At the Court of Common Council on 26 June 2025 Alderwoman Martha Grekos put forward the following motion:
That this Honourable Court resolves that the City Corporation explores liquidating
investments held within City’s Estate and using the proceeds to fund the acceleration
of the renovation of its housing estates, as their continuing dilapidation is an ongoing
scandal.This Court accordingly further resolves that its relevant committees be instructed
now to bring forward proposals as to how this can be achieved as soon as possible.
On 22 July 2025 the Chairs of GLERA and MSERA (Middlesex Street Estate Residents Association) wrote to members supporting the motion:
Dear Members of the Court of Common Council
We, the Chairs of Golden Lane Estate Residents Association, and Middlesex Street Estate Residents Association, are writing to you ahead of your next meeting about the motion put at your last meeting.
We are grateful to Alder Martha Grekos, the seven Iceni Councillors, Councillor Jason Pritchard and Councillor Philip Woodhouse for having put the motion to use City’s Estate to fund the renovation of the City Corporation’s housing estates, since their continuing dilapidation is – as the motion accurately puts it – “an ongoing scandal”.
No-one disputes the extent of the dilapidation, the Corporation’s culpability for it through decades of under-funding the estates’ maintenance or the insufficiency of funds in the Corporation’s local authority Housing Revenue Account to carry out all the long overdue works. It was entirely logical for the motion to look to the Corporation’s “City’s Estate” (formerly “City’s Cash”) endowment fund to meet the big shortfall. The hostility shown to this solution was extremely disappointing.
If there really are ways of funding this shortfall other than by using City’s Estate, why have these other ways not been found, or even explored, before now? Questions have been raised in Court since 2017 about the state of Golden Lane Estate and promises made but very little has happened. We no longer trust Corporation promises.We deplore the use of an amendment at the last minute to hijack the motion and turn it into a more general one to look at “all options”. This manoeuvre was plainly intended to put the option of using City’s Estate in the bin.
We are concerned that in recent committee meetings there has been considerable emphasis on how much has been, and is being, done on housing renovation, assuring members that the funding is well in hand. We who live on the estates know better. It is a story that residents have been hearing over the past 10 years as their homes have continued to decay. Whilst the new officers have made headway what has been, and is being, done is under-resourced, too little, too late.
We have no confidence that the funding will be found from other sources. The shortfall is more than 35% of the total £205m, and contracts cannot be signed until the funding is in place. This funding shortfall affects all our estates, not just Golden Lane, where equally urgent work is needed to improve residents’ homes.
We also understand that the cost estimates for our ‘investment programme’ do not include the ongoing repairs and cyclical maintenance required and that the HRA will only fund health and safety work – in other words there will be no cyclical work to stem the overall decay, the renovation work needed will escalate and in the intervening years many blocks on the estate will fall more and more into disrepair. 10 years is a long time to wait when you have already waited longer than that and the paintwork is already peeling, the windows rotting and the ironwork rusting.
We were also concerned to hear that at the last meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee a proposal was made to look at delisting Golden Lane Estate, (grade II and grade II * listed) to facilitate the renovation. If an institution like the Corporation can even consider degrading its heritage in this way, an issue arises about its competence to exist.
If funding is not clearly identified in six months time, we will urge all the members representing Cripplegate and Portsoken wards to bring the original motion back to the Court, as allowed under your standing orders.
In the meantime, please stop believing that housing renovation is under control, listen to residents, visit the estates, not just Golden Lane, and see that some of City’s Estate is needed to fill the funding gap and be spent for this purpose.
We will continue to lobby on this matter until it is resolved and all our homes are warm and dry.
Yours sincerely,
Sue Pearson
Chair, GLERA Golden Lane Estate Residents AssociationRoger Way
Chair, MSERA Middlesex Street Estate Residents Association
background
This motion was first put to the Court of Common Council on 13 January 2022 by then Councillor Sue Pearson:
That this Honourable Court resolves that the City Corporation explores the use of
City’s Cash to fund the acceleration of the renovation of the housing estates which it
owns both within and outside the boundaries of the City, so that it completes this
renovation as expeditiously as it carries out non-residential projects like the Fleet
Street “Justice Quarter”.This Court accordingly further resolves that its relevant committees now be instructed
to bring forward proposals establishing how this can be achieved, as soon as
possible.
It was not sufficiently supported.
Councillor Pearson started her campaign as early as July 2021 when she wrote to the Court of Common Council about the lack of funding and human resource for the renovations required on Golden Lane Estate and called on the the Corporation to use City’s Cash to supplement the HRA.
Read more here: City of London Corporation fails its residents
