New council house development in Long Lane

lucysalisbury wrote:

adding 3 or 4 thousand new people in Long Lane

You do realise the Long Lane proposal is for no more than 25-30 homes on what is a very modest site?

The target to built 1,000 homes covers the whole borough over the next eight years.

That is true. Have a good evening. Let's hope for the best.

Thanks James, I didn't realise that, having not read the document properly. Certainly seems much more manageable.

Orione, I didn't think you did mean how it sounded, that's why I said that. However, why would we what to deal with the divide in the London Bridge area before building more council houses? In fact, building council houses is part of the answer to this.

I am rather surprised to see some people arguing that we can't have more council properties because of lack of infrastructure. This is true of any housing, do you want all building to stop?

New social housing in zone 1 London … I don’t get it.

I mean let’s make a lucky few who are connected or win the lottery get cheap flats in an area where a 2bd goes for 500K instead of selling the land to developers and taking the money to help 10 time more struggling families with better schools, hospitals etc…

PeterJohn wrote:

In response to a couple of queries raised in this thread -
We have approx 20,000 people on our waiting list in Southwark - so even 1000 new homes will not solve our housing shortage, but it will make a contribution to the solution. No other council in the country has announced such an ambitious council house-building plan, but I recognise that we are in a unique position to fund our plans from the financial benefits of regeneration;

Peter

This announcement of 1000 new council homes needs to seen in the context of the loss of the guarantee of 600 affordable homes from the Heygate regeneration at the Elephant. This 25% guarantee was part of the Regeneration Agreement with developers Lendlease, but has quietly been dropped from the outline planning application papers lodged last week (AP-12-1092). When the agreement was signed in July 2010 Southwark was very bullish that the 25% did not represent a concession to Lendlease (35% is the policy minimum) but was the floor below which affordable housing would not be allowed to fall. With the loss of the guarantee we're now looking at the possibility of no affordable housing of any kind, on land where about 1,000 council homes still stand empty.

PeterJohn wrote:

In response to a couple of queries raised in this thread -
New council homes to be built will be let on exactly the same terms as all other council properties - so secure tenancies at council rent (currently an average of £90 per week for a 2 bed property);

We have approx 20,000 people on our waiting list in Southwark - so even 1000 new homes will not solve our housing shortage, but it will make a contribution to the solution. No other council in the country has announced such an ambitious council house-building plan, but I recognise that we are in a unique position to fund our plans from the financial benefits of regeneration;

Priority will be given to existing residents who are in priority need for housing / re-housing to move into the new homes on the estates or in the areas where the new homes are built.

Hope this helps!

Peter

Will any of the new council homes be built in the Elephant and Castle Opportunity Area?

Merlin Rouge wrote:

Will any of the new council homes be built in the Elephant and Castle Opportunity Area?

A good question. About 2 dozen development sites have been identified in the Opportunity Area ranging from the very large to the small; most of the big ones already have something planned - eg London Park Hotel, leisure centre, Heygate, John Smith House, so it seems unlikely that they will have council housing. The Heygate replacement housing at Stead St will probably have 84 housing association properties at social rent.
If I understand the sense of this announcement, as reported in Southwark News, the idea seems to be to use 'in lieu' payments, that developers make instead of building affordable housing on-site, to build these council homes. Using this money to build homes on lower-value land would make sense if you want to maximise the number. This would indicate they won't be built in the north of the borough.
Also, if this is the case, the homes that weren't built on-site would have to be discounted from those built off-site to get the net gain.

Looks like this proposal is now getting going:
http://news.leathermarketjmb.org.uk/2013/07/02/new-development-to-be-built-on-the-kipling-estate-se1/

One humitarian point is that building extra social housing may be better for existing council tenants of the scheme still existed for placing family members nearby, not sure now if it was called friends and families? If anyone elderly or sick or disabled has family nearby how wonderful if they did not have to rely on outside help from carers and instead had close family a few minutes away?

None of my children could afford to live nearby or would qualify for council housing based on todays needs to be considered, and at this stage of my life with my needs such as they are it would be great if I could pick up a phone and call them!