Greenwich Council still owes £4.4million towards Woolwich’s Elizabeth Line station with less than two years left to pay the bill, documents to be put before senior councillors reveal.
The council agreed to pay £15 million towards the cost of the station a decade ago in a complex deal involving City Hall and Berkeley Homes because neither the Westminster government nor Transport for London included a station in the original plans for Crossrail.
No other London borough had to pay towards having an Elizabeth Line station. Slow progress in paying off the bill has meant Greenwich has not been able to follow other boroughs in using millions from developers to improve facilities for residents.
Greenwich agreed to pay almost half of all its income from the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) – a charge on developers to ensure they contribute to local public services – towards the new station, aiming to pay the bill off by this April. It also agreed to charge a “roof tax” on developers in the Woolwich area.
In 2021, it was revealed that the council was £8 million short because it had failed to raise enough cash from developers, and last year the town hall negotiated a two-year extension with TfL.
Some £1.75 million was paid off in 2022/23 – a record since it started paying back the money in 2017. But as of April, the council still owed £4.4 million, a report to the cabinet reveals. It will be discussed next Wednesday.
Of the £10.5 million paid back so far, £7 million came from CIL, with the remainder coming from the “roof tax”.
Despite the two-year extension, the continued shortfall raises the prospect that money meant for projects in other parts of the borough will have to be diverted to the station, with the rest of the council’s CIL income – another £7 million – ringfenced to pay off the Crossrail bill if needed.
Earlier this year, a Labour councillor was told that CIL money could not be spent on a crossing outside Harris Academy in Eltham because it was all being held for Woolwich Crossrail – despite the fact that the Kidbrooke Village development, a major generator of funds from developers, is within sight of the school.
What is CIL and why is Greenwich behind on the money?
CIL is one of two ways in which councils get money from developers – the other, Section 106 payments, goes towards specific community needs such as transport, healthcare or housing. Many Greenwich Section 106 payments support its employment service, Greenwich Local Labour and Business.
The report to cabinet, the Infrastructure Funding Statement, covers payments from developers in the 2022/23 financial year and what has been done with this money, as well as money paid in previous years.
Greenwich’s slow progress in paying off the Crossrail bill is, in part, a reflection of the low rates it has chosen to charge developers compared with some other boroughs. It also reflects the fact that many of the borough’s largest developments were approved before CIL came into force.
Developers currently pay £95.95 per square metre for housing, except in Abbey Wood and Thamesmead where they pay just £54.83, a rate imposed by a planning inspector. By comparison, Lewisham currently charges between £95 and £137. Across London, Brent now charges £317 – meaning that developers in Wembley pay three times as much as they would in Woolwich, and giving the council a substantial windfall.
At the other end of the scale, Bexley charges between £54 and £82, while Barking & Dagenham ranges from £13 to about £106.
Greenwich is hoping to bring in higher rates for some of the borough – particularly around the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, and around Greenwich and the peninsula, where the rate would go up to £150 – but a public hearing will need to be held next year and the new rates approved by an inspector before this can happen. The council has also chosen to exclude some developments, such as student housing blocks, from the increase.
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