Council to pay £3m to buy back two Southend car parks

11:00pm Wednesday 4th July 2012 in News Photograph of the Author By Stephen Hackwell

CONCERNED council chiefs will spend nearly £3million to stop two car parks falling into the hands of private developers.

Tory leaders at Southend Council agreed to pay to buy back Alexandra Street and Clarence Road car parks from the Homes and Communities Agency.

The land was sold to the Government quango in 2008, after it revealed plans to build a market and shopping complex on the sites. But the proposals collapsed in the recession and council bosses now fear, if the car parks are sold on the open market, they could be snapped up by developers seeking to cram in as many homes as possible.

Council leader Nigel Holdcroft said: “The funds for the development of the sites are no longer available. “For this reason, we are keen to get them back, so we can pursue their regeneration with another partner, rather than allow them to enter into private ownership.”

The agency, previously English Partnership, dished out millions of pounds towards major regeneration projects under the Labour Government.

Its vision for the car parks was a Brighton Lanes-style network of boutique shops and market stalls. It is not known how much it paid for the sites, although the council banked a total of £4.6million from selling a range of assets in 2007/08.

Bosses now hope to revive the Government scheme in a different form. Its central area action plan – a £300million blueprint for the High Street and surrounding roads – includes proposals for homes, offices and shops on the car parks.

The council hopes to team up with private developers to kickstart the idea, allowing them to build on public land, in return for a slice of the rent or lease income from developments.

Mr Holdcroft said: “If we can make a profit out of these sites, then we should do that. Rather than selling the land we own, we should think about how we can make it work for us.”

Comments(14)

frank & monty says...
11:27am Wed 4 Jul 12

They could put the Cultural Center and Museum there instead of on the cliffs and save millions of quid.
However, regrettably they won't, and will press on Serb-like with their ridiculous plans, wasting millions instead.

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Nebs says...
11:43am Wed 4 Jul 12

Surely when they sold them for the shopping complex they would have put a condition that no other use could be made of the land.

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maywood says...
12:00pm Wed 4 Jul 12

Nebs wrote:
Surely when they sold them for the shopping complex they would have put a condition that no other use could be made of the land.
Yes but that demands some forward thinking.Sadly lacking methinks.

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jolllyboy says...
12:33pm Wed 4 Jul 12

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we want to make a profit. Well sometimes they backfire big time. Methinks they cannot look far enough to see what can happen ie Tesco, car parks etc.

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SARFENDMAN says...
1:22pm Wed 4 Jul 12

Maybe turn this on its head and think keep it private to save it getting into the hands of an incompetent Council.lol!

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Sir Peter Pantsless the 3rd says...
1:30pm Wed 4 Jul 12

Southend's Tory council never ceases to amaze with their unprecidented levels of incompetence do they!
.
Another day another fail.
.
Looking forward to tomorrows installment of SBC ineptness.

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jayman says...
2:42pm Wed 4 Jul 12

hmm. iif land without planning permission in Southend is was about £250 per square meter that would mean the council are purchasing 12000 square meters of land.. i think the council had best get a guy down to the car parks with a theodolite and a meter stick...

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Greatscot1777 says...
4:58pm Wed 4 Jul 12

There are already too many empty shops and charity shops in Southend, how can the council justify seeking more retail space. It's no longer boom time Britain and it will take years to get local spending up to past levels. Of course there is the small matter of the impact on the existing high street businesses if these car parks are taken away further reducing the incentive of getting people to shop in the town. For once the council should be commended for selling the land at the peak of the property boom, buying it back for less than half seems a good deal to me.

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Bosniavet says...
8:03pm Wed 4 Jul 12

Here's a shockingly original idea - why don't SBC just keep the land as car parks.....

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marshman says...
8:07pm Wed 4 Jul 12

If the council is worried developers could cram in as many homes as possible surely they should amend their planning policies that allow such cramped development in the first place.

Simples really.

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ShrimperSS0 says...
12:58am Thu 5 Jul 12

If the council is serious about an indoor market then why not use the old woolies/ tj hughes and use the lanes in rayleigh as an idea. win win as we get an indoor market in town and get to keep all the current parking spaces!

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SARFENDMAN says...
5:36am Thu 5 Jul 12

ShrimperSS0 wrote:
If the council is serious about an indoor market then why not use the old woolies/ tj hughes and use the lanes in rayleigh as an idea. win win as we get an indoor market in town and get to keep all the current parking spaces!
It's just a Council smokescreen over wanting an indoor market. The real intention is zero. It had it's own ready built one at York Road which it allowed to decay away quite deliberately.

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undergroundpianola says...
9:58am Fri 6 Jul 12

hey, and if you stop the Equity pension funds and banks part-owning the land when you develop it through joint private-public financing initiatives you can even stop the rents being things like £300K per annum for a shop unit like some of the places in the High Street now have gone.

Yes, the real reason Southend High Street is gone to the dawgs is that a lot of the properties are owned by Equity and pension funds happy to charge rents that price not just most but every business out of town. They need the money to fill the holes in their pension funds - your High Street stands empty til the end of time in the meanwhile.

Make sure any new "redevelopment" or "re-generation partnership" doesn't fall into this trap!

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undergroundpianola says...
10:04am Fri 6 Jul 12

ShrimperSS0 wrote:
If the council is serious about an indoor market then why not use the old woolies/ tj hughes and use the lanes in rayleigh as an idea. win win as we get an indoor market in town and get to keep all the current parking spaces!
the council can "use" the old Woolies building. It's owned by a private entity that wants a stonking stratospheric uneconomically-susta
inable rent same reason as the other vacant High Street properties. Period.

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