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Cllr Ralph Scott |
Get ready for the sale of the century
A vision to unlock the borough’s wealth? Or is it the Town Hall’s North Sea oil moment?
AN unprecedented era of property sell-offs was ushered in last night (Wednesday) as the Lib Dem and Tory coalition running Camden Town Hall unveiled their plans to “rationalise” up to 100 council-owned sites – and launch an ambitious programme to rebuild community facilities.
Every saleable scrap of land in the borough will be picked over as the administration embarks on what Town Hall resources chief Cllr Ralph Scott called a “vision to unlock the wealth” of Camden’s historic property portfolio – and critics described as a “Domesday Book” of strippable assets.
By selling off “dilapidated” buildings and “unwanted” land, the council proposes to raise cash to build “community campuses” –new facilities for St Pancras Community Centre, a rebuilt Lismore Circus in Gospel Oak – and regenerate the borough’s most deprived areas.
But there are scant details on what sites will go. A handful of sites – the Highgate Day Centre, the St Pancras boxing club, shops and a play centre in Queen’s Crescent, council offices in Weedington Road, Gospel Oak – have been earmarked for sale.
Council officials have only said that an “intensive review” has produced “a list of approximately one hundred opportunities to improve rationalise and rejuvenate some of the less well appointed parts of the portfolio”. Cllr Scott said the review – which has already involved councillors and community groups – could transform Camden.
He said: “It’s not about going out there to make money out of Camden’s property portfolio, (but) property isn’t there to be hung onto for the sake of it; it is there to provide services.
“You can’t let things stand still. Residents do not want us to be spending millions of pounds of council tax money maintaining dilapidated buildings; what people want is to have excellent buildings providing excellent services.
“It is hard to know when the last time was that someone went and looked at what was happening in these (council-owned) garages, whether anyone meets in these community halls.”
Figures about the financial implications are few and far between in the proposals.
But the planning stages alone will require £3.5m of cash, before a new brick is laid, and that will come from land sales.
Cllr Scott admitted that the middle of a recession is a buyer’s market but insisted: “Property in Camden is holding up well. And this is a good time to be investing in the trades and skills that a rebuilding project entails.”
Running alongside the deeply controversial sale of council housing – five more family-sized homes, several likely to fetch more than £1m, appear in the council’s next auction in July – the sales might be expected to attract criticism.
But in the context of squeezed funding for local authorities in the future, mainstream opposition figures have raised no objections to the theory – only the execution of the scheme.
Resources scrutiny chairman and Labour councillor Theo Blackwell likened the sell-offs to Camden’s “North Sea oil moment”:
“Property is the North Sea oil of Camden. If you are disposing of a dilapidated building, where is that money going? These resources have to go into genuine investment,” he said, adding: “No other borough has the wealth of property that we have.” |
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