Finally and probably most importantly, the high turnover of the Centre’s ownership has meant that Camden has had only a superficial relationship with its succession of landlords.The arrangement also places a potential cash-flow strain on Camden’s Housing Revenue Account as Camden has to manage variable rental income from its tenants against a fixed monthly lease payment to the Brunswick’s owners.An outsourced deal could be worse value for money to Camden if Camden had the appropriate skills and resources to fundraise and build its own housing.Friction has frequently arisen between the residents and the Brunswick owners over the management, maintenance and development of the retail and public realm elements that said though, the Brunswick has a vocal tenant’s organisation that has proved it can stand its ground on occasion. The terms of the leasehold can complicate maintenance and repair arrangements.But was the Brunswick deal a good decision for Camden, its tenants, and the neighbourhood? Cons Lovers of modernist architecture are indebted to Camden for facilitating this great piece of building now protected by a Grade II listing. (Thank you to Municipal Dreams’ John Boughton for pointing this out.) Appraising the Brunswick Model The Brunswick Model of council housing - a council’s long lease on a block of housing which is then sublet to council tenants, arranged in Camden’s case to rescue a stalled development and rehouse the tenants it displaced - is quite rare in the UK The only other Brunswick Model I know of occurs at Nottingham’s Victoria Shopping Centre. In the 60s, private developers had bought the land from the Foundling Hospital Estate, but their high-rise residential tower designs ran into trouble following planning height restrictions and the new Labour government’s laws protecting the rights of existing tenants on the site to be displaced by the scheme.Īt this point Camden stepped in to take on a 99-year leasehold – set at below-market rates – on the project’s residential element, thereby rehousing all the people who had been moved from the site to build the Brunswick Centre. How did the arrangement at the Brunswick Centre come about? The upkeep of the council flat interiors, corridors and stairs is Camden’s responsibility and consequently they were not refurbished during the 2006 makeover. The persistence of these small businesses supports the local multiplier effect – the economic upshot of spending in the local economy.Īlthough privately owned, the Brunswick’s residential accommodation is leased by Camden Council, who manages it and rents it out as affordable housing. They seem to coexist well enough with the new higher end retail chains attracted to the Brunswick following the redevelopment. The long-established small independent shops and restaurants facing the Brunswick across Marchmont Street still appear to do brisk business. Pavements have ample space for cycle parking, and the surrounding street carriageways are narrow. Pedestrians have priority in the public realm which is generous and diverse as it weaves from Marchmont Street through the Centre’s privately-owned central retail spine, past a cinema and down a grand staircase to the local park. This decline was reversed in 2006 following a major redevelopment of the ground floor, public realm and building envelope. However, post-completion it fell fairly swiftly into a decline that continued for decades. A brief backgroundīuilt in the early 70s, The Brunswick Centre was a bold urban experiment. I call this arrangement the Brunswick Model. I’m starting this blog with a slightly longer post on one of my favourite places in London: the Brunswick Centre, a Brutalist masterpiece strikingly inserted into London’s Georgian Bloomsbury in the 1970s.Īt the Brunswick Centre, the London Borough of Camden has entered into a highly unusual social rented housing arrangement: a long term agreement with the Centre’s owners to lease all of the flats at a below-market rate, which Camden then rents out individually to its council housing tenants.
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