Consultants will earn £300,000 from Hammersmith and Fulham council to advise on the bulldozing the West Kensington and Gibbs Green Estate, it emerged this week.

The Tory council allocated the cash at a full cabinet meeting on Monday (July 13) for studies into the impact of a 20-year building scheme to replace the existing blocks with a mixture of flats, hotels, offices and a convention centre.

The Town Hall touts the plan as creating a "vibrant world class new quarter to the city" at the site around Earl's Court and West Kensington.

If greenlit the development will form the centre-piece of a hotly disputed regeneration scheme to demolish seven estates across the borough and - according to the council's Local Development Framework (LDF) - banish social inequality and anti-social behaviour.

The council is ready to spend £200,000 on a study to explore the transport consequences of the mooted regeneration of Earl's Court and West Kensington, which includes a new road for extra traffic from Lillie Road to Talgarth Road. It has also budgeted a further £100,000 for legal advice for the project.

Labour MP Andrew Slaughter, MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush, said the money, which comes from a Section 106 fund paid by the developers of Fulham Town Centre, should be spent on essential schemes.

"This really is taking the taxpayers' wallet and hitting them in the head with it," he said.

"Section 106 money is to improve the quality of people's lives, not to be lavished on unpopular and unnecessary plans to destroy them."

The council document says it has powers to spend the money on "anything it considers likely to contribute to the economic, environmental and social well being of the area."

Mr Slaughter is leading the campaign to soften the council's strategy for social housing as outlined in the LDF.

Last week he released comments made by council leader Stephen Greenhalgh to a Tory think tank labelling council housing in the borough as "warehousing poverty", fuelling fears the borough has become a laboratory for broader Conservative Party policy.

West Ken Estate freeholder Richard Osband said stereotypes of his estate as a ghetto are off the mark.

"People get on here, we are respectful of eachother, there's not much graffitti and its a peaceful, quiet estate where the buildings are in fine condition. It's simply not some kind of sink estate.

"Labelling a whole area as indecent to then manipulate the housing and property market is just not right."

Mr Osband, a former Tory party donor, said his property will be blighted if the LDF gets the nod.

"Who will buy a place that may be subject to a compulsory purchase order in 5, 10 or 20 years? This is an abhorrant idea which will bring misery to many people for years to come."

His comments echo the feelings of many among the estimated 4,000 tenants and leaseholders on the West Kensington, Gibbs Green, Queen Caroline, Ashcroft Square, Clem Atlee and White City estates – all earmarked for demolition - who are horrified at the thought of leaving their homes while the work is undertaken.