Issue - meetings

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 House Building, Placemaking, and Local Economy introduced the report which sought approval, to complete the delivery of six new homes for London Affordable Rent on Council Land adjacent to 318A White Hart Lane, N17. The scheme would provide six new homes towards Haringey’s pledge to build 3000 Council homes by 2031. Detailed planning permission was granted on 21 September 2020. Works started on site on September 2021. However, following repeated underperformance and entry into a Creditors Voluntary Arrangement by the appointed contractor, Cosmur Construction Ltd, the Council terminated the contract in April 2023. Subsequently, the process to appoint a new contractor to complete the development had been underway since late Spring.

Cabinet was asked to approve the appointment of contractor A to complete the building of these new Council homes.

Following consideration of exempt information at item 28,

RESOLVED

1.   To approve pursuant to the Council’s Contract Standing Orders (CSO) 9.07.01d, the appointment of Contractor A (named in the exempt part of the report)to undertake building works to complete the provision of six London Affordable Rents at land adjacent to 318 White Hart Lane for the contract sum of £1,811,630.00.

2.   To approve the works contingency sum, and an increase in the total scheme costs, as set out in Appendix 2.

3.   To approve a letter of intent up to a maximum value of £181,163 being no more than 10% of the contract sum.

Reasons for decisions

The land adjacent to 318a White Hart Lane was approved by Cabinet in July 2019 to be included in the Council’s housing delivery programme. The scheme has subsequently been granted planning consent and a works contractor, Cosmur Construction Ltd, was appointed to build the scheme in July 2021. The project encountered a number of delays due to the Contactor’s poor performance. The Council terminated the contract and took back possession of the site which currently has a partially constructed building. A tender process was initiated in late spring 2023 to appoint a new contactor to complete the development of the six London Affordable Rented homes.

The Council seeks to performance manage all Contractors by continual vigilance by the Council’s Project Manager and the oversight of both Employer’s Agent and Clerk of Works to every New Homes Build Project.

This continuous monitoring, allied to frequent Site Meetings and both formal and unannounced Site inspections, ensures that the Council is able to obtain value for money on all New Homes Projects by reducing waste on site in terms of time, materials and labour costs, and works collaboratively with our appointed Contractors to build sustainable partnership working, which enables problems to be solved in a manner that ensures the best and most cost effective outcomes for the Council and our future Tenants.

This partnership working relies on trust and transparency on both sides of the working relationship and, regrettably, this was not an approach adopted by the previous Contractor who chose not to openly identify their corporate problems and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45