Lovell Steps In to Salvage £25M East London Housing Scheme

Arnold Road in Bow sat behind scaffolding for months: a half-built reinforced concrete frame holding 62 affordable homes and five commercial units in limbo. Jerram Falkus Construction, the original contractor on the £25m scheme, collapsed before it could finish. Tower Hamlets Council has now handed Lovell Partnerships a pre-construction services agreement to draw up a rescue plan for the site.

The approval, granted by the council's cabinet, puts Lovell in pole position to take over the project. The main works contract still needs a final agreement on costs, programme and delivery arrangements. For now, the deal functions as a route map, not a full handover. If the pre-construction work clears the technical and commercial hurdles, Lovell moves into the live build phase next spring.

What does Lovell actually take on?

A 26-week pre-construction programme built around technical investigations into the reinforced concrete frame, alongside checks on work already executed on site. Lovell favours a management contracting approach to complete the scheme. Council officers pushed back against a traditional design and build deal. They warned that route would carry "hefty risk allowances and provisional sums" without materially shrinking the authority's exposure to cost overruns on a half-built frame.

Why didn't Tower Hamlets run a fresh procurement competition instead?

Officers considered it and walked away. A replacement contractor, their report noted, would have to repeat the same structural investigations, burning months of programme and adding fresh fees on top. Bringing Lovell in under a pre-construction services agreement keeps continuity on the existing frame and avoids that duplication. It also keeps the original design team engaged, another factor the council weighed in its decision.

What does the timeline look like for Bow?

The pre-construction phase is set to deliver a final report by April 2027. Practical completion of the 62 affordable homes and the five commercial units is targeted for June 2028. The council has approved a budget uplift to finish the development, though Tower Hamlets is keeping the headline figures confidential while commercial talks continue.

The collapse of Jerram Falkus has placed Tower Hamlets in a corner any project manager dreads. The structure sits incomplete. The contractor is gone. The council chose speed and continuity over a clean restart, betting that a familiar hand on the tiller can steady a project others had to leave. Lovell — one of the most active rescue contractors in UK social housing — now has six months to prove the Bow frame is sound and the cost plan adds up.

For the families waiting on those 62 affordable homes, the practical question is simple: will the building finally work? The full answer lands in writing by April 2027, when Lovell's report tells the council whether Arnold Road can move from rescue to handover.