Lendlease are yet to sign a deal that would see them pay for post-Grenfell fire safety improvements, despite being awarded a regneration contract at Elephant & Castle worth £2.5 billion.
Housing Secretary Michael Gove is calling on developers to pay £5 billion towards fixing unsafe cladding and other fire safety issues across UK housing developments.
As of Saturday 30 April, at least 35 developers had pledged to pay their way, but Lendlease, an Australian multi-national with an £8.1 billion revenue, is yet to sign.
Sebastien O’Kelly, a spokesperson for the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a charity that defends leaseholders’ rights, said: “The Australian developer Lendlease demonstrated its wobbly sense of social responsibility right at the beginning of the building safety scandal when it ran off to court in 2018 to ensure that leaseholders in Manchester’s Green Quarter paid to remediate the buildings it had built, not the company.
“Now it is refusing to sign up to the government’s sector-wide levy on developers to pay to sort out build defects revealed after the Grenfell tragedy. In fact, it is the biggest company to refuse to do so.
“House builders are grossly over subsidised, through grant finance and the ‘Help To Buy’ scheme so, until Lendlease pays up, this source of finance should be switched off.”
The council awarded Lendlease the lucrative Elephant Park contract in 2007, paving the way for the demolition of the Heygate Estate, home then to 3,000 people.
Elephant Park wins ‘placemaking’ award despite displacing thousands
Lendlease say the development “breathes new life” into the area, providing new homes, jobs and businesses opportunities.
But it has proved highly controversial, with opposition describing the project as ‘social cleansing’ for its failure to provide adequate social housing.
In January, Michael Gove announced that housing developers would have to foot the bill for fire safety works, or else face legal action or a new tax.
Since then, the government has faced an uphill struggle in getting developers on-board, but the tide is turning with the majority of developers now agreeing to pay up.
Lendlease have been approached for comment.