Croydon’s own development company is looking for partners to help it press ahead with solving the housing shortage.
Colm Lacey, the borough’s director of development, told the Develop Croydon Conference that the company intends to unlock a host of sites across the borough with a view to releasing value from the process fund other council activity.
“Eddie Lister talked about the overall need in the London plan for 1,400 homes a year to be built in Croydon,” Mr Lacey said.
On the stand: Colm Lacey presenting at the Develop Croydon Conference
“Last year there were 1,500 – the first time that many had been built here for a number of years.
“We need to deliver on schemes we’ve already got in construction, there are 1,000 or so at the moment.
“The second key challenge is around public funding. Our level of central government grant has gone down by 46 per cent over the last five years.
More for less: Colm Lacey discusses Croydon’s proposed development company
“We need to deliver more for less but we also need to be more commercial; to make more money from the things we do.”
Mr Lacey said many of the available sites were small or difficult for developers and that the new development company would look to take those on if they don’t attract interest from the market.
“It’s not all doom and gloom because we’ve got some great opportunities. Croydon has got the capacity – with 8,500 new housing starts projected over the next four of five years as well as around 23,000 new jobs.
Stark message: Colm Lacey spells out the need to build new homes
“We also have experience in delivering major projects – having delivered a lot of the £ 50m Connected Croydon programme and the New Build programme.
“The development company is a private company with the council as a sole shareholder.
“The intention is it will borrow from the council and purchase land from the council at market rate to develop a range of product that delivers what the council needs – mixed tenure housing predominantly.
Range of projects; Colm Lacey spoke of large and small schemes across the borough
“We have major projects such as Taberner House which is a 400-unit development, possibly more. The site is prepared and cleared and ready for development.
“Similarly a major regeneration of the College Green area will create upwards of 1,500-2,000 residential units so that is a very significant scheme.
“However the majority of the programme looks across the rest of the borough. Quite a lot of our smaller sites are in the other wards and we’ve identified around 70 that are for redevelopment.
“Our key message is that we’re open for business in how we deliver this.”
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