Not the full picture: RIBA even did a mini-movie about the Brick by Brick development, without once mentioning BxB
A housing scheme in Coulsdon has won the country’s top architecture award. Yet there’s not been a peep from council’s propaganda department, usually desperate to spin anything as ‘good’ news in Croydon.
STEVEN DOWNES on the desperate efforts of architects and their pals to erase the scandal of Brick by Brick from history
Somewhere this morning, Jo Negrini was having a little self-congratulatory chuckle.
Colm Lacey was burnishing his otherwise tatty CV.
And acolytes and apprentices of Negrini and Lacey have been gleefully updating their LinkedIns.
Because RIBA has just given the country’s top architecture award to a Coulsdon housing development that was built for Brick by Brick. Not that anyone was admitting to it.
In the thousands of gushing words of praise pushed out by RIBA and their craven cheerleaders in the specialist press, they were careful never to mention Brick by Brick, the housing company that bankrupted a borough.
They also avoided mention of the name of the award-winning development, too – Red Clover Gardens – just in case someone Googled it and stumbled across mention of one of the most notorious, multi-million-pound failures in the history of local government in this country.
Hon RIBA: Jo Negrini
RIBA is the Royal Institute of British Architects, who promote the profession by staging the Stirling Prize each year.
They represent the trade which probably profited most from Brick by Brick’s largesse, as Negrini, Croydon’s discredited former chief executive, and Lacey, the incompetent she appointed to run the housing company, shovelled piles of council cash into the coffers of trendy architects.
Between 2015 and 2020, Brick by Brick received £200million in loans from Croydon Council. It never made a penny profit. By the end, when the company was wound up earlier this year, £68million was written off, lost forever.
RIBA had been so delighted with Negrini’s generosity with public money, they made her an honorary member, even though she has no architecture qualifications or experience. And oh, did she enjoy being fawned over…
Croydon’s residents will be paying for the ego and hubris of Negrini and Lacey and their little clique of supporters for decades to come, thanks in part to badly managed housing developments such as Red Clover Gardens.
Which is probably why this year’s Stirling Prize announcement has been an elaborate whitewashing exercise by RIBA and their mates. Early signs are that their efforts in deceit are already working.
“More like this please,” said the Labour government’s housing minister, Matthew Pennycook, as he swallowed the RIBA propaganda whole, without bothering to get a briefing from a MHCLG official to explain the link between the award-winning housing scheme and its local council, mired in £1.7billion of debt.
The lies began in the very first sentence of RIBA’s official press release announcing the Stirling Award judges’ decision.
“The Royal Institute of British Architects… has named Lion Green Road, a council-commissioned housing scheme in Coulsdon, south London, by Mary Duggan Architects with Ruff Architects as the winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026.”
Finishing touch: Red Clover Gardens took five years from planning permission in 2017 to build, and more than a year more to put right the many faults in construction
Because the scheme – 157 flats across five blocks – was never “council-commissioned”. Mary Duggan Architects was commissioned by Brick by Brick.
And Lion Green Road was the name of the council car park in Coulsdon that was sold off to Brick by Brick to use for the project. The housing is in fact named Red Clover Gardens. There are signs around the estate that say just that. Not that RIBA mention it.
Indeed, Brick by Brick and Red Clover Gardens are not mentioned at all in the near-1,000-word eulogy to the housing scheme that was distributed by RIBA after the Stirling Prize announcement was made in Old Billingsgate on Thursday night.
The old fish market was a very fitting venue for this exercise in self-justification and misinformation – because something stinks.
It is as if the architects and their supporters among the lanyard classes want to write Brick by Brick out of history, as they pretend it never happened. Pennycook’s “More like this please” is exactly the response they want to hear.
There is, it needs to be said, much to commend Mary Duggan’s design at Red Clover Gardens. The florid description in the Grauniad might be a bit over the top: “Nestled into a steeply sloping site, sheltered by a canopy of mature trees, stands a cluster of crystalline pink and brown brick towers, where generous flats look on to a landscape of allotments, playgrounds and to the rolling hills of south London beyond.”
RIBA goes for the full arslikhan: “Unified by a palette of brickwork in three subtle shades of brown, the housing blocks blend into the parkland beyond, while small variations in pattern add texture and give each building its own identity…
Gushing guff: ‘Unified by a palette of brickwork in three subtle shades of brown’. But no mention of Brick by Brick
“Inside, every home is dual-aspect, drawing in generous daylight, while private balconies are carefully positioned to avoid directly overlooking neighbouring homes.
“This thoughtful, carefully considered arrangement allows the buildings to sit closer together while giving residents open views from their own outdoor spaces.
“The result is density achieved through careful orientation and planning, rather than at the expense of privacy, daylight or views.” But such architectural niceties come at a price. And this was to play a significant part in the fiasco that has surrounded Mary Duggan’s Red Clover Gardens.
As the Stirling Award-winning architect would know, most of these flats were never meant to serve as social homes or council housing. The majority were intended for private sale or as unaffordable “affordable housing”, through shared ownership.
Private renters living there today are paying £1,850 per month.
Lion Green Road car park had been sold by the council to Brick by Brick at a knock-down £1.5million (other council properties were off-loaded at below market value, too, to give BxB a bit of help. Some council sites were sold for a mere £1).
Architect of Croydon’s downfall: former councillor Paul Scott, who granted planning permission to all BxB schemes
In 2017, Brick by Brick’s planning application was waved through by a council committee chaired by Labour councillor Paul Scott – himself an architect.
The build was not completed until 2022. The poor standard of construction work meant that the first residents did not move in until 2023. Slow delivery and poor build quality were two common flaws in Brick by Brick’s story of failure.
By 2023, Croydon Council was under the control of Conservative Mayor Jason Perry, and they were attempting to find buyers for the property to help reduce the authority’s mountain of debt.
Things at Red Clover Gardens got worse still.
The over-priced flats ended up sold by the cash-strapped council under a dodgy deal with an under-capitalised bunch of Essex wide boys, who quickly went into administration. Croydon Council ended up stiffed for another £22million, while Mayor Perry approved a £500,000 pay-off to the wide boys at Regen Capital.
What in 2017 was meant to have one block of social housing now has three managed as council homes. The other two of the five blocks are privately owned or rented.
More of the same?: housing minster Matthew Pennycook’s boostering tweet yesterday
Despite auditor warnings and multiple investigations and reports into the scandal that bankrupted Croydon Council, no one has ever been sacked or faced charges for their part in the Brick by Brick omnishambles.
Jo Negrini, the architect (if that’s the right word) of the Brick by Brick project, walked away from her CEO job at Croydon Council in 2020 with her designer handbag bulging with £437,973 in tax-payers’ readies.
Today, she is a director of Arup (the engineering company which benefited from several juicy contracts during her time at Croydon) and the honorary RIBA members chairs New London Architecture’s “Cities Forum”. Seriously.
It’s almost as if Brick by Brick never happened.
So “more like this please” Matthew Pennycook?
Read more: Coulsdon flats deal was rushed through as massive tax dodge
Read more: Mayor candidates call for investigation into Red Clover Gardens
Read more: #PennReport wanted police probe into possible misconduct
Read more: #PennReport: Cover-ups and denial over Brick by Brick failure
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
Seriously, if you’ve seen the national list of winners you have to wonder what’s behind the awards. Inventive as they might be, easy on the eye seems well down the list of qualifying attributes.