What happens when international capital arrives on your doorstep and threatens to devour your home? The residents of the housing estates surrounding Battersea power station in London, including the Patmore where I was raised, faced that prospect when, in 2012, a consortium of Malaysian investors bought the derelict power station, decommissioned since 1983, for £400m.

Two years earlier, David Cameron had launched the Conservative manifesto in the ruined power station. He promised to increase foreign investment into the UK, and so the international investors came and bought the thing and much more. Over the years, Battersea and the adjacent Nine Elms area was refashioned as a playground for oligarchs and other international elites. The US embassy arrived, a world-first glass sky pool was commissioned, and when Battersea power station shopping centre opened in 2022, it came with Rolex and Cartier stores, luxury private members’ clubs and apartments with multimillion-pound price tags.

The whole assembly looks like a Dubai waterfront, and for long-term locals a fear emerged of being forcibly displaced as occurred in Elephant and Castle and Stratford. In these areas of London, regeneration had become a byword for the social cleansing of working-class communities and their replacement by affluent residents.

Yet a quiet victory has occurred that shows how communities can bargain with developers. Last month, Battersea power station announced that it would be working in partnership with Wandsworth council to build 203 council homes as part of the development’s 17-hectare (42-acre) master plan.

This win is a genuinely radical vision........

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