Update for George Downing Residents Association members. (03/10/2023)
Boiler House Community Spaces Charity & The Capital Development Project.
Introduction: Hi, this is Abi at Flat 3, 69 GDE. I provided a brief update on the above at the September GDRA meeting. The update is iterated below and includes information about:
What is happening with hoardings at the back of the Cazenove Tower and
Progress on the planned development of this land, for which Boiler House Charity is responsible.
Background: I am a trustee of the Boiler House Community Spaces Charity. The Charity works to bring underused buildings and places into use for the benefit of local people. We were established as a charity in 2012. The Charity manages the Boiler House which it leases from Southern Housing. We also manage other spaces. We have worked closely with the local community over several years to understand how they would like to see the space surrounding the Boiler House used and developed.
The Charity, consulted on, raised the funds, and obtained planning permission for development of a small garden building, retention, and relocation of the cage games area (or MUGA), and a community garden to support urban agriculture and unlocking of disused areas, and a café kiosk.
Pandemic and Financial Crisis: The last few years during and following the Covid 19 pandemic were challenging time for the organisation and staff, as we pivoted our services to meet changing and urgent community needs.
Our co-founder and CEO, Anna Iskandar-Reynolds left the organization in May 2023 after 10 years’ service and following a period of sickness. We appointed an experienced interim CEO, Aabida Mohmed who is just completing a short-term contract whist we recruit a replacement. We are currently also recruiting new trustees.
The Capital Development
We appointed a contractor in April 2022, who started the delivery of enabling works for the garden building and space including moving car parking spaces, and substantively agreeing all pre-commencement conditions with Network Rail (NR).
Challenges and delays. We have experienced significant delays outside our control, with Network Rail (NR) requirements to set out our Basic Asset Protection Agreement (BAPA), a requirement of working close to railways. Negotiations were time-consuming and extended well beyond the original programme period, causing a delay to the appointment of the contractor, and their subsequent ability to start on site.
During this period of delay, and including more recently, construction material and labour costs have increased substantially. These, combined with the impact of compliance with Network Rail requirements, resulted in the contractor re-pricing the works with an uplift of 28%, exceeding the funding we had secured.
In March 2023 Trustees made the difficult decision to pause the project and terminate the contract with our contractor. We have downgraded the capital works to exclude the new garden building and proposed a refurbished/extended Boiler House building.
Moving forward: We are asking that where appropriate some of the secured funding we do have be dedicated to our uncompleted work in this space. This is looking encouraging.
Overall, we remain committed to delivering this programme of work and bringing this site back into sustained and valuable community use for the long-term. Both the internal and external have learnt many lessons along the way. We have taken the opportunity to revisit the core reasons for establishing this programme and rebuild momentum and ambition within the trustee and BH leadership team. We want to ensure we rectify this and move forward for the benefit of all our stakeholders.
Abigail Gilbert – Trustee
Please note that I am dyslexic. There may well be spelling and other mistakes in the above.