Southwark council ‘recklessly’ wasted £3.7m on aborted rooftop extension plans

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

A town hall spent £3.7 million investigating if it was safe to build flats on top of people’s homes before abandoning the idea.

Southwark council dropped plans to add extra floors to blocks of flats on nine estates across the borough in July.

A Freedom of Information request by Southwark Liberal Democrats revealed the Labour-run council spent millions on surveys and investigations of buildings where the new homes were planned.

As of July, the council had shelled out £3,753,685 on the discontinued rooftop development plans.

Councillor Victor Chamberlain, leader of Southwark’s Lib Dem group, blasted the council’s spending as ‘reckless.’

He said: “Splashing more than £3 million on an indefinitely paused rooftop development programme calls into serious question Labour’s decision-making when it comes to taxpayer money.

“There can be a place for rooftop developments amid Southwark’s housing crisis, but recklessly spending millions on a programme that might now never actually happen makes me wonder if they ever thought these projects through.”

The council said it paused the plans for rooftop homes after taking into account residents’ views and soaring construction costs.

“Nine estates across the borough were originally earmarked for development: Clifton estate, Gaywood estate, Lancaster estate, Nunhead estate, Pennack Road estate, Rennie estate, Rockingham estate, Southampton Way estate and Unwin and Friary estate.

The new homes created by the plans would have gone towards the council’s target of building 11,000 new social rent homes in the borough by 2043.

Southwark said it could still go on to build the rooftop flats in the future and that “the money spent on these works will provide a strong basis to proceed with building rooftop extensions in future.”

The council added that the money spent on the rooftop schemes accounts for 1 per cent of the £2.2 billion it has set aside for house building. There are over 16,500 people waiting for a council home in Southwark and 3,400 families living in temporary accommodation.

Labour’s Cllr Darren Merrill, cabinet member for council homes and homelessness, said: “We explored the option of building rooftop extensions on estates across the borough to provide desperately-needed new council homes for our residents. We are doing everything in our power to build as many new council homes as we can.

“To investigate the possibility of building rooftop extensions, we had to undertake extensive surveys and investigation works on the existing buildings to guarantee that these would be safe and structurally sound. Across the entire programme, these works totalled significant amounts of money, but they were necessary to get certainty on whether we could build these types of homes.”

Pictured top: Southampton Way estate resident, Koz Khor, was against the rooftop home plans (Picture: Robert Firth)