After three years of appeals by Southwark Council and its development partner Lend Lease, Adrian Glasspool has finally received the viability assessment for the Heygate outline masterplan in response to his May 2012 FOI/EIR request.

Southwark had initially rejected the request and appealed after his subsequent complaint was upheld by the Information Commissioner. A long battle through the Tribunal system then culminated in a 6 day hearing in February last year, followed by a decision notice directing Southwark to release the assessment minus some of its financial modelling figures1.

Following a further dispute about exactly which figures could be withheld, the Tribunal resumed and issued a final decision in March this year. The viability assessment was then received in April and after examination by sympathetic industry experts we can now disclose our findings.

The Heygate tribunal case has since triggered decisions to disclose viability information for other large regeneration schemes including Earls Court regeneration and Greenwich Peninsula.

As well as a copy of the disclosed viability assessment, the 35% campaign has also obtained via FOI a (heavily redacted) copy of the District Valuer Service(DVS) appraisal of the viability assessment, commissioned by Southwark council.

First impressions:

This is a profitability assessment- not a viability assessment.

25% is deemed the acceptable level of profit.

Residential sales prices were grossly underestimated.

Why no review mechanism?

‘Something Sinister’ or ‘crap journalism’?

More information here.