Building work has restarted on the former Lidl side in Redhill town centre, following an agreement between the developer, a government agency and Reigate & Banstead Borough Council. Since originally being given permission in 2007 the development had been left in limbo after the banks financing the project were caught up in the financial crisis. The project is now due to be completed by mid 2011 and will consist of 126 flats and a large, prominent new retail store.
As part of the agreement, the developer will contribute funding to the improvement of Station Road in the immediate vicinity of the development, and funding for local health and education services. 50 of the flats will also be set aside for shared ownership and “key worker” housing for local residents, overseen by Raven Housing Trust.
The recent changes to the original planning permission, approved by the Planning Committee, do not include any changes tot he design or quality of the building itself – the only changes were to permit the 50 flats to be allocated to Raven Housing Trust in lieu of a payment to the Council, which was the stipulation in the original approval. A key provision of the revised planning permission prevents any of the units being allocated to socially rented housing in future – only shared ownership and key worker housing are to be permitted, with the remaining 76 flats being for sale on the open market.
Cllr Natalie Bramhall said “The site was left empty for a year, and there was a serious possibility of it staying that way for years to come. After a lot of work by the developer and Council, we have reached a plan which represents a very good outcome for Redhill, and will mean that the building is completed within just 18 months, providing high quality housing and retail space right in the centre of town, as originally envisaged.”
The developer is also establishing a local liaison group in order to ensure that local businesses and residents are kept well informed on the progress of the development.
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These 50 flats were always going to be relatively cheap. Is it fair to use our own money in order to exclude most of us from a chance to live there?
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The report is not clear whether 50 flats are to be donated or sold to the housing trust in return for the developer being let off the cash contribution he’d agreed to pay the council for his planing consent. Is the article complete without saying how much these key worker homes have cost us?
It seems unfair that low paid workers in the shops & offices surrounding this development will be deprived of a fair chance to live in the 50 subsidised homes. However relatively higher paid ‘key workers’ like council employees can live there, even if they only use Redhill to commute to jobs in London.
The low paid shop workers help pay the higher wages now available to many public sector workers, but their insecure contracts make getting mortgages very hard. Public sector workers with secure contracts & predictable pay structures can quite easily negotiate long-term & cheaper mortgages.
An example of ‘key workers’ with easily visible wage rates are the police. An 18 year old on his first day as a Met PC earns £30,000pa & much more after 30 weeks training. Last year 2,300 Met constables got £50-60k (+enviable retirement from 55). Compare this to our Jobcenter’s vacancies for mature Redhill shop workers, mostly minimum wage £12k pa & a manager at £15k.
Direct.gov.uk lists only 11 groups of eligable ‘key workers’ – Group 6 are …… “Planners working in a local authority”. What’s the highest salary a local planner can achieve while still being eligible to join this private subsidised housing club? (A tad embarrassing for our local planners if they were partly involved in excluding these 50 homes from the open market by ‘buying’ them using our council’s cash).
(hope you’re not regretting your new open-government site, many thanks for the opportunity for hopefully constructive comments)
Geoff – thanks for the thoughtful comments – certainly constructive and no regrets about giving you and others the opportunity to comment!
First, the planning committee report on the matter is available at the following link:
Committee Report
You can also search for the application on the Planning search function on http://www.reigate-banstead.gov.uk in order to see all of the background documents relating to the application.
In terms of the financing of the affordable housing, no Council money has gone or will go into the development. The affordable housing contribution required as part of the original development was £1.2m, and was agreed in a very different financial environment. The Council could have continued to insist on this level of contribution, but that would almost certainly have meant a developer going into administration and therefore no restart of the building work on site for years. Before giving permission to vary the amount the Council commissioned independent advice on the viability of the scheme which confirmed this.
Effectively exchanging this financial contribution for 50 of the flats on site appeared to the planning committee to be an acceptable way of getting the development restarted, as well as getting 50 units of affordable housing on this key site in the town (effectively at a “cost” of £24,000 each, ie £1.2m into 50).
