Croydon readies £100m worth of housing deals

Croydon council’s development firm Brick by Brick is gearing up to go to the market for over 30 residential schemes worth a combined £100m.

The private firm is expected to issue tenders for three packages of work in just over a month’s time.

Two of the packages comprise over 12 sites each and are worth £50m apiece, with a third smaller package worth £10m made up of three sites.

Brick by Brick’s overall pipeline includes over 1,500 homes at College Green, which also incorporates the redevelopment of 1960s-built arts venue Fairfield Halls, as well as 100 homes at a site in Coulsden.

The revamp of Fairfield Halls and College Green is part of the Fair Field masterplan, on which consultants Aecom, Arcadis and WSP have worked, along with architecture practice Make.

The firm has planning approval for nine of the sites so far but expects the rest to navigate the planning system by the end of next month.

The new homes have been designed by eight architectural practices - Coffey, HTA, May, Michael Richards, Pitman Tozer, Stitch, vPPR and the council’s own in-house firm.

Colm Lacey, chief executive of Brick by Brick, said the developer was hoping to appeal to local builders and smaller firms that might be considering making the step up into main contracting.

He added that while Croydon was not concerned about any impact from Brexit on its pipeline or home valuations, it was concerned about costs.

Lacey said: “We are looking to use local supply chains and have designed the new homes to be compatible with timber panelised systems to cut down on products coming from Europe and construction price inflation.”