Lewisham look to buy 42 homes within 26-floor development
Lewisham Council are looking to buy 42 homes designated as affordable within a development at the Apollo Business Centre at Surrey Canal Road.
When the development gained approval, 42 units were to be offered to a Register Provider such as a Housing Association.
With many Housing Associations recently unable to afford to take on Section 106 affordable housing due to issues such as cladding replacement and repair backlogs on existing homes, the council are stepping in to purchase from Fosfel Hurlington Limited.
It’s along the same lines as Greenwich buying S106 discounted homes in Woolwich and Kidbrooke recently agreed – though in Greenwich’s case not all were section 106 homes.
The tallest block on site at the Apollo Business Centre site will be for students with council homes within the adjacent block. The development sits within an area set to see substantial change with another student block underway metres away..
It’s located not too far from the unfunded plans for Surrey Canal Road station on the London Overground. A separate site nearby saw reduction in affordable housing agreed last year to part-fund station works but full costs have not yet been met.
Public sites
Ideally, homes designated as affordable under a Section 106 agreement would be taken on by housing associations with council’s focusing on developing their own land to maximise housebuilding given ever growing problems across the capital and beyond.
Yet with many housing associations halting the process of taking on discounted homes, action has been needed to help. Measures in last weeks spending review should help including access to a remediation fund for building defects.
Still, in the near term Lewisham and other boroughs taking on Section 106 housing is seeing council-owned sites elsewhere go nowhere despite public plots laying dormant for many years.
The report on this proposal lays it out: The move to buy 42 S106 homes hinders other areas as it states: “Agree to the withdrawal of the Evelyn Court/Parker House scheme currently within the Building for Lewisham Programme (BfL)”. That was supposed to see 300 homes.
Elsewhere large sites such as Besson Street which sat vacant for more than 15 years with zero social homes planned.
Unfortunately we still have an either/or situation with new housebuilding from public bodies – despite an ever growing housing crises forcing steep cuts to council services.
