Council leaders meet in Town Hall after £25m revamp

The Grade II-listed building, which first opened in 1941, has been repaired and made more accessible and now has a new fountain, all new windows and a bicycle store in the basement.

The refurbishment was the first phase of the council’s Fellowship Square regeneration, which will also see almost 450 new homes and a new civic building added to the site.

At today’s cabinet meeting, Cllr Simon Miller, cabinet member for housing development, said the project had given the building “an interior worthy of the exterior for the first time”.

The Town Hall's new reception

He said: “It’s nothing short of an extraordinary achievement to get this far so quickly.

“This is a real testament to the serious business of this council and will benefit residents of the borough for hundreds of years to come.”

The cabinet meeting was chaired by deputy leader Cllr Clyde Loakes, following the council leader Cllr Clare Coghill's resignation last week.

Deputy leader Cllr Loakes led the meeting in the leader's absence

Work on the site began in June last year and Cllr Miller said that, since then, it had taken more than 415,000 hours of work to complete the project.

The council now needs planning permission to begin the next stage of the regeneration, building a three-storey civic building and five blocks of flats ranging from five to nine storeys.

This will add 433 new homes to the site, more than a third of Waltham Forest’s target for this year set by the London Plan, half of which will be affordable rent or shared ownership.

The council partnered with developer Countryside to deliver the homes and last week, Cllr Miller, agreed to dispose of a small part of Chestnut Field behind the Town Hall to make way for the development.

Five flat blocks and a new civic building will be added to the site

The planning application submitted to Countryside justifies building on part of the sports ground by noting that it is used “by only a handful of local sporting groups on a very ad-hoc basis”.

The application adds: “The field is somewhat cut off from Forest Road in terms of wayfinding, and is not overlooked or well lit resulting in an uninviting environment.

“Due to surface water flooding, the field is also regularly water-logged and unpleasant to play on.”

Consultation on the plans for the new homes has now finished and will be considered by the council’s planning committee at an unknown future date.

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