The Clays Lane Estate was a housing estate

Housing estate

A housing estate is a group of buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance...

 in Stratford

Stratford, London

Stratford is a place in the London Borough of Newham, England. It is located east northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically an agrarian settlement in the ancient parish of West Ham, which transformed into an industrial suburb...

, East London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and the UK’s largest (and Europe's second largest) purpose built housing cooperative

Housing cooperative

A housing cooperative is a legal entity—usually a corporation—that owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings. Each shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right to occupy one housing unit, sometimes subject to an occupancy agreement, which is similar to a lease. ...

. It was an experiment in building close-knit communities as a way of helping vulnerable single people. It became the subject of significant controversy when it was demolished to make way for the site of the London 2012 Olympic games.

The Co-operative

Clays Lane Housing Co-operative was a fully mutual

Mutual organization

A mutual, mutual organization, or mutual society is an organization based on the principle of mutuality. Unlike a true cooperative, members usually do not contribute to the capital of the company by direct investment, but derive their right to profits and votes through their customer relationship...

 housing co-operative, established to address the lack of housing for vulnerable single people in the east of London. It was initially funded by organisations including Newham London Borough Council

Newham London Borough Council

Newham London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Newham in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London. The council is unusual in that its executive function is controlled by a directly elected mayor of...

 and the University of East London

University of East London

The University of East London is a university located in the London Borough of Newham, East London, England, based at two campuses in Stratford and Docklands areas...

. There were up to 500 contractual tenants at the beginning, 450 after the flats were voted eligible for single person occupancy, who had to be single people aged between 18 and 59. Tenants

Leasehold estate

A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord....

 were required to purchase a £1 share

Share (finance)

A joint stock company divides its capital into units of equal denomination. Each unit is called a share. These units are offered for sale to raise capital. This is termed as issuing shares. A person who buys share/shares of the company is called a shareholder, and by acquiring share or shares in...

 in order to become a member of the co-operative, which entitled them to attend and vote in the annual general meeting

Annual general meeting

An annual general meeting is a meeting that official bodies, and associations involving the public , are often required by law to hold...

, to elect or stand for the management committee, participate in the co-operative’s affairs and receive its services.

The Clays Lane estate consisted of an enclave of 57 shared houses in red or yellow brick (containing four, six or ten bedrooms) and 40 self-contained flats and 10 self-contained bungalows, all purpose built in 1977. A community centre

Community centre

Community centres or community centers or jumping recreation centers are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole community or for a specialised group within...

 (complete with shop, café, function hall, and training room), which also housed the housing office, was added in 1982. All of the co-operative's properties were located on one site in the London Borough of Newham, on the top of a small hill next to the Eastway Cycle Circuit (which had previously been the site of an old landfill site, the West Ham Tip). This provided views across Hackney Marshes

Hackney Marshes

Hackney Marshes is an area of grassland on the western bank of the River Lea in the London Borough of Hackney. It was incorporated into the Lee Valley Park in 1967...

 and the Lee Valley

Lee Valley Park

Lee Valley Regional Park is a long linear park, much of it green spaces, running through the northeast of London, Essex and Hertfordshire from the River Thames to Ware in Hertfordshire, England through areas such as Hackney, Tottenham, Enfield, Stratford, Tower Hamlets, Walthamstow, Cheshunt,...

.

The estate was designed to engender a strong local community

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

, and was frequently used to help people make re-entry into social life - its motto was "A community - not just a housing estate

Housing estate

A housing estate is a group of buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance...

". The housing was arranged in ten courtyard

Courtyard

A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky. These areas in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court....

s, each of which held a monthly meeting to discuss issues that may have arisen, hear back from committee

Committee

A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...

 representatives (each courtyard elected a member to the management committee), find out the latest news and generally catch up with each other. The estate also had its own sports teams and program of activities and training.

Similar projects in the area

A similar but smaller co-operative also existed on the other side of the river at the Thamesmead Housing Co-operative

Thamesmead Housing Co-operative

The Thamesmead Housing Co-operative was a housing estate in Thamesmead, South East London in the London Borough of Greenwich. It was a purpose built housing cooperative and like others it was an experiment in building close-knit communities and as a way of helping single people and couples.It was...

 and in Deptford the Deptford Housing Co-operative is still running.

