Croydon Council is to recreate its own, in-house architects’ department.
According to a report in Architects’ Journal, the council architects will be used to design housing schemes across the borough.
Jo Negrini: architect of her own placemaking
“The move bucks the trend of recent decades, which has seen councils ridding themselves of architects departments. Croydon said its new unit will assist a newly formed development company established by the council to deliver new housing on 80 sites it owns,” the report stated.
The new unit comes from the department run by the increasingly powerful Jo Negrini, Croydon’s “executive director, place”, to give her the ridiculous official council title; or the Town Hall planning, housing and development chief, to describe Negrini’s six-figure-salaried job in the terms which most of the people she is supposed to serve will understand.
Running the project will be Colm Lacey, whom Negrini appointed as her director of development just over a year ago. Negrini and Lacey had previously been colleagues at Lambeth Council and more recently at Newham, where they will have worked closely with Westfield on its Stratford development. Continue reading
