Home » Spurs Closing In On £30.5M Deal

Spurs Closing In On £30.5M Deal

By The Boy -

Haringey Council is to use dedicated Housing Funding to give Tottenham Hotspur Football Club £30.5 million towards the cost of a Podium (a raised public space) at its new football stadium.

The £30.5 million was provided by the Greater London Authority to support housing regeneration in Tottenham!

Spurs has purchased many additional sites around the area, using its land as ransom holdings to influence Council redevelopment plans.

Despite promises, much of the council housing to be demolished in the area will not be replaced by new social homes! 

Spurs has repeatedly pressed for public subsidy for its new ground, and has pressed for exemption from planning policy on affordable housing.

The new ground includes 585 new homes which are to be 0% affordable. The justification for this at the Planning Sub Committee (Nov 2015) was that the development costing between £750 and £840 million had an expected rate of return of just 1.2%.

It was suggested at the time that further public subsidy would be required to fill a viability funding gap which we estimated at £60 million.

Now Haringey are planning to give Spurs £30.5 million for the podium from Housing Zone funding which has been provided by the Greater London Authority to support housing regeneration in Tottenham.

The money could be borrowed at a fixed rate of 2.2% over 12 years, loading additional costs onto this subsidy to one of the world’s richest football clubs.

Haringey has an alternative source for part of the £30.5 million – a £23m surplus which has been created in the cashflow for High Road West, a plan to demolish council housing opposite the Spurs Ground. The Slides reveal that contrary to GLA Guidance, demolished social housing will not be replaced in full.

212 rented Council dwellings at the Love Lane estate will be replaced by only 145 social rent, in a huge mainly private new housing development.

Spurs have bought up 14% of the redevelopment area, and the £30.5 m subsidy is tied to Spurs being prepared to sell these ‘ransom’ land holdings to allow land assembly for High Road West.

The £30.5 m subsidy will need to be ratified by the Haringey Cabinet.

These subsidies to Spurs are being proposed by a Council Cabinet besieged by critics of its Haringey Development Vehicle joint venture with the developer Lendlease to demolish yet more council homes and price local people out by increasing rents and house prices in this mainly poor area of North London where 48% of households have no savings or are in debt.

Meanwhile other council services are being slashed, such as Adult Social care and the sale of the Osborne Grove care home.

Local MP David Lammy has publicly expressed his lack of confidence in Council leader Claire Kober, and Labour Councillors meeting last night debated a NO Confidence motion in Cllr Kober.


This information is in the public domain in slides from Haringey Council to its External Auditor on 19th April 2017 and my thanks to Haringey Defend Council Housing.

Tags affordable housing haringey Haringey Cabinet Haringey Defend Council Housing NewsNow social cleansing haringey social housing haringey
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