Southwark Council spent nearly £4 million on nine rooftop homes schemes that have since been abandoned.
The council, which has an ambitious programme to create 11,000 new social rent homes by 2043, indefinitely paused its controversial plans to build on the roofs of existing estates in July, as we exclusively reported.
Southwark said it paused the programme “after listening to residents’ views, and taking into consideration new building regulations and rising construction costs.”
A Freedom of Information request by the borough’s Liberal Democrats shows how much the council spent on architects, designers, consultants and other advisers for each estate, with a total outlay of £3.75 million.
Southwark said the money went on surveys and investigation works on the existing buildings to make any new homes were safe and structurally sound. These were “necessary to get certainty on whether we could build these types of homes”, according to Cllr Darren Merrill, the council’s head of council homes and homelessness.
Preparing a planning application is a complicated task. A look at any application on Southwark’s planning portal shows dozens of documents needed to show the design and scale of a new building, how developers are planning to minimise its impact on the natural environment and avoid overshadowing or otherwise inconveniencing neighbours. All of this adds up.
But Lib Dem leader Victor Chamberlain criticised the spending, which he called “reckless”.
He added: “We are in the middle of a cost-of-living emergency and Labour must avoid flip-flopping on future plans by ensuring from the start that any undertakings are a responsible use of residents’ money.”
Labour’s Cllr Merrill said: “We may still go on to build rooftop homes in future, the money spent on these works will provide a strong basis to proceed with building rooftop extensions in future. Additionally, on some of the estates where rooftop homes were proposed, we are going ahead and building other types of new council homes. In these cases, the money spent on ground surveys and investigations will contribute to building new council homes.
“The cost of the Rooftop Homes programme amounts to around 1% of our total new homes building programme of £2.2 billion.
“The sums that are involved in building developments are huge, but we take any expenditure of taxpayers’ money extremely seriously and strive to spend as efficiently as possible.
“Any proposed new build scheme goes through a rigorous validation process to meet the council’s checks and balances. We always spend to meet the needs of our residents and provide the best possible service we can for them.”
The council is building thousands of new homes to tackle its 16,500-household waiting list. Because of space constraints and the cost of land in central London, many schemes have been on existing estates – either next to or on top of buildings where people already live.
Some residents have been concerned about plans for the rooftop homes after the serious disruption caused on Roderick House and Anthony House, next to the Abbeyfield Estate on Raymouth Road. This is a Lambeth and Southwark Housing Association development, rather than Southwark Council.
Exclusive: Southwark Council puts all plans to build rooftop homes on hold
Residents in blocks earmarked for rooftop homes have also previously expressed safety concerns, citing a report by engineers Arup that said rooftop builds on pre-1970s blocks could cause disproportionate collapse.
The council said earlier in response to those concerns that the report makes “blanket comments” and any potential site would be judged on a “case by case” basis.