Agenda item

Report of the Director of Placemaking and Housing.  To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Council Housebuilding, Placemaking and Local Economy.

The Cabinet Member for Council Housebuilding, Placemaking and Local Economy introduced the report which sought approval of an indicative capital project budget of £1.7m for the development of the design of the Selby Urban Village project to RIBA 3, inclusive of internal re-charges and additional services, and to award a contract to to Karakusevic Carson Architects (KCA) to the sum of £757,172 to lead a multidisciplinary design team in the design of the Selby Urban Village Masterplan.

In response to questions from Councillor da Costa, the following was noted:

-       The project would be taken forward in a two-phase approach so that funding from the Levelling Up fund could be used to take forward the sports and community facilities element, and allow officers time to develop the housing element separately.

-       When developing the housing phase, all processes would follow the normal gateway processes to ensure that the scheme was as efficient as possible and viable for development.

RESOLVED to

1.    Approve an indicative capital project budget of £1.7m for the development of the design of the Selby Urban Village project to RIBA 3, inclusive of internal re-charges and additional services.

2.    In accordance with CSOs 7.01. (b) and 9.07.1 (d). approve the contract award to Karakusevic Carson Architects (KCA) to the sum of £757,172 to lead a multidisciplinary design team in the design of the Selby Urban Village Masterplan.

3.    Note the two-phase approach to delivery of the Selby Urban Village project.

Reasons for decision

Since 2018, the Council have been working with the Selby Trust to develop the Selby Urban Village masterplan. Located in North Tottenham, the masterplan seeks to repurpose an old school site and the Bull Lane playing fields, to deliver a mixed-use development that will deliver new council homes and community infrastructure for the local community.

In early 2022, the Council bid for Levelling Up Fund (LUF) funding to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). For the bid, the Council split the masterplan into two phases. Phase one would see the delivery of a new community centre and sporting facilities and phase two the delivery of c.200 new Council homes.

A condition of the LUF monies was for any awarded money to be spent by March 2025. At the time, following coproduction with Selby Trust and numerous rounds of engagement with the local community and stakeholders, the project was approaching planning submission with a design well advanced into RIBA 3, meaning that this condition could be met.

In January 2023, DLUHC awarded the Council £20m LUF grant for phase one of the Selby Urban Village scheme. Following the LUF funding announcement, in the context of a substantially more challenging delivery environment, the scheme still has faced significant cost pressures. As a result, a significant cost optimisation exercise has been carried out for both phases of the scheme to ensure a deliverable scheme is submitted for planning.

Currently, the whole scheme is at RIBA 3, but elements of the scheme will be required to go back to RIBA 2 due to significant design changes required to reduce cost. This includes Phase 1 - community infrastructure, and phase 2 – housing which will additionally be amended to address changes to building regulations following the Grenfell tragedy.

As such, this report asks that Cabinet approve the £1.7m budget to progress with the development of the Selby Urban Village masterplan to RIBA stage 3. This will enable officers to continue to develop the design of the masterplan with the community and local organisations, with the aim of submitting a planning application for the scheme in Winter 2023.

This report also seeks approval to award a contract to KCA to lead the multidisciplinary design team to develop the design of the masterplan to RIBA 3 and submit a planning application for the scheme. This award would be made via a direct award through the Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) Development Framework.

The report further notes a two stage approach to the scheme. The first phase of the scheme will be delivered through the General Fund capital programme; including the sports, leisure, work/community space, parks and biodiversity investment. The second phase, the housing site on the site of the current Selby Centre will be delivered instead within the Housing Revenue Account. This is to allow a clear focus on the initial delivery of phase 1, and the subsequent separate delivery of phase 2. By separating the phases out in this way there is no need for the General Fund to forward fund the delivery of the homes in phase 2, and instead these costs can be met by the Housing Revenue Account in due course.

Alternative options considered

The £1.7m budget has been calculated and tested through a project forecasting exercise. Not approving the spend of the budget will prevent the scheme from being developed to a deliverable design, therefore risking the overall deliverability of the scheme, the LUF funding, and the associated reputational risks of non delivery.

The Council could have pressed ahead with planning and undertaken a value engineering exercise post-planning with a contractor. However, given the scale of the challenge, this could lead to the scheme having to return to planning as material changes to design could occur. This could lead to additional costs and delays leading to reputational damage.

The Council could have competitively tendered for a new multidisciplinary design team. This could have increased programme delay, placing the LUF at risk and resulted in a loss of continuity if an alternative supplier were to have been successful.

The proposals set out in this report mitigate against the risks identified above and ensure that the experience of the existing architects is brought to bear on the revisions to the scheme design.