Contractor pulls out of £100m Southampton regeneration

An embattled regeneration arrangement in Southampton has stalled all over again after the contractor pulled out.

Drew Smith, now identified as Countryside Partnerships, signed a contract with Southampton Metropolis Council in 2021 to invent three plots containing 273 properties as phase of the £100m Townhill Park regeneration arrangement. Countryside Partnerships is phase of Vistry Community.

Plans to extinguish 428 council apartments and substitute them with 675 contemporary properties had been first unveiled in 2012. The arrangement used to be initially due for completion in 2022, but even supposing several constructions were demolished and loads residents contain left their properties, most productive 56 properties were built.

Southampton Metropolis Council chief Lorna Fielker said: “It be disappointing that Drew Smith (now Countryside Partnerships) has withdrawn from the contract.

“In light of this resolution, the council will most doubtless be reviewing the future transport of contemporary properties at Townhill Park and are dedicated to taking the sites forward at trot.”

Countryside Partnerships didn’t give a cause within the reduction of pulling out of the arrangement and didn’t provide a observation to Development Information.

A really grand of the plots, Residing Two, used to be narrate to residence 213 apartments all over several mid-rise constructions. A combine of one-, two- and three-storey apartments would contain changed the old 1960s constructions described by planners as “on the tip of their in fact useful life”.

Countryside Partnerships began preliminary work on Residing Two in late 2020.

The agency used to be also lowered in measurement to provide 34 apartments and 17 properties on Residing Nine and 20 properties on Residing Ten.

The council purchased £1.1m from the authorities’s Brownfield Land Launch Fund in October 2023 to extinguish the constructions occupying Residing Nine. Demolition used to be planned for spring 2024.

Countryside Partnerships handed over essentially the most indispensable 56 contemporary properties on the property in July 2019 following work on an earlier stage. Balfour Beatty implemented boulevard and footpath resurfacing, web page web page visitors-calming measures and entry enhancements on the narrate in 2020.

The cancelled contract is basically the latest in a string of setbacks to contain hit the project. Shortly after the arrangement used to be announced, Labour councillors attach the project on abet for several years after they took over council abet an eye on.

Demolition works began years later than planned after difficulties transferring out some leaseholders, and the council slashed the project’s budget from £144m to £61m in September 2022.