Lots of things to do for all the family, from 11am til late. We look forward to seeing you there.
11am to 3pm: Community workshops, BBQ, family activity including Community Portrait with the Mosaic Rooms, and an opportunity to drop-in and discuss the Somerleyton Road project with the team.
4pm until late: Opening event for the Brixton Street Gym / Brixton Come Together Spring Sessions with live performances from Omar, Poeticat, Lescines and Beans on Toast and a celebration of World Record Day!
There’s a lot happening on Somerleyton Road. Our new design team will be appointed soon and Number 6 is about to open its doors to a fantastic programme of events and projects.
We’re particularly excited to welcome the fabulous Brixton Street Gym brought to you by the amazing Blockworkout.
Join us at Somerleyton Road on Saturday 26 April, 11am to 3pm to find out more and have some fun. There’ll be food, something for the whole family, and some special guests!
Read more about the Somerleyton Road project here and on the Brixton Green website.
The workshop that will look at the kinds of homes we want to build on Somerleyton Road has been postponed for a few weeks. It was due to take place tonight, Thursday 6 March.
It’s a really important discussion and we weren’t quite ready with the detail. Everyone who registered should have received an email yesterday and we’ll be rescheduling very shortly.
Are you interested in visiting one of London’s largest housing regeneration developments? You can register here to join us on a FREE visit to Woodberry Down estate.
Woodberry Down Estate in Hackney is undergoing a major redevelopment involving the demolition of 1,981 homes and the construction of more than 4,600 new social rented, private, and shared ownership homes as well as a host of other amenities.
For anyone interested in designing housing schemes, this is an exciting opportunity to help develop ideas. We’ll look at how we can establish design principles, social infrastructure and long-term stewardship of developments and how to apply this to community-led regeneration in Somerleyton Road. It will also give us a chance to see a community development trust in action!
If you are interested in visiting the Woodberry Down Estate on Wednesday 5 March between 9am and 12pm register for a free ticket now. But hurry, spaces are limited.
A bus with wheelchair access will leave No. 6 Somerleyton Rd at 9am sharp.
Around 20 people attended a workshop to go through the financial model for the Somerleyton Road project. This model identifies all the costs needed to make the project happen and all the possible sources of funding.
The council’s financial advisors (Grant Thornton) took the group through the model and explained the assumptions that had been used (e.g. the construction cost for a new home would be £1200 per square metre and an additional £150 per square metre if it is built above the Victoria line tunnel. These assumptions will change as the project develops and we start firming up our requirements.
We hope that sharing the model in this helps you to get involved. We want people to understand what decisions will be based on and what impact certain requirements might have on the overall project and what we can achieve on Somerleyton Road.
For example, at the workshop people told us we should aim for high sustainability standards and we discussed the option of building passivhaus homes. These are a specific type of eco home which result in very low heating bills. These homes tend to be more expensive to build but have longer term benefits to normal housing.
Grant Thornton modelled the development using 60% of the homes at private rent levels and 40% of the homes at Council target rent levels (e.g. £94 per week for a one-bed flat. They then showed that if 100% of the new homes are Council target rent, the rent levels are not high enough to pay back the borrowing and the scheme has a financial hole of £21m.
The group agreed that a summary version of the model along with the full version should be made available so we’ll upload these to the Future Brixton website next week.
We’ll also start planning site visits to schemes elsewhere in London so we can better understand how to achieve ambitious sustainability targets without adding significant costs to the project.
A series of workshops will now be organised by focusing on key aspects of the project including design, housing mix, long term management as well as returning to the financial model.
The design team and development manager will be in place in May when the serious work of preparing the planning application will take place.
Here is a sketch produced on the night which tries to capture some of the main discussion points. Summary sheets of the financial model based on three different scenarios are available on the library page.
Sketch notes by Odd Zebra
Many of you have told us you want more information on the Financial Model for Somerleyton Road.
This workshop is aimed at people interested in how the finances of the scheme will work and how the Model will be used to help with decision-making. Our financial advisor, Leke Adebiyi (from Grant Thornton), will be running this interactive session.
At No. 6 Somerleyton Road
On Thursday 23 January 2014
From 6.30pm to 8.30pm
A procurement workshop for the Somerleyton Road project will take place on Thursday 28 November at at St Vincent’s Community Centre, Talma Road SW2 1AS from 6.30pm to 8.30pm (drop in) Instead of handing over the site to a developer, Somerleyton Road will be developed in a new way. We will appoint a design team and a development manager to work with the steering group and the community to develop the site. This drop-in event will give people the opportunity to see what we expect the design team to do and will help choose the questions for those who want to bid for the contract. An initial advert is expected to go out for the contract on 21 November and we will expect to receive bids at the beginning of February 2014. Find more information about Somerleyton Road here.
On Monday 4 November the council’s Cabinet will decide the next steps for the project. Local people have told us clearly what they need – homes they can afford, jobs and training, and a chance to build a community. We have an exciting opportunity to do things differently – involving local people in how we achieve these things.
The report proposes that the council acts as its own developer for the site, employing specialists to manage the design and build.
This means more control of what we build and the proposal is for most of the new homes to be for rent, aiming for at least 40% at council rent.
It also means the council keeps ownership of the land, the new homes and the commercial buildings, but will work with Brixton Green to look at options for a community development trust and/or cooperative(s) to own or manage these.
See the papers for the Cabinet meeting here
Over 50 people turned up to a walk in session at No. 6 Somerleyton Road last night to get on with what the short-term, or ‘meanwhile’, use of this space could be. The former meals-on-wheels kitchen is set for demolition as part of the long-term regeneration plans for the area, but we estimate we have about 18 months before this happens.
Ideas put forward last night include an outdoor space for the brilliant Block Workout, kitchen space for local caterers and food entrepreneurs, a ‘hack space’ for comedians, space for drama, art and music, a place for exchange of goods, skills or services, workshops, local history evenings, a good traditional community space for local groups and loads, loads more…
While we may not be able to accommodate all these activities, Brixton Green has asked Meanwhile Space, a social enterprise with expertise in this type of work, to draw up a business plan for the space based on the ideas received last night. If we can develop a sustainable business model for the space that covers things like management costs and utilities, the next steps will be for local volunteers and tradesmen to help fit the space out for its future use.
It will take at least 18 months before building work could start on Somerleyton Road. So in the meantime we aim to use one of the empty buildings for a variety of ‘meanwhile’ activities, such as new enterprise, arts and food growing. If you want to get involved with making ‘Number 6’ a success then please contact Brixton Green on 020 7183 5838 or visit Brixton Green. We’ll be holding a workshop to discuss ‘Number 6′ and will post the dates shortly.
