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STITCH-UP COSTS £4M
Historic home sale costs you, the tax-payer, millions
A HIGHLY controversial deal to sell off historic buildings in King’s Cross to developers was botched with the council potentially losing out on millions of pounds, surveyors claimed last night (Wednesday).
The Town Hall jumped at the chance to sell the Stanley Buildings to developers Argent Limited last week for £3 million, largely because part of the sale price included a £1 million bonus payment. It was claimed the extra cash on the table put the property out of reach for housing associations that might have been interested in refurbishing the listed buildings to create cheap homes and ease Camden’s waiting list for accommodation.
Argent instead paid the extra “premium” because it was accepted that the buildings are crucial to its plans to revamp the railway lands with a proposal to demolish one of them and re-align St Pancras Road.
But the deal was under the microscope again yesterday (Wednesday) when a surveyor said that the Town Hall could have squeezed as much as £7 million out of Argent – a mark up of more than 50 per cent on a sale price that was trumpeted by officials last week as the best possible available.
Ian Lerner, who runs a prominent estate agency and has been credited for revitalising Greater London House in Mornington Crescent and warehouse neighbourhoods in Clerkenwell, said the council had miscalculated the deal.
He said the final sale price was worked out on the building’s existing use and not the possible gain Argent can get out of it by demolition and redevelopment.
He said: “£7 million should be the ballpark figure. The council should have worked out how much it was worth to Argent. The £3 million valuation is what they put on it on the basis of somebody going in and refurbishing them and using them as flats but Argent will be knocking one of them down and building a much bigger building with greater commercial space.”
The deal has already been criticised on two fronts. Firstly, objectors were angry that the price was kept secret until a leak to the New Journal revealed all, and secondly that the sale was agreed before campaigners hoping to save Stanley from the bulldozers had been able to argue their case at a judicial review, due to begin later this month.
A High Court order forbid Camden from demolishing the Stanley Buildings – but not selling them.
Under Argent’s plans the north building will be demolished, while the south building will be embedded into an office block.
Mr Lerner said: “The council should have looked at the planning application for the buildings and what represents to Argent before agreeing this deal.”
The latest controversy over the Stanley deal coincides with a planning meeting tonight (Thursday) when specific designs for the site will start to be considered. Effectively the start of detailed planning applications for the overall £2 billion development, specific details regarding St Pancras Road will be discussed. Campaign group King’s Cross Think Again said it was too early for such a process.
Spokesman Michael Edwards said: “Local people have always been promised they would be consulted in the normal way about detailed applications for this scheme. Yet there is the first decision being smuggled through, without any public consultation at all. We shall ask Councillors to wait till a full consultation has been done.”
Relations between KXTA and supporters of the development are at their most stretched.
Writing in Estates Gazette, a property journal, former Conservative environment minister John Gummer said on Tuesday that the objectors were “self-obsessed”.
He said their challenge made his ‘blood boil’, adding: “Those self-regarding campaigners are determined to foist their views on us all and will use every way open to them to stall this exciting development.”
Council leader Councillor Keith Moffitt rejected claims that the deal was reached in secret.
He said: “We took this decision in public in the Council Chamber, which is not some smoky back room, but the very open decision making space of Camden Council.” |
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