StART has signed a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to formally co-operate with City Hall in developing the site.
The Memorandum formally establishes the structures of decision making between City Hall and StART for developing the site, following the Mayor’s purchase, announced in May 2018[1].
The Memorandum formalises the working relationship between City Hall and StART and confirms both will work together towards:
• Ensuring the community can influence and shape the process at all stages of delivery;
• Identifying opportunities for the community to own, steward or manage some of the homes and the neighbourhood;
• Ensuring benefits of the scheme to the local area are legally protected.
The Memorandum also confirms the commitment to create an exemplar housing scheme, delivering at least 50% genuinely affordable homes, which can be used in future as an example to others that such schemes are financially viable and deliverable. The site was previously set to be offered for a development with only 14% so-called affordable housing. StART welcomes the GLA’s purchase because it will achieve this step-change in providing more homes that local people in Haringey can access. However, StART also encourages City Hall to go further still towards making this a truly community-led development.
StART’s CONCERNS/COMPROMISES
Tony Wood from StART said:
“We have signed the Memorandum of Understanding as a formal community commitment to collaboration with the Mayor for the St Ann’s site. It is not a document we are totally happy with but we have agreed to sign it to move the process forward. It is a significant milestone for the development of 800 homes on this important site in the centre of Haringey. We recognise it’s the first time the Mayor has established a direct working relationship with a community-led housing project and we welcome the start of this new partnership to contribute to solving London’s housing affordability crisis.
We know that working with the community will create challenges and new ways of working for City Hall, but we hope it can take on these challenges as the rewards will be huge. The Mayor has expressed a strong commitment to community-led housing. We recognise that this site is on a scale unprecedented for community-led projects but there is huge appetite for doing development differently. We believe our collaboration with City Hall can and should ensure that our vision, based on and designed around the community’s priorities through a transparent democratic process, is now realised in a groundbreaking development.
We look forward to working with the GLA, LB Haringey, NHS and most of all our local communities to ensure the development will deliver the real benefits in terms of housing, health and environment for all the community have already identified, prioritised and demanded.
Now that the LB Haringey have formally voted to reject the HDV we hope that this partnership between the GLA and StART heralds an approach to viable development that is led by the community and based on community needs.”
[1] See StART Press Release May 14 2018: http://www.startharingey.co.uk/blog/the-london-mayor-has-bought-the-st-ann-s-hospital-site