Is ‘gentrification’ in London emptying its schools? Maybe not

It may be tempting to blame "luxury flats" for falls in demand for primary school places in the capital, but what if the story isn't that simple?

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For most of this century at least, a conspicuous strand of opinion has declared that everything precious about London is being destroyed by big money, especially from abroad. These narratives construct causal connections between property development, especially of housing, and neighbourhood changes that bearers of those narratives dislike, such as the replacement of council-built housing, rises in rent levels and house prices, or the closure of entertainment venues.

They are deployed to explain demographic shifts judged undesirable. They assert, for example, that the building of “luxury flats” leads to local people on lower incomes being “pushed out” of areas, forced to go and live somewhere else they like less. And now this “gentrification” is held to explain recent falls in demand for places at London primary schools. It is declared that the phenomenon has “hollowed out” areas where families used to live but can no longer afford to.

Is the story that straightforward? Or are the reasons for the merging and closing of schools for younger children in several inner boroughs more varied and elusive than that?

The assertion that “gentrification” is directly responsible for the capital’s recent spate of primary school closures has, not for the first time, been made in the Guardian, which has long been a vehicle for “anti-gentrification” polemics, with London usually its focus.

In this case, particular attention is directed at the Elephant and Castle area of Southwark, scene of some of the biggest demolitions of post-war, municipal housing over the past 20 years, and of political protests against them. Already accused of causing “social cleansing”, one of those projects is now found guilty of bringing about the end of a local primary school.

The contention is very similar to one recently made about the ongoing regeneration of the Woodberry Down estate in Hackney, and the coming loss of a primary school near it. However, Census figures showing a rise in the number of under-10s living in the Woodberry Down ward during the regeneration period, an increase in the number of family-sized dwellings in the parts of the estate footprint nearest the school in question, and the fact that a different primary school located on the estate footprint itself sustains a three-form entry, suggest the case for blaming the regeneration might not be all that strong.

Does that mean there is no problem? I wouldn’t go that far. What is the problem, though, exactly? And how can it best be solved?

If dwindling pupil numbers in inner London cannot necessarily or convincingly be blamed on other things that people who campaign against school closures tend to dislike – such as estate regenerations – we might look at London-wide, nation-wide and, indeed, worldwide declines in birthrates, which are happening for a range of reasons, not least more women choosing to have fewer children.

That does not explain, however, why primary schools in inner London boroughs are closing while the same isn’t happening – not yet, anyway – in outer London. The difference is to do with housing costs and availability, yet a blanket characterisation of this as “a larger story of the extreme gentrification” of London, brought about by the arrival of “luxury apartments” obscures a more complicated picture.

For example, the 2021 Census hinted at the emergence of what Richard Brown, in his analysis for On London, cautiously identified as a possible inner borough “boomer belt” – a sharp rise in the percentage of people in their late fifties, and older, living in places like, well, Southwark. Have they sailed in on a tide of hostile foreign investment and “pushed out” the less well off? Or have they been there for decades and turned out to be less likely than predecessor generations to move to the suburbs or Home Counties for a quieter life, vacating dwellings that households with children or couples wishing to have them might move into? Inner London is nicer than it used to be. And their children have outgrown primary school.

Such trends don’t interest polemicists against “gentrification”, though. They prefer to contend that falling primary school rolls result from the “displacement” of poorer households as a result of the appearance of “luxury flats”. And sometimes, as with Southwark’s expunged Heygate estate, it is literally true that plots of land on which social rented homes once stood are now occupied by more expensive dwellings, with former residents having had to move.

However, although London as a whole has seen a net loss of homes for social rent over the past 30 years, the overall figure has remained at around 800,000. Inner London boroughs still contain high proportions of council or housing association rented homes – over 40 per cent in Hackney, almost as much in Southwark – and the tenants living in them, perhaps especially those with young children, are highly unlikely to move, even if they’d like to. Waiting lists for social homes are long. Availability is low.

So maybe the strongest links between Londoners’ accommodation circumstances and falling primary school demand are to be found in other, less stable parts of the housing landscape.

As everybody knows, buying a house or flat in inner London, like renting one privately, has become increasingly, incredibly expensive. Except for the very wealthy, first-time buying there is impossible for younger people, Londoners or otherwise, without some sort of help from the fabled Bank of Mum and Dad. If you can’t get such help, you have no chance. And even if you can, your only option may be to look at relatively cheap outer London, probably the east – Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Newham or beyond.

This is the group being “displaced” from inner London areas they might have been born and brought up in, and also the group that might want to move into London, but can’t afford to move very far into it. Too affluent for social renting, not affluent enough to get a mortgage anywhere near the centre, they are the ones who have their babies in the suburbs or “middle London”, rather than in Zones 1, 2 or even 3, unlike older generations of Londoners.

And even that isn’t entirely new. Households have been moving out of inner London and into home ownership, perhaps to start or enlarge a family, for decades, just maybe not as soon, not as far out or in the same numbers as they are now. Their “down from London” migration to the seaside isn’t novel, either – Brighton has been teasingly known as Hackney-on-Sea for at least a quarter of a century.

Still, no one wants to see primary schools shut, with all the heartache, worry and disruption it entails. And if we can agree that it is not desirable for the core of the capital to be unaffordable for a large section of the population, we need to think about how to turn the situation round.

We need more social and other low-cost rented homes, whether for households with children or not, and regardless of anything else, because London’s homelessness crisis has become a desperate, intolerable, unbearable emergency. But we also need more homes that are affordable for young middle-income households, whose lack of options is contributing to their delaying having children, having fewer of them than they might like, or moving further afield than they might wish to before they have them.

How will such supplies of housing come about? Well, perhaps there will be a housing market crash, as there was in the late 1980s, allowing more people on to “the ladder”. Failing that, there needs to be land, there needs to be a speedy planning system and there needs to be money.

There is no substitute for government funding, the more of it the better. But, equally, there is no getting away from the inconvenient, unpalatable, almost unmentionable reality that a great deal of the newer social and middle income “affordable” housing in London has come from, and will continue to come from, profits generated by the sale of more expensive homes, derived as a condition of planning consents.

If we want more little children living in inner London, we might need more “gentrification” and “luxury flats” there too. Still strange to many, but still true.