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Haringey votes through £2bn vehicle amid protests

Haringey Council is to transfer homes into a new £2bn vehicle in partnership with Lendlease, after the cabinet voted through the controversial proposals last night.

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Haringey Council will put homes into £2bn partnership with Lendlease

While protesters blew trumpets and hit saucepans outside, councillors voted the plans through after a mammoth three-and-a-half-hour session.

As a result of the vote by cabinet members, Haringey Council set up the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) in partnership with Lendlease, the developer behind the regeneration of Southwark’s Heygate Estate.

The vehicle will be a 50:50 partnership between Lendlease and the council, with just over 50% of Haringey Council’s commercial portfolio transferred into it. It is intended, according to the contract, “to deliver growth through new and improved housing” and “to achieve a commercially acceptable return”, among other objectives.


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Two local Labour MPs, David Lammy and Catherine West, made a last ditch attempt to persuade the council to pause the development vehicle.

The MPs had asked the council to consider setting up a wholly owned development company, but the council argued it would have the funds to start building homes quicker if it went into partnership with a private developer.

The HDV has been the subject of a continued struggle between the council’s overview and scrutiny committee – which has called for a pause – and the cabinet.

Last night’s vote accepted one recommendation from the scrutiny committee – that the commercial portfolio be transferred in a phased approach. Members of the committee, however, complained that they had received 1,500 pages of details only five days earlier.

Emina Ibrahim, chair of the housing and regeneration scrutiny panel, said: “This wasn’t information that was available to the scrutiny committee throughout this process – it’s new information for us. I’ve just been going through it, but I found it quite a huge task.”

Alan Strickland, cabinet member for housing, regeneration and planning, responded: “It was always clear that the scrutiny process was going on while agreements were being reached – while agreements were being drafted – and therefore I think it’s always been clear that a lot of these documents would not be ready until they were prepared for cabinet.”

The scrutiny committee issued a report last month, recommending that the HDV be paused so that the business case, first outlined in 2015, could be reviewed given changes to the political and financial climate.

Ms Ibrahim commented: “[2015 is] a really long time ago. It was before Brexit, it was before the snap general election, it was before there were doubts around whether Crossrail would happen.”

Mr Strickland insisted: “A significant amount of work has happened since then. The financial assessment does supersede that original business case.”

He admitted, however, that the council would suffer no financial penalty if it were to pause the project, as suggested by the local MPs.

 

Update: at 10.23am, 06.07.17

This story has been updated to correct a piece of information Haringey Council gave Inside Housing. The council had originally said its entire commercial portfolio will be transferred to the HDV, but has now corrected this to "just over 50%".

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