What we showed you in August 2024

Planning Approval

Following a detailed redesign of the proposals during 2024, to incorporate the governments building safety regulation changes and a stand-alone community centre and mosque, the council’s Development Committee gave their support to the application on the 12th June, recommending that planning permission be granted. This was a key milestone to cross and our thanks go to PRP Architects for all their hard work to get the application submitted on target.

Selection of a developer partner

In March 2024 the process began to select a preferred developer partner to work with us to price and deliver the construction stage of this project. This procurement process is an exercise of tendering (advertising and requesting bids), evaluating and appointing a chosen developer to work with the council. The council allowed eight weeks for potential contractors to return their bids. However bidders asked us for another four weeks to complete this bids before submitting these to the council. The closing date for the council to receive the bids was the 26th June.

The council is now in the process of clarifying and evaluating the bids. This means that the project team and other relevant teams in the council, such as finance and legal colleagues look at the content of the bids and engage in dialogue with the bidders to explore the detail of their proposals, before scoring each bidders submission. As always your Residents’ Panel has been involved along the way and the Panel chose two representatives to form part of the evaluation panel scoring the non-commercial elements of the bids. Our thanks to Robi and Eric for giving up their time so generously. Once the council has completed the evaluation process, it will appoint the highest scoring organisation, we expect this to take place in September. However, before the winning bidder can be announced publicly, there will be a period of commercial negotiation over the contract, followed by a mandatory 2 week ‘stand still period’ when all bidders are informed of the outcome and can raise any queries they may have. Hopefully an announcement will be possible in late October, but we’ll be intouch as soon as we’re able.

Buy-Backs update & selling your home back to the council

The leasehold buyback scheme is fully under way with nine resident and non-resident leasehold buybacks already complete. There are many more in the pipeline going through the selling process. As always please do make use of the Rehousing Guides which can be found within the Rehousing Documents section of this page. It is also worth keeping the details of JLL (the council’s appointed valuer) at hand for when you are ready to have your property valued: contact Tim Surry on 07548 099 645 or email tim.surry@jll.com

Timeline

*To view a larger image of the timeline, please right click on image and select magnify image.