Published: Monday 20 June 2022
Our first council-built homes in years came one step closer to completion as we celebrated placing the final beam at the top of the new buildings at Kensal Road and Hewer Street sites as part of the process to complete the construction over the coming months.
These are two significant milestones in our New Homes Delivery Programme which aims to build 600 new homes across the borough, 300 of which will be for social rent.
Cllr Kim Taylor-Smith visited the two sites on Thursday 16 June to sign the final beams to be placed at the top of the two buildings and to check out progress on the new homes.
Kensal Road and Hewer Street are two of four of our Phase 1 new homes delivery sites, which will see us deliver 97 homes in total.
At the Kensal Road site we are providing 38 new homes – 28 at social rent and 10 for key workers with four of those homes being accessible.
There will also be a shared garden area for residents, with flexible community space and a retail unit at ground floor.
Hewer Street will provide 20 new homes to rent - 10 of which will be offered to key workers and 10 open market. This site offers two accessible homes.
These new homes will also use energy efficient technology and improved levels of insulation to reduce fuel bills while ensuring that quality of build and safety issues remain paramount. In addition, all areas of the buildings will have sprinklers as well as incorporating other design features to focus on fire safety measures.
We'll be handing over the new homes at Hewer Street to local people towards the end of the year and then early next year Kensal Road will welcome its first residents.
Cllr Kim Taylor-Smith, Lead Member for Grenfell Housing, Housing and Social Investment said: "It was great to be able to visit both sites and mark these important milestones. We really are motoring on with both Hewer Street and Kensal Road developments now and it won't be too long before local residents will be moving in.
"The fact that we're still committed to building homes for local people against a backdrop of rising building costs and inflation shows how important this issue is locally. We are building high quality, spacious and environmentally friendly homes that are ‘tenure blind’. I know local residents will be proud to call them home one day."