Question
Some years ago when I was a Borough Councillor and sat on the working party that dealt with the regeneration of Wokingham Town centre, the plan was that money generated by this would go to regenerate other town centres in the Borough.
Please will you tell me how much has Wokingham’s regeneration cost in total and how much in profit has it returned to date?
Minutes:
Question
Some years ago when I was a Borough Councillor and sat on the working party that dealt with the regeneration of Wokingham Town centre, the plan was that money generated by this would go to regenerate other town centres in the Borough.
Please will you tell me how much has Wokingham’s regeneration cost in total and how much in profit has it returned to date?
Answer
The Wokingham Regeneration, to date, has proved to be a huge success and the programme is progressing well, with both Peach Place and the commercial part of Elms Field complete. The residential sections of Elms Field continue in conjunction with our partner David Wilson Homes (DWH) and the Carnival Hub is now under construction and due for completion next summer. The scheme has won several awards for its place-making, quality and financial approach.
There were several objectives behind the Wokingham Regeneration project with many outputs. Its key objective was first and foremost to deliver a town centre fit for, and reflective of the, then existing and, now, growing population of the town.
The Council chose to act as developer in this process because it gave us much more control over the design, layout, architecture and, importantly, type of uses and businesses coming into the town – we were clear that we wanted to resist the national trend of introducing the same old national tenants and ensuring Wokingham retained its feel and offer from local independent traders. This we have done very successfully. It is one of the reasons why Wokingham is proving so popular.
Despite the current pandemic, whilst the majority of town centres up and down the country are struggling to identify tenants, Wokingham continues to ‘buck the trend’ with a lot of interest from potential tenants. As I said before we are now 90% let across both schemes and have another two leases currently going through the legal process.
In terms of residential sales, there is enormous interest in Elms Field, with the majority of the ‘stand-alone’ residential being reserved ahead of it being built, and above our budgeted figures. Currently, on the stand-alone residential scheme with our partners DWH, we have completed, or had reserved 21 homes, despite only 10 being fully built. We have just released another 12 onto the market.
The total cost of delivering all schemes will be ascertained upon final completion of all schemes. Based on the viability and financial appraisal established before work commenced, and updated more recently, the total cost is expected to be £113m, creating assets valued at £162m, £48m of which is realised through residential sales.
In addition, when the scheme is fully operational, the surplus income is expected to be circa £2m per annum. Over the fullness of time, when debt is fully repaid, the surplus will be in the region of £5m – £6m per annum.
Supplementary Question
When I sat on the Committee it was not clear to me that there would be no returns in my lifetime for Woodley. The figures given are projected over many years. Could you give me some idea of when other towns in the Borough, including Woodley, will benefit from all this money that has been spent on Wokingham?
Supplementary Answer
As I stated in my earlier answer, the money from this goes to pay for other Council services. This is taking Capital and producing Revenue from selling houses and rental income. We have already started regeneration in other areas around the Borough, despite what we are doing here. We have already regenerated Phoenix, for example. We are working on Gorse Ride and other smaller schemes. We have already purchased, through the Property Investment Group, buildings in Twyford and Woodley.
We are not stopping at just Wokingham. But it is clear to make this point, and I am not sure why you have not recognised it having been involved early on, that this scheme is not solely related to generating other areas of the Borough. That happens on its own. It is not linked to this. This is to produce revenue to help fund other vital services.
We don’t have as much money coming in to the Council from central Government. In fact we were threatened with negative revenue support grant, as you know. At the moment, we at zero for that. It is always with the longer view. This scheme, if you think of it like a household mortgage, takes a while to pay back. This has a pay back over 20 years.