Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

published at HGY/2015/0034. 

Keeps the facade at least of the old building, and adds two new blocks along Hermitage Road.

A total of 24 new tenure-blind homes all designed to Lifetime Homes standards in a new apartment building containing 19 dwellings on Hermitage Road and 5 terraced houses in a secluded mews to the rear of the site.

• A total of 8 new flats built within the converted St Ann’s police station, including a new modern extension. • 12.5% of accommodation will be affordable and 87.5% will be private.

Open for comments for 3 weeks at least.

Anyone know what tenure-blind means?  Does the 1 in 8 figure refer to the flats in the old PS, or to the whole development?

Tags for Forum Posts: st ann's police station

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It means that there is no visible difference between the different types of dwellings. One of the problems with mixed developments has been that the social housing units tend to be meaner and less attractive that the other units. Tenure blind should mean that they are indistinguishable.

Thanks, so no 'poor doors'.

Let's hope so, but the definition of blind tenure is about visible difference so this is one to keep an eye on!
Homes=Work

Any apprenticeships on the build site, some have up to three.

If someone can go through the plans to work out how many of the new-build homes will be 'affordable' vs private, we need to know. It could be that 31 out of 32 dwellings will be for-sale, in which case there needs to be a scandalised response.  I've just chucked the plan here as soon as it turned up in my email.  

I don't mind taking a look. 

I just had a very quick look. There are 32 proposed residential units - 28 are described as 'market housing', 2 'social rented housing' and 2 'intermediate housing'. 

In the 'affordable housing' statement it says that 4 of the units will be classed as affordable:

"We have analysed the development economics of the Proposed Scheme. Under current market conditions, and with the costs associated with the development, the proposed scheme cannot viably meet the Council’s full scope of the planning obligations, and a wholly private scheme would be viable. However, the Applicant proposes to accommodate 4 units (13%) of the scheme as affordable housing units."

Thanks. I love how 'current market conditions' ie print your own money for developers, has chucked out the original S106 requirement of 50% down to 30% down to whatever-you-fancy. 12.5% here.

This is the same reason that New Deal/LBH bunged £1.5million to Grainger re Wards, to make sure they made enough profit. They expect 20%.

Like Alison says only 4 of the 32 units are "affordable" but in the planning statement they have a table at 5.54 which says 2 units will be shared ownership and 2 will be "affordable rent".

"Affordable rent" is a new term used for affordable housing introduced by the Government. It is different from social rented (which is more like council rents). In reality "affordable rent" can be up to 80% of market rents.

The affordability of shared ownership also depends on whether you can buy 25% or 50% of the price.So if the market value is say £400k you would pay a mortgage of about £500/month on a 25% share or about £ 950 on 50% plus rent on the remainder (which is unlikely to be under £400/month).This may be affordable for some, but not for many residents in housing need. It would be reasonable to ask how affordable the "affordable housing" really is.

The very surprising thing about the application is that it is not by a private developer who inevitably try and minimise affordable housing,  but by One Housing Group who are a housing association whose sole purpose should be about providing affordable housing.

A reasonable request would be to ask for the relevant parts of the viability appraisal to be published.

OHG will have submitted this to the Council (by BNP Paribas according to the planning statement ) to argue why the affordable element is so low. (Often these would be refused on commercial confidentiality grounds, but some information can be justified to be disclosed. See http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DBFiles/Decision/i1279/London...)

Also it seems reasonable to ask whether the funds generated by private sales will be invested in other affordable housing in Haringey or elsewhere?

The Council could also ask OHG to sign up to a "deferred affordable housing contribution" in the event that the sales prices on the private units achieve more than they will have estimated in their viability appraisal (often these are overly cautious to justify the low amount of affordable housing).

Those figures are always withheld, for 'commercial' reasons.  ie you people are too stupid to understand our special feelings about how we work out the profit %age.  Why is this legal?  It's the most suspicious part of the whole planning game.

It would have made sense to retain this building as a face for a Healthcare facility, it's like selling the front garden of your house.

Not when nearly all of the StAnns complex if being 'refreshed' surely?

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