Around 70 Harbourside Village lottery winners were promised last night that they would get their homes by Works and Engineering and Housing Minister Lt. Col. David Burch at the New Testament Church of God.

On June 3, 98 people won the chance to buy a home for $199,000 at Harbourside Village. However, since Bermuda Homes for People (BHP) collapsed on September 8, there had been doubts whether Government quango, Bermuda Land Development Company, would take on the $80 million project. ?Essentially what I wanted to do was update them on where we are in terms of the Harbourside Village project,? Lt. Col. Burch said. ?It was announced in the Throne Speech it will go forward. That is still the position of the Government.

?The last they were told BHP had collapsed but the project will go forward. There has been some movement since then in the sense the BLDC have completed the due diligence on the BHP proposal and submitted it. The technical officers in the Ministry are wading through that. I expect they will make a recommendation to me before Christmas. I intend to take that to Cabinet early in the new year. We should have a decision and then we will have a plan as to how we move forward.

Lt. Col. Burch said some winners asked difficult questions about timing and other things, all of which he could not answer until he had Cabinet approval and then he could start a delivery timeline. However, one winner said after the meeting that an 18-month timeline was bandied about inside the meeting from which the Press was barred.

?Generally, their feeling was they were appreciative of the outreach,? Lt. Col. Burch said. ?There is a lady, who is a winner who has been e-mailing me since I became the consultant. I have been answering her and encouraging her to continue to save and continue to plan. The last e-mail I got from her was two weeks ago and I thought, ?You know what there has got to be 97 other people that want the same answer she wants?. And so we organised this meeting even though it was Christmas time, we figured that they would appreciate a formal interaction between the Ministry and themselves and I think they appreciate it.?

Lt. Col. Burch was hoping to find a contractor sometime early in the new year.

?We are all patiently waiting,? a lottery winner said after the meeting. ?We are all content.?