Contract award
Windsor and Maidenhead picks HBV Cityheart for Imperial Road homes
By Staff Writer | 14 October 2026
The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has named HBV Cityheart Limited as the preferred partner to redevelop its Imperial Road site in Windsor as supported housing for 22 adults with learning disabilities.
The contract award notice was published on Find a Tender on 13 October 2026. The award is shown as pending, with a standstill period ending at 23:59 on 22 October 2026 and an expected signature date of 8 November 2026. The contract period shown runs from 9 November 2026 to 8 November 2030. One bid was received under an open procedure, and HBV Cityheart was the only final stage bidder.
The site and the homes
The site is owned by the council and currently holds two day centre buildings, which will be relocated. The existing buildings have a gross external footprint of 821.5 square metres on a plot of 4,649 square metres. The council wants a partner to demolish them and build two new schemes, each expected to house 11 people with learning disabilities who have medium to high needs.
The proposed arrangement for each building is a six unit shared home with staff and communal facilities, and five self-contained single person flats above. One scheme is intended for young people aged 18 to 25, who will live together as their permanent home, and the other for people aged 25 and over. Both are to provide lifetime homes, although the council says it is open to other proposals that meet its requirements. The partner, or its subcontractor, must provide a full housing management service to tenants, covering repairs and maintenance, and work with the care provider the council has identified.
A lease, not a capital contract
The council will lease the site for 250 years at low to nil consideration. In return the partner must secure the capital funding for the redevelopment. The council states that it has no financial envelope set aside and that the bidder is required to fund the requirement itself.
The award value of 150,000,000 pounds excluding VAT, or 180,000,000 pounds including VAT, is not a construction sum. The notice explains that the council expects the preferred bidder could earn gross income of between 300,000 and 600,000 pounds a year, and that 600,000 pounds multiplied by the 250 year term gives the 150,000,000 pound advertised maximum. Actual income will depend on the bidder's delivery model and funding and may be higher or lower.
The council has classed the arrangement as a works contract rather than a concession. It reasons that its commitment to fund any void rooms removes any meaningful operating risk from the partner. It also reserves the right to provide funding to cover any gap between housing benefit claimed and received, though it does not expect to use it routinely, and to apply any grant or internal funding it receives to the building or the services.
Although the procurement concerns a lease, the council chose to run it under the Procurement Act 2023 for the avoidance of doubt, rather than rely on the exemptions in Schedule 2 to the Act, describing the case law on development projects as complex. The notice is registered as 096727-2026 and classifies the work as construction work.