Building for Lewisham marches forward

Tonight at Mayor and Cabinet - subject to the Business Panel - we agreed to move forward on the Building for Lewisham programme, adding new sites and taking out others.

Building for Lewisham is our programme for the delivery of new council and social homes. While Covid-19 has impacted on the physical building work, officers at the Council and Lewisham Homes have continued to get us in a good position to re-start the construction as soon as possible, with the safety of the workers being paramount.

Just like any well managed projects, sites are reviewed on a regular, project managed basis. This will mean that some sites continue and others will go no further forward. This report is about governance. It was noted in the January Mayor and Cabinet report that updated governance arrangements would be presented to Mayor and Cabinet to provide reassurance that the programme-level risks identified are mitigated sufficiently. Over the past few months, officers from both the Council and Lewisham Homes have been working on the governance arrangements. This work is ongoing and an interim update is provided within this report.

We are ambitious in our goals, but we must also mitigate risk where identified. This Part 1 report is accompanied by a Part 2 report that focusses on the financials.

In section 5.14 of the report, the new schemes are listed. There is a potential for even more new homes that could be added to the Programme as a result of these additional sites. I have to stress that we do development with the community and through consultation, design work, financial viability reviews and the planning process we will determine how this translates to foundations in the ground.

Consultation forms a crucial part of how our developments will come forward. The excellent work undertaken by the Lewisham Homes development team to date will influence the outcomes of these sites, as we want existing residents to be empowered to shape the way in which their neighbourhood develops. We must and we are taking steps to ensure that seldom heard voices from the community are heard and given a chance to contribute.

Section 6 of the report talks about the Mayow Road construction. Work will commence – all being well – in November 2020 with completion by March 2022.