Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on social cleansing is a direct challenge to Sadiq Khan

Wednesday’s conference speech by Jeremy Corbyn contained words I’ve been waiting to hear from him for a long time.

Following the lead of a conference vote the day before, the party leader at last gave us the one detail residents in hundreds of estates across London have been waiting for since last year – a strong commitment to letting residents decide what happens to their homes and a promise of a ballot before any plan goes ahead.

For several years we’ve seen increasingly vocal campaigns from residents facing “regeneration” plans in London and other cities around the country. These schemes are often little more than planned social cleansing and they are being spun, pushed through and promoted by councils of all kinds.

At the start of this year we saw an outcry over Sadiq Khan’s draft ‘Best Practice Guidance for Estate Regeneration’. The proposed guidance was almost useless to residents trying to make their own plans for their estates or oppose wholesale demolition. It read more like a manual to support the worst kind of council plans, and appeared to go back on a manifesto promise that “estate regeneration only takes place where there is resident support”.

The draft guidance actually warned against ballots when homes were set to be demolished, seeming to favour the kind of spin and PR-based consultation exercises that have led to protests and court cases in recent years.

Estate residents across London were chilled by this backtrack and the Mayor has made it clear this was not a mistake but represents a change in approach. The Mayor tends to resort to catchphrases when he’s on uncomfortable policy ground, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “horses for courses” when he’s been asked about giving residents, like those on the Cressingham Gardens estate in Lambeth a simple vote.

Far more than the call for rent controls, which has gained the most headlines, the latest development in policy on estates from Corbyn represents a grassroots rebellion in Labour that’s been brewing for some time.

Too often since joining the London Assembly I’ve been the only prominent politician willing to use my voice to support resident campaigns fighting the demolition of their homes and communities. I’ve been speaking alongside several campaigners who are Labour party members at screenings of the new independent film about estate regeneration, Dispossession. But, despite the importance of this film, I’ve not seen any praise for it from the Labour leadership team, or sat alongside their elected councillors, MPs or AMs at these events.

In July at the People’s Assembly rally in Parliament Square I stood up to give a speech that challenged Jeremy Corbyn to do something about London Labour councils demolishing estates. It felt risky saying this in front of tens of thousands of people who were doing the Corbyn chant between every speech, so I was relieved that my comments were in fact well received. And yet, even though the rally was focused on the disaster of Grenfell Tower and the issues it exposed, in his own speech the Labour leader said not a single word about how his own party could change the way they worked with estates.

All this may have changed this week. With strong words at last from Jeremy Corbyn in support of ballots, the key question for the Mayor is whether these will now be included in his final guidance. The finished document will be binding on London councils who want GLA funding for their plans and it is due to be published any minute now.

Last weekend I spoke at a rally in Haringey against their council’s plan to put their council homes under 50 per cent control of the developer Lendlease, responsible for the infamous deal with Southwark council over the Heygate Estate (now Elephant Park). The “Haringey Development Vehicle” has generated huge opposition among local Labour members, who are working cross-party with Greens and Lib Dems to oppose the plans.

Given events in Haringey it’s no surprise that the Labour conference motion this week came from the Tottenham branch of the party, or that conference delegates passed it so enthusiastically.

This is the way politics should work. Conference has listened to the members, Corbyn has listened to conference, and now the Mayor must listen too, rewrite his guidance and give estate residents the voice they need in deciding the future of their homes.

Sian Berry is the Green London Assembly Member. She was also the Green Party candidate for Mayor of London in 2008 and 2016 and is a local Councillor in Camden.