Greenwich Council hopes to finish paying off the £15 million it owes for the construction of Woolwich’s Elizabeth Line station by April, a senior councillor has said.
Aidan Smith, the cabinet member for regeneration, was speaking as a report revealed that the council still had £4.4 million to pay towards the station under a complex deal struck in 2013.
The council agreed to pay £15 million towards the cost of the station in an agreement involving City Hall and Berkeley Homes because neither the Westminster government nor Transport for London included a station in the original plans for Crossrail.
Greenwich was the only borough to have to pay towards a new station, and slow progress in paying the debt has hampered the council’s ability to spend cash from developers on new 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. A “roof tax” was also charged on developers in the Woolwich area.
Smith, who has been tasked with making sure developers pay their way, told last week’s cabinet meeting that the council had secured “the highest level so far” of CIL cash from developers in the last financial year, at £4.3 million. “You’ll note on the following pages that we have paid off most of the funds on the Woolwich Crossrail [station] box, and we hope to complete that payment within this financial year,” he said.
“It’s really important that we get this infrastructure money from developers and spend it on vital infrastructure that we need.”
Greenwich had hoped to pay the debt by this April, but secured a two-year extension from TfL last year.
Other London boroughs have used multi-million pound CIL windfalls to pay for new facilities, but Greenwich has struggled to get cash from developers – partly because many of the area’s biggest developments were approved before CIL was introduced, and partly because Greenwich’s rates are lower than some other boroughs. A public hearing is due to take place next year on increasing CIL rates in some parts of the borough.
This week it was revealed that an estimated 8.3 million journeys were made to and from Woolwich station in the year to April, making it one of southeast London’s busiest mainline stations and busier than stations in the heart of the capital like Cannon Street and City Thameslink. All-night services will come to the station for the first time on New Year’s Eve.
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