Camden marks topping out of two new hostels to support people in need of immediate accommodation
On Friday (6, February), Camden celebrated reaching the halfway point of building two new hostels to help people in need of immediate temporary accommodation.
Part of Camden’s Community Investment Programme (CIP), two new hostels are being built on Camden Road and Chester Road to help address the housing crisis and house people who do not have a permanent home.
This development is part of the Council’s response to London’s growing housing crisis which has resulted in 175,000 people living in temporary accommodation across the Capital.
The accommodation will be allocated to people who are in need of a home and need a safe, good-quality and secure place to live. This could be due to a sudden eviction, life event or those escaping domestic violence.
89 safe and good quality accommodation units will be built across the two sites and will be self-contained, with a kitchen and bathroom fitted in each unit. Chester Road will include 50 temporary homes including shared indoor spaces and play areas for children, whilst Camden Road will host 39 temporary accommodation studios, including a private rear garden, play areas and a community room.
The wider site at the Chester Road hostel has been designed to include outside gardens, creating a neighbourhood feel and helping residents to feel at home while they wait for more permanent housing.
During the topping out ceremony, Leader of the Council Councillor Richard Olszewski joined Cabinet Members Councillor Nasrine Djemai and Councillor Sagal Abdi-Wali, local ward Councillors and representatives from Morgan Sindall Construction, contractor for the project, at the Chester Road site.
Our Community Investment programme is helping to tackle the housing crisis head-on, not just by building high-quality family homes, but by providing better quality temporary accommodation, like the Camden Road and Chester Road hostels, to support people who don’t have a secure place to call home.
This new temporary accommodation will be energy efficient, safe, secure and be built to the highest quality. Alongside this we want to ensure this development benefits local communities and as part of the works, contractors are providing apprenticeships, work experience placements and ring-fenced jobs for local people.
We must build more temporary accommodation to help support those in desperate need of a safe place to stay until a more longer-term solution is allocated. This is a great milestone to reach - by investing in two high-quality hostels, we can also reduce how much we spend each year on hotel and out-of-borough temporary accommodation, reallocating that money into our services and building more high-quality council homes for local people and families.
Reaching this topping out milestone is an important moment for everyone involved in the delivery of the Camden Road and Chester Road hostels. These facilities will provide safe, secure, and high-quality accommodation for individuals and families at a time when demand for temporary housing in London is at a critical level, and we are proud to be a part of that.
It’s been a pleasure to work in partnership with Camden Council to deliver this project. A project that meets the need for urgent housing while also creating welcoming, community-focused spaces where residents can feel supported.
The whole team is looking forward to completing both projects this summer, so individuals and families in the community can begin to benefit from these much-needed facilities.
This project is part of Camden’s Community Investment Programme (CIP), the Council’s ambitious plan to invest in schools, homes and community facilities across the borough.
To fund this work, Camden successfully bid for £1.5million from the UK Government’s Brownfield Land Release Fund (BLRF) to carry out enabling works as well as £5.4million from the Local Authority Housing Fund (LAHF) to support project delivery.
Camden Council appointed Morgan Sindall Construction as contractor for the project. The construction works are due to be completed by summer with residents expected to move into the hostels by the end of the year.