Lambeth drops plan for new council homes in Waterloo
Lambeth has effectively dropped plans for Waterloo's first new council homes in decades, with any new affordable homes on council land in Wootton Street expected to be managed instead by a housing association.
The council's ill-fated Homes for Lambeth company – which ran up a £1 million bill on swanky South Bank offices despite a poor record of building new homes – had intended to build new council homes on land next to Windmill House in Wootton Street, off The Cut.
The Waterloo & South Bank area has seen some of the biggest and highest-value residential developments in the borough, but few affordable homes have been built in the immediate locality, with developers' cash sometimes spent further afield.
The Southbank Place developers on the Shell Centre site – where a flat is currently on the market for £13.25 million – built their affordable housing contribution a mile away in Kennington's Lollard Street.
With the Homes for Lambeth company being wound up, the authority is instead seeking a development partner to build on six council-owned sites across the borough, including Waterloo's Wootton Street.
In an update for this week's overview & scrutiny committee, the council has admitted that the Wootton Street development – if it includes any social rented homes at all – is likely to be handed over to a housing association to manage.
The council says that "the working assumption is that all affordable homes across the five sights [sic] ... will be owned and managed by an RP [registered provider]" whilst the council would retain the option "to elect to purchase the social rent homes on that site if resources are available".
On Wootton Street specifically, the report says:
This is a site with an existing building which used to house the Coral Day Nursery which has been vacant for several years.
Planning was submitted in January 2021 for 36 homes (19 private sale, 11 social rent and 6 shared ownership) and a new flexible community use on the ground floor. It has subsequently been withdrawn due to daylight sunlight issues.
A new scheme comprising 24 homes has been designed to address the planning issues and concerns, with positive pre-app feedback received.
Wootten Street [sic] will be a mixed tenure scheme, and therefore delivered under a development agreement, subject to the SBC approval.
The council will have the option to purchase any affordable homes, but it is likely that, given the financial constraints outlined earlier in the report, any affordable homes will be owned and management [sic] by a registered provider with full nominations to the council.
In a separate decision, Lambeth Council this week said it plans to spend £24 million buying back and refurbishing 60 homes on its own estates that had been sold under right-to-buy legislation.
£14.5 million of this cash has been provided by central Government to ease the burden on the council of the costs of temporary accommodation, and to provide a small number of homes for refugees from Afghanistan.
Lambeth's recent record of council house building is in sharp contrast to neighbouring Southwark, where hundreds of new council homes have been built or acquired from developers in the last decade.