Transfer to the Peabody Trust

The Housing Corporation

Housing Corporation

The Housing Corporation was the non-departmental public body that funded new affordable housing and regulated housing associations in England. It was established by the Housing Act 1964...

 instigated a standard (statutory) inquiry into the affairs of the Clays Lane Co-operative in 2000, and subsequently received a report of poor management of the Co-operative's affairs from the Audit Commission

Audit Commission

The Audit Commission is a public corporation in the United Kingdom.The Commission’s primary objective is to improve economy, efficiency and effectiveness in local government, housing and the health service, directly through the audit and inspection process and also through value for money...

.The report was the result of an Audit Commission Inspection and which resulted in the Co-op receiving a judgement of zero stars and poor prospects for improvement. Under the Audit Commission inspection regime, this was the minimum,base, and worst possible, result for any housing provider. One of the report's most worrying findings was that the Co-op had no written Allocations Policy, which meant that it was not clear how people secured a place there or who was actually living there.
It proposed that the Co-operative’s housing stock be transferred to the Peabody Trust

Peabody Trust

Peabody Trust , founded in 1862, is one of London's oldest and largest housing associations with over 19,000 properties. It also a charity and urban regeneration agency...

, one of the UK’s largest housing associations, because of its better financial security, and the Government approved the transfer.

The Clays Lane Co-operative appealed against the order, because as the Peabody Trust was not a co-operative they would lose their mutual status if the transfer were to go ahead. They proposed an alternative, whereby the homes be transferred to Tenants First, a mutual housing co-operative based in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. The Housing Corporation

Housing Corporation

The Housing Corporation was the non-departmental public body that funded new affordable housing and regulated housing associations in England. It was established by the Housing Act 1964...

 rejected this alternative and again directed transfer to the Peabody Trust.

The cooperative called for a judicial review

Judicial review

Judicial review is the doctrine under which legislative and executive actions are subject to review by the judiciary. Specific courts with judicial review power must annul the acts of the state when it finds them incompatible with a higher authority...

 of the decision, but this was refused, with the court ruling in June 2003 that the housing should be sold to the Peabody Trust. In August 2005 the estate was statutorily transferred to the Peabody Trust, and was subsequently managed by Waltham Forest Community Based Housing Association.

Redevelopment and compulsory purchase

The entire estate was the subject of a compulsory purchase order

Compulsory purchase order

A compulsory purchase order is a legal function in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland that allows certain bodies which need to obtain land or property to do so without the consent of the owner. It may be enforced if a proposed development is considered one for public betterment - for...

 by the London Development Agency

London Development Agency

The London Development Agency is the Regional Development Agency for Greater London, England. It is a functional body of the Greater London Authority...

 to make way for the athlete's village in the 2012 London Olympics site: indeed almost all the inhabitants cleared from the Olympic site were students at the adjacent UEL

University of East London

The University of East London is a university located in the London Borough of Newham, East London, England, based at two campuses in Stratford and Docklands areas...

 halls of residence or Clays Lane residents.

Residents were promised equivalent, if not better, housing. However it was reported that early movers found this was not the case, and some feared that dispersal to sites across East London would mean the end of the unusually close community links in the estate.

Many residents were extremely vocal in their opposition of the compulsory purchase order, and several protests were held in nearby Stratford. A group of tenants gained leave to hold a public inquiry

Public inquiry

A Tribunal of Inquiry is an official review of events or actions ordered by a government body in Common Law countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland or Canada. Such a public inquiry differs from a Royal Commission in that a public inquiry accepts evidence and conducts its hearings in a more...

 into the decision to compulsorily purchase the estate, which was held in August 2006. This was, however, dismissed in a High Court ruling on on 30 May 2007. All 430 residents of the Clay’s Lane Housing Cooperative were issued with orders to leave

Eviction

How you doing???? Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, eviction may also be known as unlawful detainer, summary possession, summary dispossess, forcible detainer, ejectment, and repossession, among other terms...

by July 2007. The buildings were demolished starting in September 2007.