The cheapest one-bedroom flats in the development – which is across the street from parliament and has views of the Thames – are on sale for £1.75m.
Studio apartments (estate agents’ new term for bedsits) that are significantly smaller than Agyekum’s one-bedroom flat are advertised to rent for more than £3,600 a month.
Agyekum’s rent is £862.42 a month. That’s because his flat is one of 13 “affordable homes” that Westminster city council required the developer, Berkeley Group, to provide for working Londoners under a section 106 agreement as condition of granting the planning application. There are nearly 200 apartments in total at the scheme.
Entirely, wholly, absolutely, fucking insane.
Even if you’re going to ding the developers for the cheap housing this is still insane. Sell the one bed for £1.75 million and buy 5 one beds 5 miles away. 5 times the housing, see?
Absolute insanity.
The intoxicating climax of our civilisation lies in dreaming up increasingly expensive and elaborate ways to cram more people called “Oogabooga Scrabblename” into London.
Will this extremely fortunate young Englishman exercise his “right to buy” at the earliest opportunity or quietly re-let in order to clear in excess of £3k per month? I recall initial reports, rapidly memory-holed, claiming that many of the official Grenfell tenants had done something similar.
Incidentally under what criteria does a modestly paid business management officer (filing clerk?) at the House of Commons qualify as a key worker?
I think Ali G might know the answer.
UK madness. One of the most prime development sites in London. And it goes up a mere 7 stories. Because “We must retain the character of the area”. Lucky they didn’t think that when Westminster was becoming a city. It’d still be all wattle & daub.
What everyone really wants to know is what Mr Agyekum did to be selected for the tenancy. I don’t suppose being black is qualification enough.
‘being black is qualification enough.’
So I assumed, dearieme.