A dramatic £12.5m intervention is set to be made by Worthing Borough Council to build hundreds of homes at Teville Gate, a 1.4 hectare (3.5 acre) site next to Worthing’s main train station.
Council leaders have recommended the authority enter a joint partnership with an award-winning affordable homes provider, to take over the site, and bring momentum to a development.
Current owners Mosaic Global Investments Ltd had planned a £150 million mixed use scheme incorporating office space, hotel, gym and 378 new homes but now indicates it wants to sell the land. Worthing Borough Council is set to intervene and bring forward a plan to build 230 new homes on the site, 130 of which will be affordable.
The report proposes entering into partnership dialogue with VIVID, a Housing Association which has 31,000 homes in the South of England. VIVID is a strategic partner of the government’s Homes England body.
The Council’s investment would be around £12.5m, but 50 per cent of the sale proceeds of the market homes would return to the authority. If the homes were built and sold within three years at a 10 per cent profit, the Council would return a surplus.
In 2019 the Council secured a £1.6 million grant to demolish the multi-storey car park which sat on the only part of the site that it controlled via a long-term lease.
