Southwark (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Southwark Council has announced a sweeping review of every major works project completed in the past decade to assess spending, performance and accountability.
After plans to renovate existing buildings and add 44 new rooftop apartments were shelved due to growing construction costs, residents of Rotherhithe’s Chilton Grove Estate have been left in a state of uncertainty for years.
Opposition council members claim that residents have been forced to live on construction sites and are facing exorbitant costs while major renovations remain unfinished.
Southwark Council Cabinet Member for Council Homes, Michael Situ, said:
“The first thing to say is sorry to the residents who were in the building itself. I think if you’re a resident in the building and if you’ve had to experience the number of years where not only were you living on a building site, but you weren’t absolutely sure when things [would] be resolved, that would have caused a lot of anxiety and distress to the residents.”
Cllr Situ stated at a meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday night (October 8) that all significant construction projects beginning in 2015 would undergo reviews.
According to Ryan Collymore, Director of Repairs and Maintenance, the Chilton Grove Estate’s main construction project also encountered COVID-19 complications, which resulted in delays and delayed decisions regarding the cladding and other modifications.
Mr Collymore added:
“When the contractor left the site in 2021, they left the site in a state and it was a very, very bad experience for our residents. The fact the contractor left the site meant we had to abandon the rooftop homes and also the corner extension that we planned to do.”
According to Mr. Collymore, the initial proposal to leaseholders was that they would not be responsible for the rooftop repairs because the new home construction would cover the landscaping and cladding. According to him, the council has agreed to compensate the residents £4,600 because the work did not proceed.
Mr. Collymore continued by stating that certain repairs, such as those to the roof covering, concrete, lighting, and some cladding, will still be carried out with a start date of January or February 2026.
Although it sounded as though the matter had been handled, many of the residents he spoke with expressed little trust or certainty in the current state of affairs, according to Cllr. Victor Chamberlain, the leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition in Southwark.
He explained that he had spoken with one Chilton Grove leaseholder, who claimed she could be facing a £60,000 bill on top of the £40,000 one she had already paid for the works.
Cllr Chamberlain said:
“We’ve had Canada Estate, Devon Mansions, Kirby Estate, Arica House, Consort Estate and now Chilton Grove Estate; the list just seems to be systemic and endless about the culture in a department that doesn’t seem to be able to get on top of these issues. It’s always left to residents to do the digging and opposition councillors to try and challenge the council to do better.”
Hakeem Osinaike, Director of Housing, said:
“The reality is, all of these schemes mentioned by Cllr Chamberlain and which this [committee] is very much aware of, you know Chilton Grove which we are talking about today, Canada Estate, Kirby Estate and Devon Mansions – all of those schemes happened around the same time, between 2020 and 2022.
In fact, some of them started before that around Covid-19 – it’s not an excuse but the point is they are all historical, that is not the way we do things in housing now.”
He added:
“We have made promises to you, the recommendations that you’ve made we’ve accepted in full each time and officers have gone away and we have been taking those actions to make sure that what residents have experienced on this estate they will never have to experience them again.
They are not pleasant, I’m not sitting here excusing it at all, in fact it’s embarrassing for me that I have to come here each time and talk about the same thing so it’s important that I never have to do it again.”
With the council’s new online service, Southwark leaseholders and freeholders may now view and download their service charge information.
Residents can now go online and see a detailed price breakdown of their charges for 2024/25 by logging online to MySouthwark and looking at their account. This was in response to long-standing complaints from leaseholders about being charged high fees for vague services or works, with inadequate transparency around what the charges were for.
Cllr Situ added:
“Our pioneering new online service will make it simpler for leaseholders and freeholders to check their charges. Anyone can now use their smartphone or computer to see what they owe, plan payments, and check if there are any charges they want to query or talk to us about.”
Which external auditors or oversight bodies will the council appoint?
The national scheme is the default choice for Council’s Principal Local Government Bodies to appoint qualified, registered auditors for a period of five years, from 2023/24 to 2027/28.
The external auditors appointed will prepare an independent audit of the Council’s accounts and assess compliance with Best Value during the audit, under relevant codes of practice and associated statutory responsibilities.
External auditors are regulated by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), following its establishment by the Act as the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA), a body with greater regulation.
The council itself has limited and indirect control over the appointed audit service provider when it comes to the appointment and oversight of the quality framework to provide independence.