Council secures government funding for new homes

Support will boost delivery of new homes on brownfield sites in Tottenham, reports Simon Allin, Local Democracy Reporter

Haringey Council has bagged the second-biggest grant in a round of funding for new homes on underused and derelict land.

The council secured £3.8million from the government’s brownfield land release fund, which has been set up to help build good-quality homes on previously-used sites and protect green spaces from development. It will be used to build homes at the Gourley Triangle and Ashley Road Depot in Tottenham.

Ruth Gordon, cabinet member for housebuilding, placemaking and development, announced the funding boost during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. It comes just over a month after the council was awarded £127m by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to help build new council homes – the third-highest grant in the capital.

Cllr Gordon told the meeting: “I have just signed a wonderful thing today to receive almost £4m from the government for the use of brownfield sites. That is the highest award in London and the second-highest award in the country.”

During the meeting, councillors agreed to look into building homes at twelve more sites across the borough. Sites in Tottenham, Seven Sisters, Muswell Hill and Hornsey were among those added to the council’s housing delivery programme, meaning town hall officers will look into whether building homes on the land is viable. Haringey aims to have started work on 1,000 homes by March next year and to build 3,000 over the next ten years.

Earlier in the meeting, Cllr Gordon defended the council’s approach to housebuilding following claims it was concreting over green spaces in the east of the borough.

Speaking during a deputation to the meeting, campaigner Jack Grant said several sites set to be added to the housing delivery programme included green spaces – the vast majority of them in the more disadvantaged and densely-populated east.

Jack said: “Haringey Council has pledged to address the east-west inequality which falls on the shoulders of its BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] and disabled residents, but it cannot hope to do that if it accepts the result of decades of inequality as a baseline to work off.”

He added that green spaces in the east of the borough should be treated the same as in the west, otherwise the council will embed the inequality that already exists.

Responding to the comments, Cllr Gordon said most of the sites that would be added to the delivery programme made use of either disused car parks, areas where there had been anti-social behaviour, or concrete hardstanding. She said: “We are doing our best to change and transform areas that are blighted in our borough and make good use of them.”

Cllr Gordon said half of those in the highest priority band of the council’s housing waiting list were BAME and that the housebuilding programme would benefit them. She added: “Everywhere we will leave behind, after we have done the builds, increased diversity, better insulation in the homes [and] cheaper homes.”

Sites that were added to Haringey’s housing delivery programme: