Northern Line extension vs. Affordable Housing for Nine Elms - £58 million funding gap

Last summer, a Development Infrastructure Funding Study (DIFS) was conducted concerning the new Vauxhall, Nine Elms and Battersea regeneration area.   It contains information about a vasty array of transport, health, education etc. requirements for the set up of the new "Nine Elms" town.  As soon as I can, I will disseminate the contents of that document, but in the meantime, chapter 12 (the section about 106 agreements) has been published by the Mayor of London and is now being consulted upon.  Although this chapter is rather dull and concerns Section 106 monies etc. the comments on it are likely to be very important to groups that are concerned with social housing and how the demographic of the new VNEB is to be constituted.

The matter of affordable housing considerably affects the levels of funding available for infrastructure.  It's recognised by the Funding Study that asking developers to provide a high percentage of affordable housing will affect the levels of contributions they can make towards the Northern Line Extension.  The government has not announced whether or how much they will make available in grants for the implementation of affordable housing, which adds confusion to the proceedings.  Chapter 12 of the Development Infrastucture Study makes it clear that Infrastucture is to be given the priority over affordable housing.  Whilst Lambeth Council would normally seek 40% or 50% affordable housing, in this instance, the study makes clear that 15% is more likely to be an adequate target:

"the 15% affordable housing option is considered the most appropriate for the majority of the opportunity area. However, the affordable housing level required by Lambeth will normally be 40%, although for sites within close proximity to the proposed station at Nine Elms and those which may not be suitable for family housing, the affordable housing level will normally be 15%."

It seems to me that this places the community in a double bind.  If anything greater than 15% affordable housing is requested, the developers may turn around and say that they cannot provide enough funding for the Northern Line Extension.  Since the Northern Line Extension is required for the whole project to go ahead (particularly the Battersea part), there appears to be no grounds for argument.  What do readers think?  Your views on the document should be sent to: mayor@london.gov.uk with the email subject heading, "VNEB S106" no later than March 21st.

Despite contributions to be made by the developers to the intrastructure, there is still a funding gap of £58 million (assuming economic recovery), and consequently it's recognised that some infrastructure projects will have to be prioritised over others.  The document notes:

It is not yet possible to determine which projects will be prioritised. However whilst it is recognised that Northern Line Extension is vital to the success of the Opportunity Area, a number of other transport and non-transport infrastructure projects are also required to make the development successful.

This raises questions in my mind about the level of commitment to the Northern Line Extension.  What will happen if the £58 million hole cannot be plugged?

Developments within the VNEB have been excluded from having to make contributions to the Crossrail project on account of needing to contribute to other infrastructure eg. the Northern Line Extension.  Indeed, many of the developers at Elephant are objecting that they're so far away from Crossrail, they shouldn't be forced to make payments, so it seems sensible to ensure that the VNEB funding goes to the Northern Line Extension.  Developments that lie on the river itself in what is being called "Zone A" (orange area on the above diagram) will be obliged to make larger contributions than developments in "Zone B" (purple area on the above diagram.  It looks as though most of the Vauxhall developments lie in Zone B.  A contribution tariff is displayed in the full version of the Section 106/CIL study. 

Wandsworth Council and transport / town centre - Part 5 of 5 from Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Exhibition VNEB

Finally, just for the record, I wanted to add the final in the series of VNEB exhibition boards. There is so much going on locally that it's difficult to keep up! These boards mostly show Wandsworth Council's outlines on the VNEB, which is importance since the majority of the VNEB falls on their patch.  In my view, the boards aren't quite as useful as the ones that Lambeth Council supplied on account of the fact that they don't summarise all of the buildings that have been granted planning permission to date.  Maybe there are too many to list (or they've not yet been declared), but without an idea of that, it's difficult to imagine the volume of housing and commercial space that will hit the area:

This board clearly outlines the scale of the development.  16,000 new homes means the arrival of a vast number of new residents.  I fail to see how 20,000 - 25,000 new jobs will be created when industrial space is being reduced, but perhaps we'll all be surprised:

Note the mention of the "linear park", linking Vauxhall to Battersea.  This will not provide adequate green space given the likely population density, even once the parks at Spring Gardens and Vauxhall have been taking into account:

