'Most expensive' council homes go under the hammer

At what point will the council realise that they can't build more council housing if they keep selling off their land? I don't care how much this building can be sold for, it could be a home (or several) for someone on the housing list. They keep talking about all these new housing they are going to build, but where, and when? Perhaps LBS will just sell off the whole of this area and a new small (private) borough will be created.

What, so you would prefer for them to house one family in luxury, rather than use that ridiculous amount of money to house the many?

Who said it would house one family? And who said it would be luxury accommodation. The council own the property so it is not costing them £2.3m. Of course they would have to spend some money on making it into apartments and they have millions waiting to be spent on providing more council accommodation.

The houses are listed and not suitable for high density flats and they require a lot of work to be habitable. Demolishing them and rebuilding would be completely wrong too. I personally hope someone takes them on as a labour of love and restores them but that is probably too much to hope for. I don't agree with selling off land and buildings wholesale but in this particular case, selling them is by far the most sensible option.

breaking: the buildings have been occupied http://t.co/63EALWzuKi

Does anyone know what the council is doing with all the cash it has received from all the multi million developments in terms of social housing
Developers have seemingly thrown cash at the council so as not to include the appropriate percentage of housing within these river side developments but have not seen any houses being built with the cash reserves they must have built up.

Southwark as a council owns a large proportion of the land in the borough - anything between 45% and 60% depending on which calculation you look at. Whilst some of that is protected green space, it also demonstrates that as a landowner we have the capacity to build right across the borough. Only last week we agreed to build new council housing in Cathedrals Ward as part of the second phase of our new build programme.

The economic reality is that we have to try and use our resources to maximise the benefits for the residents of our borough. The high value of this one property will help us build at least 12 new council homes of various sizes. SE1 is changing whatever we do as a council - it is time for some people to embrace that change and ensure that it brings benefits to the area rather than opposing everything for the sake of it.

BTW PeterJohn
My comments are not negative in anyway but given that NEO development is completed I would assume that the council should have by now have at least dug some foundations in another part of the borough?

Just sold for £2.9m.

PeterJohn wrote:

...The economic reality is that we have to try and use our resources to maximise the benefits for the residents of our borough..

How much did you get for the land the Heygate Estate was on and how many council homes were lost as a result of that plan? How many new council or really affordable homes will be built on that site in the future?