8 January - Bellway Homes promotes tower blocks. Bexley Council promotes failure
Bellway Homes which is building 518 flats in Bexleyheath (known as The Eastside Quarter) issued a Press Release this week which was dutifully regurgitated by what remains of our local press yesterday. I read it and laughed out loud.
“London is easily accessible with Bexleyheath train station a short drive
away, which takes you into the city in less than 40 minutes.”
How funny is that?
The anti-car Mayor of London wanted to see zero car
parking spaces on Eastside but Bexley Council managed to get the number up to 208 but only
by rushing through the planning permission before Khan’s new dictat came into
play. Some might argue that the scheme should not have been approved at all but
Khan would likely have over-ruled such a decision. In the event the scheme was approved
only after Councillor
Val Clark craftily managed to cast two votes in favour.
As for “less than 40 minutes” I’m not sure where 208 new commuters would park at
Bexleyheath station which is the best part of a mile away and where are these fast trains anyway?
A quick consultation with National Rail Enquiries shows one train to Cannon Street that takes 37 minutes
followed by two which take 42 minutes - on repeat throughout most the day.
The Eastside
site has a long history not all of which reflects well on Bexley Council.
Ten years ago the Council Offices were where these new flats are being built and
they were well past their sell-by date. Two hundred yards down the road Tesco had
plans to build a supermarket which was not favoured by local residents. After
turning their back on the cheapest option which was to spend close to £30
million on rebuilding the Civic Offices on Broadway, Bexley Council arranged a
profitable swap, They sold their Broadway site for £25 million.
At a projected £36 million (ultimately £42 million)
refurbishing the old Woolwich building was not a totally unreasonable decision.
It placed the new Tesco store in a much more convenient position and still kept the Civic Offices close to the town centre.
In the event the
Tesco plans for a huge superstore with 550 free town centre
parking places came to naught when Tesco ran into financial difficulties and sold it on to Sports Direct for - reports are - rather more than
the £25 million they paid for it.
They had
plans for shops and a gymnasium and those plans also hit the buffers. Along
came Bellway Homes intent on making a profit from the misfortune and mistakes of
the previous owners, none more so than Bexley Council.
Bexley’s mistake was not writing an overage clause into the original sale
agreement. Former Labour Councillor Munir Malik was always going on about it but
he had somehow incurred the wrath of Bexley Conservatives long before I began to
take an interest in their juvenile infighting. If only Bexley’s Finance Officers had had the foresight
to
take a cut from any subsequent selling of their site taxpayers would have seen some benefit. Labour
Councillors Stefano Borella and
Seán Newman continued to criticise that decision long after
Councillor Malik left the Council in May 2014.
More than six years went by before a Cabinet Member for Finance came up with
an
official excuse for failing to profit from Tesco’s land sale. Councillor Don
Massey claimed that Tesco sold to Sports Direct as a loss and and Sports Direct
also lost out on the Bellway sale. Even if that is true - and I am not sure I
would trust Massey to tell me the date - does it excuse the original decision?
Informants claiming to be in the know are sure his story was less than truthful.
Hindsight has shown that Bexley Council made several wrong decisions over their
Civic Offices. They could have had a purpose built town hall in Broadway for
around ten million pounds less than the far from ideal bodge which is 2 Watling
Street and the centre of Bexleyheath would not be dominated by a 12 storey tower block.
They could have benefited from rising property prices.
The Eastside prices currently vary between £267,000 and £401,000 and if the average is
close to £300k. it tots up to about £160 million. Who in Bexley Council will be
profiting from that? Not resident taxpayers that’s for sure, but most of the
people who took the decision to forego an overage clause are still at Bexley
Council are profiting from their failures by being promoted - either within Bexley Council or by heading up BexleyCo.