EVERSFIELD NOT RISING
Housing hopes set back as building company fails
HUGH SULLIVAN
Construction work has halted at Eversfield Rise, the estate of 140 affordable homes being built on the former playing fields of Harrow Lane. The building company, Ilke Homes, has suffered financial collapse and entered administration.
The company, which had bought the site from Hastings Borough Council (HBC) in partnership with public housing providers Orbit, was building the homes in a modular process at its base in Knaresborough, Yorkshire. There seems to be no immediate prospect of any resumption of this work. It has been reported that Ilke’s management and backers had spent the last few weeks trying to find a buyer or investor to take over the business so as to deliver on its ongoing contracts, but without success. According to the trade website Construction Enquirer, they approached a trio of major volume house builders with invitations to make a nominal bid of over £1 for the business, but found no takers. Most of the company’s 1,150 employees were made redundant immediately by the incoming administrators.
The estate is planned to offer 70 affordable properties for rent and 70 more for shared ownership, ranging in sizes from one to four bedrooms. Eighty-four have been designed as ‘zero-carbon’. A proportion of the housing was intended to be ready for occupation this autumn, and the rest to be completed next year, with freehold ownership passed on to Orbit.
HBC’s decision to sell the site of former playing fields for housing has been controversial, consistently criticised by Conservative councillors who point out that it goes against the Labour administration’s stated policy of retaining limited greenfield assets. However, council leaders are desperate for new affordable housing to be built in the borough as soon as possible so as to make a dent in the numbers of households in temporary accommodation, which it has a statutory duty to provide homes for (see further on p.3).
Following a competitive tender process, HBC chose Ilke Homes in October 2021 as developer. According to Orbit’s website, the selection was due “to the company’s ability to demonstrate best value, accelerated delivery and high levels of sustainability”. Its modular process, involving precision-engineering techniques and benchmarking standards at each stage of the build cycle, promised delivery of the 140 homes “in half the time of traditional methods”.
A spokesperson for the council has confirmed that the full purchase price for the site had been received from Ilke, so it has no contractual involvement in the company’s demise and will not be left out of pocket. But in view of the “critical” need for completion of the housing scheme, the council “will continue to stay in close contact with Orbit as they review [alternative] delivery options”.
The council set itself a target in October 2021 of getting 500 affordable homes built in the next five years, of which this development was due to contribute nearly a third.
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