Haringey Development Vehicle HDV

What is ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’ (HDV)

It “will be established between the council and its selected partner. This is based on the 50:50 form of a joint venture vehicle, for the specific purpose of carrying out regeneration and development.”

States the ‘Memorandum of Information & Pre-Qualification Questionnaire’ for the appointment of a Strategic Investment & Development Partner to form the Haringey Development Vehicle with Haringey Council.

Fuzzy warm words pepper this document, which was used to lure developers into a bidding process. 

If you want to know what is on offer – The above Memorandum of Information document is a good place to start!

Reading it, one can’t help concluding – this plan has been in the works for a very long time, with a lot of preparatory work done to bring us to this point – At least since 2011 in my estimation. This includes rewriting favourable policies and strategic frameworks, as well as acquiring key sites to facilitate land assembly for larger developments. As per usual, public consultation or transparency are none existent…

As you can imagine such giant steps do not occur overnight… It is unclear when the marketing document ‘Memorandum of Information’ was produced, possibly sometime in 2015. 

It states on page 9: 

“The council has also created its own £50 million Acquisition Fund to acquire key sites, either to develop itself or facilitate land assembly on larger schemes.”

“The council has already laid much of the important groundwork for bringing forward its developable land within the Borough, through the Local Plan, Site Allocations, Tottenham Strategic Regeneration Framework and Area Action Plan (AAP), and the emerging Wood Green Investment Framework and AAP.” 

To really make heads and tails of it all, one needs to trawl though a huge a mount of material…  But unfortunately the implications of that plan for peoples’ lives are all too obvious even with a minimal understanding of all the ins-and-outs.

Let me spell it out crudely; If this plan goes ahead tenants and leaseholders of 1,300 Social housing units will be turfed out (without guarantee of return), their homes demolished, fancy flats built, making way for a new population of private home owners, who will be able to commute to the city or central London under 5 stops on the new Crossrail line… 

Of course the £50 million Acquisition Fund could have been used to build 500 new council homes… but Haringey council has bigger fish to fry, their commitment to social housing is questionable to put it mildly. 

First Phase

Included in the first phase: 

• Haringey Civic Centre High Rd, N22 
• Station Road Offices: 225 Wood Green High Rd | N22, 10-48 Station Rd, N22 | 40 Cumberland Rd, N22 
• Wood Green Library and Shopping Centre, Wood Green High Rd, N22
• 33.6 hectares (33.6 sq km) within the Northumberland Park Ward, the majority of which is within council control. Predominantly housing (c 1,300 existing homes) with ancillary commercial and community uses.
• Cranwood Care Home and 102-116 Woodside Avenue, Muswell Hill N10 1.2 hectares. Former purpose built school and residential care home for the elderly built in the 1970s. In July 2011, the council approved that the care home should close in order to deliver budget savings.

This is only phase 1 – later on, other development sites will follow. I suspect it will not stop there either! 

Later on

Other development sites that may be offered at a later stage include: 

• Broadwater Farm Estate Improvement Area N17 
• Leabank / Lemsford Close N15 
• Park Grove (including Durnsford Road) N11 
• Tunnel Gardens (including Blake Road) N11 
• Turner Avenue / Brunel Walk N15 
• Reynardson Court N17 
• Demountables – Watts Close N15 and Barbara Hucklesbury N22 
• Fred Morfill House, Bounds Green Road N11 
• Land to the rear of Muswell Hill Library N10 
• Land opposite the Crematorium, Great Cambridge Road EN1 
• Commercial property adjacent to Clarendon Square N15 
• Ashley Road Depot N19

If you think this is not concerning you because your post code is not in Tottenham you could be in for a big surprise. Although not explicitly putting the whole of it’s property portfolio in the HDV basket, Haringey are giving developers a taste of what could be, by including information of it’s entire portfolio on page 13 of the above document.

“The council owns a large commercial property portfolio comprising 146 assets (offices, industrial and retail) with a value of c £48 million, generating an annual gross income of £5.2 million. The portfolio includes a mix of secondary and tertiary office, industrial and retail properties, offering various asset management and value improvement opportunities. The assets are located across the Borough.”