Regarding the people eligible to buy or rent the 50 units, there is indeed a central government definition of “key worker” which is fairly restrictive. Locally we have adopted a wider definition, and in the case of this development, and at the request of the local ward councillors (in particular Cllr Natalie Bramhall) the definition will be widened to include employees of local businesses.
I should mention that some of our money has been used to support the restart of the building – in the form of a grant from central government which the developer applied for and was granted. Finally, as part of the protracted process of permission being approved (you can look up the occurrences of this application at planning committee meetings in July through to November last year) the developer’s contributions towards local education and health services were also secured.
I hope this helps – please let me know if not and I can provide more info/explanation.
Thanks for taking the time near midnight for such a quick & comprehensive reply, Julian.
Good to see that work on the building has starting again.
Pleased to hear the council is working to at least bend the government’s ‘key worker’ system, that lets homes to be allocated not by your need, but by who pays your wages.
Thanks for the document link. It seemed to say the developer originally had to give the council £1.2M +£0.2M (education ext) +16 flats, but now gets £6.5M from Homes & Community Agency for affordable housing, so perhaps the 34 ‘key worker’ flats cost £7.9M? : perhaps more like £232,000 each than £24,000? (but I appreciate the cash also helped the developer restart & may have strings attached)
Good point – I believe there are some strings attached with the HCA funding, eg I believe some of it is repayable upon full completion of the building. Not sure R&BBC would have provided funding on that scale to get things restarted – as you say it is good to see it start and also mildly encouraging to see Surrey being given funding from central government for once. Not often that we get any of our money back!
This e-mail is most informative so please ignore my earlier request for information on the Queensway development. I have not persued this with my customary vigour.
Dubai Municipality have a very good policy in that all developments are required to display a brief description of the scheme, names and ‘phone numbers of developer, architect, engineer and main contractor. I admit this has not prevented the place becoming the capital of kitsch but that is another matter altogether.
Geoff S made some good points and I’m pleased you included them. I do feel that particular consideration be given to those who work locally especially the lower paid and key workers restricted to those employed within the borough rather than others who commute further afield.
However I have some reservations about involvement of the Raven Housing Trust, if the history of their management of Hilary House is anything to go by. Admittedley the place is quieter of late but their style seems very much hands off. Key workers who have to rise early will not appreciate noisy behaviour late at night to which the Trust should adopt a zero tolerance policy. This needs to be made very clear to any “difficult” families and individuals considered for accomodation.
As to the retail part it is important that this should be leased to businesses likely to compliment existing ones in the town. This is not to say that competition should not be encouraged but care needs to be taken to ensure we maintain balance in the retail mix. We do not need to follow the example of Reigate where the centre is becoming dominated by eating establishments at the expense of useful shops.
I trust you find these comments helpful. I know how busy you must be but do keep us in touch.
I refer to the following extract from the ‘Queensway development restarts’ article:
“As part of the agreement, the developer will contribute funding to the improvement of Station Road in the immediate vicinity of the development…”
Is the condition and outlook of the alleyway which runs at the back of Lloyds TSB and Connexions included within the scope of improvements to the immediate vicinity of the development?
This alleyway will be a highly used access route between the new development site and the town centre. Its current state is shocking – it is poorly lit, cluttered with commercial bins and a haven for people who wish to misbehave or refuse to use public toilet facilities.
Thanks Nick – it’s a good point as this has long been a grotty and unsafe alleyway. I think there are issues of not being public highway (ie in private ownership) which could hamper any improvements, but I will look into it.
Thanks for your response Julian. I actually did a lot of investigation myself in to the ownership of the alleyway and got written permission from the owner, subject to completing the legal and planning processes, to gate the alleyway.
However, the costs of legal fees, planning fees and actually installing the gate (which I have plans and a quote for) were prohibitively expensive. I would be happy to discuss this further with you if there is a way of securing financial support. As I am sure you would agree, the gating of this alleyway would benefit a large number of people.
Thanks Nick – that could be of great help. I will email you separately to take this further.