Spurs freed from affordable housing obligation

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club will no longer have to contribute £16m towards the regeneration of its local community and will not have to provide any affordable housing as part of its new stadium development, under a deal backed by Haringey council last night.

Haringey council’s planning committee last night voted unanimously to back a series of changes to the football club’s existing Section 106 agreement, which were aimed at boosting the financial viability of the football club’s £400m stadium development plans, known as the Northumberland Development Project (NDP).

As Building revealed last week, under the changes Tottenham is relieved of a requirement to designate 50% of the homes built as part of its stadium development as affordable and will now be allowed to designate any residential development for the open market.

Tottenham will also be allowed to extend the total number of homes in the southern part of the scheme from 200, as set out in the initial plans, to 285.

The council report said that requiring Tottenham to provide affordable housing in the development would result in a “lower development value than if all the homes were open market” and therefore would impact on the financial viability of the scheme.

“While there is clearly a major need for new affordable homes in the borough, if the NDP scheme as a whole is not viable no new homes will be built,” the report said.

The council also backed a proposal to delete around £16m worth of contributions from Tottenham to the borough, set out in the original Section 106 agreement, for wider regeneration, public realm, education and economic development improvements to the area.

Under the changes, Tottenham will now only need to provide £470,000 - rather than £16.436m - that would go towards parking and environmental improvements.

The changes to the Section 106 agreement follow a deal, announced last month, between the mayor of London, Haringey council, and the football club that saw the council agree to contribute £9m towards improvements to the public realm alongside £18m from the mayor of London towards the wider regeneration of the area.

Daniel Levy, Tottenham Hotspur chairman, said he was delighted with the council’s unanimous decisions and was “grateful for the support of the council and those right across the community who have who expressed such enthusiasm for our plans”.

“We welcome the public sector coming together to further regeneration in an area with such a real need. We are proud of our roots in Tottenham and we are committed to seeking to deliver a world class new stadium, ” he said.

The deal with the council and the mayor follows efforts by the club to secure legacy use of the Olympic stadium, which would have seen the club move out of Tottenham.

Cllr Alan Strickland, cabinet member for economic development, said: “Following last summer’s riots, the need to transform Tottenham for the benefit of everyone who lives, works and studies in the area is stronger than ever.

“I’m delighted that the planning committee unanimously backed this exciting scheme which will be pivotal to our aims of building back better for Tottenham.”