Aitch Group won planning permission this week to build more than 200 flats on a former factory site in Leyton, reports Josh Mellor, Local Democracy Reporter
A developer building more than 200 flats next to Leyton Jubilee Park has blamed extra fire safety measures for its failure to meet the borough’s target for affordable homes.
This week, Waltham Forest Council’s planning committee approved plans for 213 new flats in blocks of up to 17 storeys high in Marsh Lane, which will replace a factory formerly occupied by Percy Ingle, despite the fact that only a fifth of the flats will be affordable.
The council sets a target of 50% affordable housing for large developments but, at the meeting on 2nd May, developer Aitch Group said it could not afford to meet this goal because the scheme is facing a “sizable deficit”.
This is due, councillors heard, to the last-minute cost of adding extra staircases in the taller buildings to improve fire safety. Under new rules being proposed by the government in response to the Grenfell Tragedy, second staircases could soon become a requirement in new residential buildings over 30m.
Speaking for Aitch Group, Phoebe Jones said that, despite the need for extra stairs “reducing viability”, her employer was “still including” 20% affordable housing. A total of 32 flats in the scheme will be affordable and, of these, 23 will be let at low-cost London Affordable Rent and the rest will be sold under the Shared Ownership scheme.
Planning documents submitted to the council show Aitch Group expects to make an estimated profit of £14million on the project, around 13.7% of the approximately £63million cost of construction.
Council planning officer Pedro Rizo said the council had looked at “different scenarios” to make up for the loss of space from the extra stairwells, including increasing the height of buildings or reducing industrial floorspace. However, the planning team – which advised the committee to approve the scheme – decided that cutting affordable housing would be the “best way forward”.
The project will instead go through “open book” financial reviews by the council during construction and once the scheme is complete, which will assess whether more affordable housing can be included last-minute or if cash payments should be made to the council by the developer to fund building them elsewhere.
Councillors also heard objections from three of the scheme’s future neighbours, who raised concerns about how the towers would overlook Leyton Jubilee Park just next door.
However, planning officer Pedro claimed the park would not see any overshadowing and that new open spaces around the development would be “an improvement” for the neighbourhood.
In his report on the scheme, he wrote: “The slender design approach would provide a greater sense of space between the tall building element and its immediate surroundings and would also serve as a landmark ‘marker entrance’ to the Leyton Jubilee Park.”
Committee chair Jenny Gray said the scheme was “really impressive” but added that she was “so disappointed” by the lack of affordable housing. The four Labour committee members voted in favour of the scheme while Conservative member John Moss voted against.
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