Jan 6: Major victory! We’ve pressured Lambeth Council to initiate an Improvement Notice on our landlord under the Housing Conditions Act (2004).
May 14: We wrote to Daniel Cusack (click for Linkedin profile) and Tracey Walker, co-directors of Property Partners to initiate a dialogue over affordable rent during the pandemic, rent debt and remedial works to our heating and hot water system. See our letter here.
April 29: Our landlord has used the COVID-19 lockdown to apply for planning permission to build penthouses on our rooftops. All renters will be evicted with no right to be rehoused. We will lose our homes.
Dorchester Court Tenants’ Union was founded as a response to an estate wide heating and hot water outage in November and December 2019 at Dorchester Court, Herne Hill, London. Its tenants still have intermittent heating and hot water. We are part of the London Renters Union.
Dorchester Court was built in 1934–36 and currently houses around three-hundred tenants. The Court comprises of 96 flats overlooking a central courtyard. It is connected to the road used for the 1934 Ideal Homes Exhibition, for which architects designed and constructed state-of-the-art houses. The flats at the Court were spaciously designed where two/three-beds incorporated a large living room and three/four-beds a living room and dining room with a sliding partition door. All had beautifully tiled bathrooms and parquet floors. Residents argue that the managed decline of the estate has led to the demise of many of these features. The realities of London rental prices mean that spacious feel of the flats has been lost, with many renters now resident in the living and dining rooms.
Our landlord is listed on The Sunday Times Rich List who sold No 1 Poultry (opposite the Bank of England) in 2015 for £110 million. Dorchester Court is operated by Property Partners, who are owned by Beaumaris Ventures Limited (British Virgin Islands), a financial intermediary of the IFM Group Limited (Jersey), who are both listed in the Panama Papers. Dorchester Court generates around £1.5 million in rent per year with additional income from leaseholder service charges.
The Court has a rich history of protest and resistance. Leaseholders and renters have battled the managed decline of the estate for the past 20 years. Over the years the Court has shifted from a community of leaseholders to a mixed community that is 80% private renters. Balconies and windows are propped up with timber whilst masonry has been caged to prevent fallout. Cockroaches and mice infest lower floors. There are leaks, damp and mould throughout. In 2015, a number of privately rented flats were evicted over protests surrounding rent hikes with little investment in the estate itself.
