On 9 May 2016 WECH received revised planning approval from Westminster City Council for our proposals to improve the Elgin Estate. All 43 of the homes that will be built as part of the scheme will now be for rent. This has been made possible by Westminster agreeing to provide £3.9million from their Affordable Housing Fund and £400,000 from the Community Land Fund, which they administer on behalf of the Department for Communities and Local Government. The Mayor of London has also agreed to provide £2.58million from the Housing Covenant Programme. We have agreed a loan facility of £9million with Charity and Unity Trust Banks and have in place the funding package necessary to complete the scheme.
Following the preparation of detailed specifications for the various elements of the project, we successfully tendered the contract and have engaged Pavehall to carry out the construction of the scheme. The works will be carried out in phases with the new community centre, nursery and office block on Elgin Avenue scheduled to be finished first in January 2019 followed fairly soon after by completion of the residential parts of the scheme by July 2019.
I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in getting our proposals to this stage – WECH residents, the WECH Board, the Elgin Working Party, WECH staff and our consultants and advisors. We will continue to work hard to make sure that the scheme is successfully completed and achieves the improvements and benefits we are looking for.