Delays to 'ghost town' restoration project defended
BBCA council is being criticised for delays in a project to refurbish 135 homes it bought from a hospital trust.
The properties in Hospital Close in the Evington area of Leicester were first abandoned by tenants in 2019 when the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said it could not afford to upgrade the homes to modern standards.
People in the surrounding community have taken to describing it as a "ghost town".
Leicester City Council took over the site in 2021 and had hoped people would be moving into the first refurbished homes by the end of the 2024, but that target has not been met.
Liberal Democrat councillor Zuffar Haq, who represents people in this part of Leicester, is among those who have criticised the length of time the refurbishment scheme is taking.
"It's taken far, far too long and the costs of the security are almost half a million pounds (£488,319), other costs adding up to £1.7m," he said.
"It's just taken all the shine away from getting these properties refurbished and bringing them back into use.
"People are waiting for these properties, they should have been refurbished years ago. I don't know what the delays have been but it's taking too long and cost too much."
At the end of Hospital Close is the Leicester centre for the brain injury charity Headway.
Development manager, Tor Berry, said she was also fed-up with the delays, and she hoped the development could be completed as soon as possible.
"The morale, the sense that it's kind of a ghost town, people are dropping litter, it's everywhere, anti-social behaviour, people are parking inconsiderately," she said.
"It's just lost its sense of community and neighbourhood and being neighbourly, because everyone is kind of starting to think the worst of each other."
Elly Cutkelvin, a Labour deputy mayor at Leicester City Council, visited Hospital Close to show what progress had been made and to respond to the criticism.
She told the BBC: "It's been intensely frustrating for us at the council as well.
"We really wanted these to be delivered as fast as possible, but we've just been subject to a number of external forces, with the economy, with the construction industry, with people not wanting to develop these types of projects".
As well as earlier problems in finding a contractor to carry out the work, Cutkelvin also said delays had been caused by the condition of some of the buildings.
"The properties were first built in the 1960s," she said.
"We had tested and seen some of the properties but actually we found that there was a huge variance amongst the properties in terms of standards and they obviously hadn't been invested in for a number of years beforehand so they came to us in quite a poor condition."
Responding to criticism of the costs of 24-hour security on the site, Cutkelvin said: "The council paid the security cost [£488,319] during the period that we had it in our ownership. We then handed it over to Jeakins Weir who are now paying the security costs."
She confirmed no more extra security costs would be paid by the council as they are now the responsibility of the building contractor.
The overall cost of the refurbishment scheme is £17m and all the homes will be rented out as council houses.
The authority now hopes the first residents could move into some of the refurbished homes by the end of April this year with work to renovate 35 homes expected to be finished in August.
A contractor to refurbish a further 100 homes in phase two of the scheme is due to be announced soon.
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