In HTA Architects’ submission to the official government inquiry, obtained this week by Building, it blames the joint-venture developer’s lack of commitment to Egan objectives for the scheme’s inadequacies.
Meanwhile, Greenwich Millennium Village joint-venture chairman Alan Cherry rejected the allegations in a speech to the House Builders’ Federation conference in Weston-super-Mare on Wednesday.
HTA Architects says the developer was responsible for the lack of innovation in the first phase because it failed to institute interdisciplinary project management teams. Its submission says: “The inadequacies of the delivery process are the root cause of the drift towards failure.”
The alleged inadequacies are:
The inadequacies of the delivery process are the root cause of the drift towards failure
HTA Architects’ Submission
I am confident that the independent review of the project will show that we are well on course
Alan Cherry of JV Developer
HTA first outlined these claims in a letter dated 28 June to Stuart Lipton, chairman of the Millennium Village competition jury and the government’s architecture champion.
In his speech to the HBF, Cherry, who is also chairman of housebuilder Countryside Properties, said the development company was committed to deliver the standards agreed in its legal agreement with English Partnerships, and by a section 106 agreement with Greenwich council to deliver innovations and improvements during the life of the project. He added: “I am confident that the independent review of the project will show that we are well on course.”
Cherry denied claims that the scheme would not integrate social and private units and said affordable housing would be dispersed through the village.
He also announced a partnering arrangement with BT to develop the “intelligent infrastructure” for the village. He said this would include a community web site, home shopping facilities and community safety measures.
Cherry also said the joint venture was working with Thames Water to develop a central treatment plant costing £100 000 for up to 50 dwellings. He said the target of 30% reduction in water consumption could not be achieved without grey-water water recycling but admitted that he was reluctant to invest in this. “There are no UK technical standards for the quality of grey water, and there are major concerns about the hygiene and maintenance of some systems,” he said.
Cherry admitted that some available methods of achieving the energy-saving targets had proved uneconomic, such as wind power and photovoltaics. “A key issue for us – and for our industry – is that the UK supply base simply cannot meet many of our requirements, either because they have not been asked to before, or because the volumes don’t yet justify the business, or because some of these techniques and ideas are either just uneconomic or in their infancy.”