Track record

Financial Viability Assessment, East Street, Southampton

Prepared and submitted a detailed Financial Viability Assessment (FVA)

Financial Viability Assessments

Service

£3.7M

Project value

Residential

Industry

The project

The site has planning consent granted in 2019 for 16no apartments with a s106 requirement to provide 6no apartments for affordable housing. The site was part built by a previous developer who went into receivership and has been left unfinished for a number of years. Part of the reason it has become a stalled site were viability issues generated in part by the affordable housing requirement.

Reflect Homes Ltd reached agreement to acquire the site and instructed Rapleys to prepare a viability assessment to make a case to remove the s106 requirement on viability grounds.

Our solution

We prepared a viability assessment report to make a case where the s106 requirement would need to be removed to create a viability development that could come forward.
The assessment was reviewed by BNP Paribas for the council, and we responded to the review on behalf of the clients negotiating on key appraisal assumptions
The key area of disagreement was around construction costs, and we worked with the clients QS to build an argument to support the construction cost assumption.
The outcome of the negotiation was the s106 was varied to remove the affordable housing subject to a late stage review to capture any changes in viability and the project is now moving forward.