04 Sep 2023
The redevelopment of the former King Offa pub site is set to cost almost an additional £900K after the previous contractor went into administration.
The council-owned site at Norman Close has planning permission to develop two four-bedroom, 11 three-bedroom and one two-bedroom wheelchair accessible home, and Jarvis Contracting Ltd started work on the project in January.
But the company subsequently went into administration and all work ceased at the end of February.
SADC received the site back from the administrator on March 29, and a tender exercise for a replacement contractor is due to complete in late October.
Now members of the council’s housing and inclusion committee are being asked to endorse the submission of a report to the next strategy and resources committee requesting an additional budgetary provision of £894,000 be included within the Housing Investment Programme (HIP) for the redevelopment of the site to allow SADC to proceed with the appointment of a replacement principal contractor.
The alternative would be to cease the project completely, meaning the necessary social housing was not delivered, or transferring the site to a registered provider. However, this would lead to further delays and provide no guarantee that all the family-sized properties will be delivered at social rents.
The homes will house applicants on the council’s Housing Register.
The King Offa pub was closed in 2015 and demolished three years later despite a community campaign to save it. But the site remained untouched until councillors eventually backed a new development in 2021 and work started earlier this year.
When the contract was awarded to Jarvis it prompted outrage from the SADC Conservative group due to the lack of an official tendering process.
The Lib Dem administration said this was because of the urgency of getting social homes built and the difficulty of going through tenders.
An SADC spokesperson said “The project to build 14 new social housing properties on the King Offa site is on hold because the building contractor has gone into administration and cannot continue the work.
“The implications of this are set out in a report to a meeting of the housing and inclusion committee.
“We are committed to completing the project, but there may need to be an increase in the budget. This is due to the expense of having to re-tender as well as the inflationary rise in building costs since the original tender was agreed.
“All of this will be discussed at the meeting when the committee will decide what action to take.”
The meeting takes place on Thursday (September 7).