The additional 800 primary school aged children will be catered for by /one/ primary school.  Goodness knows whether the other primary schools in the locality can be expanded to meet demand.  The 600 secondary school aged pupils will presumably have to be placed in existing schools.  I'm not sure whether a school feasibility study has been completed, but this /sounds/ a tad unrealistic even to my unknowledgable ears.  Battersea gets a library.  Vauxhall probably won't (but then, libraries aren't really in vogue at the moment, are they?):

Transport.   One of my favourite topics!  This poster indicates improved bus services, new bus routes and increased bus frequency.  It also shows enhanced railway stations (but doesn't mention enhanced services) so this probably just means the stations will get a make over (see here for Vauxhall rail station refurbishment).  Cyclists are mentioned here in terms of "better provision", but it doesn't clearly outline cycle lanes or segregated cycle paths on roads or anything like that.  There's mention of the proposed Northern line tube to Battersea, with an added station at Nine Elms (my favourite option, but it probably wouldn't do much to relieve congestion Kennington tube station).  However, I think the huge cost of this project will eventually mean that the area will get a tram (which is one of the proposed options in the giant VNEB consultation document).  I suppose another option might be to add a new National Rail station between Queenstown and Vauxhall, but looking at the map, this would probably be too far from the power station to meet the new residents' needs:

Here's a model, which I think illustrates how nasty and oversized the new St George tower will look. The architecture is not even particularly imaginative, just a round tall tower.  This model is not illustrative of all of the buildings planned for Vauxhall.  For some reason, some of these have been missed off.  The orange line on the plan is the new proposed tube route:

Just for the record, here are the last few signs up at the exhibition, and completes this rather long and tedious set of plans and photos in the VNEB series.

Part 1 (Ballymore section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 2 (Lambeth Council section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 3 (Tideway Wharf section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 4 (Sainsbury's Towers section) of VNEB exhibition is here.

Battersea Tube Home?

There's an article in today's Kennington news journal about the proposed tube extension to Battersea, which would apparently be paid for by some developers who want to put a vile building next to the lovely (but somewhat derelict) power station.

Here is a picture of the lovely Battersea power station, taken from Wikipedia:



Here is a picture of the vile building (with the power station to the right) that some people want to place in Battersea:



Now, as a self-confessed public transport geek, it would be grand to see a development of the Northern Line from Battersea to Kennington, but I want to raise a few issues that I think may be shared by other Londoners:

1. The wonderful development of a new tube station at Battersea, funded through private finance, is a waste of money when one considers that the tube could be extended much furthur than just one stop. Once one has begun digging underground, and arranged labour, material, machinery and civil engineers, one might as well go a lot furthur south. If TFL could get government money for tube expansion (or even tram lines), we wouldn't have to be so grateful to private finance for such suggestions as new bits of tube.

2. Extending the tube by one segment of line and one station just does not justify the monstrous building that has been suggested. I'm actually in favour of new housing/buildings in London, but I have one condition for all buildings. Buildings should not be considerably higher than those already surrounding them. SE11 has got off lightly because of the historic nature of its buildings, but poor Elephant and Castle is about to be dwarfed. So if you want the rocket monstrosity meant for Battersea, put it in Canary Wharf, not Battersea. I do not object to new housing, but I don't understand why new housing has to be very tall skyscrapers. Such skyscrapers are simply not designed to promote community or shared life, and I think that they're a really bad idea.

3. If the height of the building were not bad enough, there is the beautiful power station to consider. Would anybody really contemplate building the rocket next to Buckingham Palace, or Big Ben? No. Of course not. But because this is South London, and the area is in need of regeneration, it's considered that anything goes...

I really am in favour of the tube station at Battersea, (although I have no idea how long it might shut Kennington tube and/or the Northern line for) and in favour of regeneration (if it can be proven to benefit the disenfranchised of Battersa), but that building is too large a price to pay.

And finally... I discovered a really great little map, posted by somebody on the Urban75 forum, which shows all of the proposed transport links in London by 2016 if, by some miracle all of the funding were secured. The proposed Cross River Tram line is in a groovy purple colour.