Greenwich councillors have voted to sell car parking spaces on three estates in the borough to a private developer, promising to invest the proceeds in new council housing.
The plots of land, in Charlton, Kidbrooke, and on the Lewisham border, will be sold to developer Pocket Living, subject to consultation with council tenants who live nearby.
Pocket believes it can build 151 one-bedroom flats across the three plots: 45 in a four-storey building at The Heights in Charlton, 46 in two three-storey blocks at Kidbrooke Park Close; and 60 at Quince Road, on the Orchard Estate in Lewisham.
The developer, which specialises in “affordable compact homes for first time buyers”, will sell the homes to Greenwich residents at a 20% discount, with a covenant in place to ensure they cannot be sold for a year after purchase. Buyers will also be barred from getting parking permits.
80% of the proceeds from the sale will go into new council housing, with the remainder being used to improve the immediate area in the housing estates affected.
The proposal has been criticised because of the small size of Pocket’s homes, and the fact the council had opted to sell to a private firm rather than Meridian Home Start, the company it set up to deliver housing at 65% of market rents. Neither criticism was directly addressed in the meeting.
Regeneration director Pippa Hack, the senior council officer in charge of the scheme, said developing all three sites would deliver between £100,000 and £130,000 in council tax receipts.
“All the homes will be for sale to people who live or work in the borough, and 70% of buyers who buy through Pocket have incomes of up to £40,000. They will be sold at 20% discount compared to the local market, there will be a restrictive covenant that secures the properties in perpetuity, so there will be no sub-letting or no sales in year one,” she added.
Asked by deputy leader David Gardner what the council would do if the consultation revealed significant opposition to the scheme, Hack said officers would need to judge if the concerns outweighed the benefits of the scheme.
Cabinet member Averil Lekau added: “It seems obvious to me that you will listen to the views of residents and you will weigh that up. We would never say we would go to consultation unless it was meaningful.”
Leader Danny Thorpe said: “There have been some comments online about these particular schemes and our decision to dispose of the land; I would point out that on The Heights in Charlton, that is actually contaminated land that we are looking to dispose of; and while I appreciate that there have been some concerns about that, we have to address the housing crisis in any way we can.
“The land we are looking at here is land that we haven’t been able to make the best use of as an authority, so that conversation with residents will hopefully be a positive one when we explain what we’re doing.
“And also, we can utilise some money directly for us to build our own homes, council homes at social rents. It won’t provide us with the funds to provide all the homes we need, but it will provide us with some. And we have to start somewhere.”
The site at The Heights in Charlton overlooks The Valley, while the Kidbrooke Park Close site is surrounded by housing. The Quince Road site is next to Morden Mount Primary School and is opposite Lewisham Council’s Lethbridge Estate, itself due to undergo major redevelopment.
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