More than 1,000 homes, of which at least 400 will be social housing, are due to be built on the site of the old Holloway Prison.
After standing empty for more than two years, the Ministry of Justice revealed last week that the final women’s prison in London has been sold to the housing association Peabody for £81.5m.
Under the terms of the sale, Peabody, along with its partner, the housebuilder London Square, are obliged to build at least 50 per cent affordable housing.
Peabody, which borrowed £42m from City Hall to buy the site, has commissioned architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris to build the homes, of which 600 will comply with Mayor of London’s definition of “affordable housing”, which is aimed at those earning a maximum household income of £60,000.
Of that number, 400 of the homes will be social housing, which Diarmaid Ward, Islington’s Executive Member for Housing and Development, described as “old school council housing”.
The women’s centre became a requirement largely due to the pressure from activist group Sisters Uncut, which staged a protest at the site when it was first sold in 2016.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, took to twitter on Monday to express that the Holloway Prison site “will be different” from other examples of public land “sold off to the highest bidder with little or no social housing.” He also restated the promise that “60% of new homes will be socially rented and genuinely affordable.”
Londoners are rightly fed up of seeing public land sold off to the highest bidder with little or no social housing.
The Holloway Prison site will be different – 60% of new homes will be socially rented and genuinely affordable.#DeliveringForLondon ? pic.twitter.com/IPMAtpm45U
— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) March 11, 2019
Ward, who co-authored the SPD for Holloway, said that “we need to see more detail” of the exact conditions of the sale, but admitted that the announcement is “potentially great news”.
“It’s great that the new owners want to go well above the required 50% genuinely affordable homes. Islington Council and the local community stand ready to work with Peabody to make this a brilliant success.”
Since the prison’s closure in July 2016, the MoJ spent more than £232,557 managing the empty site.
A Freedom of Information Act revealed that at least £91,336 of public money was spent on electricity, £58,238 on gas, and £21,971 on water and sewage.
An additional £61,012 was spent on advertising and legal fees throughout the process of trying to sell the site. This figure excludes site surveys and assessments, and other fees that will follow the sale.
The largest spending figure is thought to be security costs: two security guards have been posted at the eight-acre site at all times since the closure.
However, the MoJ would not reveal the cost of this, citing “a strong public interest in protecting the commercial interests of the MoJ and third parties.”
