Council to buy new homes on bingo site to ease housing pressures

Haringey Civic Centre hopes the purchase of 86 new properties will help reduce its waiting list, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

The Mecca Bingo site in Wood Green and (inset) cabinet member Sarah Williams (credit Haringey Labour)

Haringey Council has agreed to purchase 86 new homes to help reduce the number of people on its housing waiting list.

Still yet to be completed, 78 of the homes will be delivered on the site of Mecca Bingo in Wood Green, which closed over summer and is set to be demolished and redeveloped.

The remaining eight homes will be delivered at the site of the former Hornsey Police Station in Tottenham Lane.

Sarah Williams, cabinet member for housing and planning, said: “With the overwhelming need for affordable housing in Haringey, particularly for families, this acquisition is especially important; it [the Mecca Bingo scheme] includes ten three-bedroom homes and seven five-bedroom homes.

“These are the first five-bedroom homes in our council housing delivery programme. This will enable us to provide much needed accommodation for those on the council’s housing register including vulnerable children.”

Developer Tri7 and student accommodation provider Fusion Group, which will deliver the homes at the Mecca Bingo site, are set to deliver four buildings between three and nine storeys, providing the 78 council homes as well as 623 student rooms.

Addressing a cabinet meeting last night (Tuesday 12th), Liberal Democrat councillor Pippa Connor questioned whether negotiations with the developers had secured the affordable homes in perpetuity, and whether the service charges would be kept to “a minimum” and were not “set to change”.

Assistant director of housing Robbie Erbmann indicated this would not happen.

He said: “We have recourse on service charges, if needed we can go to a tribunal, so we do have that legal recourse but ultimately we manage those developments.

“It’s worth saying the service charges aren’t for the whole building, we own the blocks and manage the inside of the blocks, it’s just for the public space around the building, it’s quite a similar arrangement to Hale Wharf for example, and some of our other developments.

“In terms of the service charge it’s good value for us and good value for the tenants who will be moving in.”

Hale Wharf is a development in Tottenham Hale which aims to deliver 447 new homes including 191 new council homes.

Dixon8 Ltd will deliver the eight council homes on the site of the former Hornsey Police Station as well as 21 market value homes.

Cllr Connor said ongoing delays on the Hornsey Town Hall mixed-use development had meant eleven affordable homes, a part of the agreement, had been “completed” but “sat empty for close to a year”.

“This is difficult considering the housing crisis in Haringey,” she said. “What’s the council doing to ensure the absolute minimum void time for the handover of affordable homes secured from a private development, such as those that are being acquired at Hornsey Police Station?”

Cllr Williams said: “In regards to Hornsey Town Hall, that [the delay] is due to very technical legal reasons, it isn’t because of void contract work or anything on that side.”

Robbie added: “Hornsey Town Hall is stuck in a difficult place between the developer and the contractor at the moment, it’s worth saying it is a pay on completion job for us so there isn’t council money that’s currently sitting in the scheme.

“Nevertheless, there are complexities in the site that are being resolved between the developer and the contractor and that’s probably all I can say in this meeting.”

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