2015. 

Anxious residents set up the Four Estates Forum in response and their opposition helped prevent the project from going ahead. What also helped was that the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Planning Forum, set up in 2011 by former Ward Councillor Andrew Wood, was officially recognised in 2017.

Forum members set out detailed guidelines on the required resident consultation process before changes were made on the estate and specified these should be written into Section 106 or Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) contracts signed between councils and developers. In 2019, the Greater London Authority introduced new regulations requiring that estate residents vote on any regeneration scheme involving demolishing existing homes. 

Back yard politics

At this point, you might think you detect the scent of NIMBYism – that is to say, the ‘Not In My Back Yard’ sentiment held by those who oppose development. The Neighbourhood Forum would rather describe itself as BIMBY – ‘Beauty In My Back Yard’. 

Aesthetics aside, the Forum members are not opposed to building affordable homes. They’re questioning developments that have the potential to displace residents and end up too expensive for them to occupy once completed. 

They oppose the kind of redevelopment that would replace the current social renting community – ordinary people living there and earning modest wages – with those who can afford to pay more to be there. 

With the recent election of a new Labour government, local councils and the Mayor’s office are under pressure to speed up the planning process and build as many homes as possible, as quickly as possible. But if proposals aren’t scrutinised for affordability, you risk fast-tracking schemes that take away the affordable homes they have now. You engineer an island of wealth, waving away the existing community with the unambiguous message: you’re too poor to live here now that it’s got better.

‘What the Four Estates Forum is about,’ Tyrell explained, ‘is trying to make sure that residents make the decisions about what happens to their homes, not One Housing.’

Communication drought

The difference between Project Stone and recently approved plans to regenerate the estates is the level of input from residents. Each estate under Riverside’s management has a dedicated Resident Steering Group that meets regularly to discuss redevelopment plans. 

The Four Estates Forum (or 4EF) publishes regular newsletters online and prints hard copies posted across the island. These detail meeting outcomes and update residents on the latest planning decisions. 

It sounds simple, but residents can’t take it for granted that they will be told what is happening to their homes. Redevelopment tends to be a long, convoluted process, and residents can’t rely on the web of developers, contractors and housing associations involved for timely – or transparent – updates. 

‘In the past, there’s been a real lack of communication,’ explained Tyrell. ‘To tackle that communication drought, we introduced the newsletters. Everyone knows each other on the island, so if someone says something inaccurate, that tends to spread.’

Redevelopment enables housing associations to attract new tenants with higher incomes, who are willing and able to pay for high-quality homes. This means that proposals don’t always give existing residents the full picture.

‘People might think they’re getting a bigger house and a garden, and they’ll say yes straight away. People don’t always understand what they’re agreeing to,’ Tyrell said.

The Barkantine scheme promises 429 homes – instead of the initial 300 –  to replace the 72 which will be demolished. The Riverside Group told Poplar London: 

Current residents of the estate will have the choice to move back into a bigger flat once it’s complete. One thing that can be hard for people to visualise, Tyrell explained, is how dense the new developments will be. 

The reason new schemes promise this exponential increase in the number of units is not as straightforward as creating more affordable homes. Affordable units will make up 35 per cent of the homes that are built, as per the GLA’s minimum requirements. But the rest will be available for purchase, rental or shared ownership at Canary Wharf market rates. This density of build is how Riverside and the developers Mount Anvil will cover the cost of the entire regeneration project. 

‘We currently do not have a final design nor any exact figures,’ Riverside told us when asked about the total number of social homes to be built. ‘We anticipate these will be available shortly before the planning application expected to submit in December.’

Thanks to the efforts of the 4EF, Riverside revised the development plans, which no longer involve wholesale demolition. More than 80 per cent of residents have voted for regeneration on three out of four estates. Construction will move in phases, starting with the St Johns and Barkantine Estates. Construction on the Kingsbridge Estate is expected to finish in 2034 at the earliest. Tyrell hopes that seeing how the other schemes pan out will be helpful when the residents of Samuda Estate cast their votes. 

Promises at a price

Riverside has agreed that anyone currently paying social rent on the estates will have a legal ‘right to return’ once the estates are completed. Crucially, they will be able to do so and continue paying social rent. 

‘We have made a commitment to returning residents that their terms and conditions and rental rates will remain the same,’ Riverside told Poplar London. ‘Their rent will only change if they choose to downsize or upsize to meet their housing need.’

Without that sort of deal, you end up in a situation where social renters move out of their homes during construction, and by the time it is completed – estimated to be 2031, in the case of the Barkantine Estate – they could be asked to pay ‘affordable’ rent, which would be about 80 per cent of whatever the average rent of a Canary Wharf flat is in 2031. The current average for a one-bedroom flat is around £2500 per month. 

One thing Tyrell has stressed to residents is that, even if the rent stays the same, service charges will be higher, because the infrastructure installed in new builds – from lifts to heating systems – invariably costs more to maintain.

Often, the hassle of another move is enough to deter residents from moving back to the estates they once called home. That’s why temporary relocation often ends up as code for social cleansing. Tyrell estimates that about half of the residents who’ve moved out of the Barkantine Estate want to return, so far. ‘All residents have been rehoused within the borough,’ Riverside said, and the majority still live on the Isle of Dogs.’

It will likely be another decade before we know whether the underdogs have been able to stay on the island as property prices rise into the millions around them, with service charges to match. Whatever happens, they will certainly be able to say they fought for their right to remain. 

In our next article, we’ll ship out of the docklands to explore regeneration schemes in other parts of the world, and how they’ve handled the clash between capitalism and community.

The next article in our series will zoom into regeneration, and how it differs – or is supposed to differ – from gentrification. We’ll look further afield at how communities around the world have dealt with the pressures of rapid change.

Read the first in the series Isle of Dogs: The history of a lone wolf forever searching for its pack

Read the second in the series: Homes versus high-rises: Will Isle of Dogs’ social housing survive the fallout of Canary Wharf’s luxury expansion?