Spurs let off the hook on affordable homes

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club could be relieved of a requirement to provide affordable homes as part of its new stadium development in a deal with Haringey council that could also see £16m wiped from its wider contribution to the borough.

A report to Haringey council’s planning committee, to be voted on next week, recommends a series of changes to the existing Section 106 agreement that are aimed at boosting the financial viability of the football club’s £400m stadium development plans, known as the Northumberland Development Project (NDP).

Under the proposed changes, Tottenham would be relieved of a requirement to designate 50% of the homes built as part of the development as affordable and would be allowed to designate any residential development for the open market.

Tottenham would 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 report said.

The 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.

The report added that in recent years there had been “very little building of open market homes” in the Northumberland Park area, while there have been “far more intermediate and social rented new homes built”.

“Therefore, the building of 285 open market homes … would help broaden the tenure mix in this part of Tottenham,” the report said.

“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 added.

The report also recommends the council 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 proposed changes to the Section 106 agreement, Tottenham would only need to provide £470,000 - rather than £16.436m - that would go towards parking and environmental improvements.

The recommendations follow an agreement, 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.

A Haringey council spokeswoman said: “The revised application will be considered by the planning committee next week, and the committee will make a decision on any proposed revisions to the S106 agreement.”