Westfield London
78 new affordable homes
The multi-award winning Octavia Housing Bourbon Lane development has now delivered 78 new homes for rent and to buy on a shared ownership basis. The scheme has also provided a significant number of larger family-sized accommodation, which local families are now enjoying.
Bourbon Lane has been described as a ‘brilliant example of how to achieve high quality and generous affordable housing’. The buildings have achieved nine awards and commendations from industry and building design bodies and have been praised for their ‘light and airy’ feel. Each home has a garden, a generous roof terrace or a balcony.
The council has set it sights high with ambitious plans to build 6,500 new homes in the borough over ten years. The Bourbon Lane development is a good example of the type of high quality and generous housing the council wants to deliver more of. Grahame Hindes, Chief Executive of Octavia Housing said: “We are extremely proud of Bourbon Lane. Our tenants deserve the best in housing design, and Bourbon Lane shows that we are committed to giving them this. We strive to create homes where people want to live and Bourbon Lane highlights the importance that good working relationships with our local authority partners has on this process.” The mews of housing back directly onto the new Westfield shopping centre, carefully bridging the transition from the existing area to the new development.
Last year the council launched its “open for business” campaign to encourage developers to invest in H&F to the benefit of local residents. According to a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study on housing affordability, H&F is the least affordable area in London in terms of the proportion of younger working households able to buy at lowest quarter house prices.
Cllr Lucy Ivimy, H&F Council Cabinet Member for Housing, says “With high house prices and the credit crunch making mortgages harder to come by, buying your first home can be a distant dream for many Londoners. But, with schemes like Bourbon Lane, this council is helping low and middle income earners to get that vital first step on the ladder.
“The scheme also provides low cost rented housing for local residents who can then use this to progress be it in terms of securing employment, settling children into local schools and saving, so one day they too can own their own home.”
Only 44 per cent of people own their own home in the borough, compared to 68.7 per cent nationally. The council wants to increase that figure to 50 per cent by 2014 by giving those on low to medium incomes the chance of buying in the borough.
Page last updated: 05/11/2008
