Lambeth awards £150,000 Rookery contract to Streatham co-operative without tender

Lambeth's corporate director for growth and environment awarded a £150,000 contract to Streatham Common Co-operative to manage The Rookery on 23 June 2026, waiving the council's own tendering rules to do it.

The decision record states the council approved a waiver of contract standing order 17.2(a) and made a direct award, rather than putting the work out to competition. The contract runs from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2028 at £60,000 a year.

The co-operative has held the work for almost seven years. The council's September 2019 decision awarded it a two-year contract from 1 October 2019, worth £100,000.

What followed came in short steps. The November 2023 decision records that the 2019 contract carried optional two-year extensions, taken as two one-year variations at £60,000 a year, and adds a further year backdated to 1 October 2023 with a three-month break clause. It puts the five-year value at £280,000.

The September 2024 decision extended the contract again, by 21 months to 30 June 2026, and puts the value of the work from 2019 to 2026 at £385,000. The new contract takes the total to £535,000 across nine years and three months.

The 2024 record describes the site as "a small historical Grade II listed garden adjacent to Streatham Common". The council's issue record puts it in Streatham Common and Vale ward and names Kevin Crook, assistant director for neighbourhoods, as lead officer.

Two other park sites went to community organisations this year on leases with no rent. On 5 March 2026 the head of valuation and strategic assets granted a ten-year lease of Kennington Park Adventure Playground and One O'Clock Club, at 40 Agnes Place SE11, to UINCAP, the International Union of Capoeira, at a rent of £35,000 a year waived through a community service agreement.

On 30 June 2026 the council granted a 20-year lease of the Oasis Nature Garden site, at the corner of Larkhall Lane and Studley Road SW4, to Oasis Children's Venture. That record waives rent of £5,500 a year provided the group submits an annual social value return.

The two waivers come to £40,500 a year, or £350,000 at Kennington Park and £110,000 at the nature garden across the terms the records set.

Neither decision publishes what the organisations must deliver in return. The papers listed with each are an officer report and an equality assessment, and neither lists the community service agreement.

An earlier lease shows how such an arrangement is policed. In May 2025 the council granted Tulse Hill Adventure Playground, Greenleaf Close SW2, to High Trees Community Development Trust for 21 years and 11 months, waiving rent of £22,750 a year while the services in the community service agreement are provided. That record states children's commissioning officers monitor them annually, and that "If they are not met, this is deemed a breach of lease terms."

None of the three 2026 decisions took the usual scrutiny route. The council classed each as a non-key decision and recorded each as not subject to call-in, the process by which councillors can ask for a decision to be reviewed before it takes effect.

The Rookery contract ends on 31 December 2028. The nature garden lease also authorises amendments for demolition of the existing building and a single-storey classroom and nursery, under planning reference 23/01133/RG4 of 5 April 2023.