Minutes:
Councillor Austin asked Councillor Jill Bayford the following question:
"At a recent drop-in session, the Director of Housing & Planning highlighted the current pressures on affordable housing in Thanet occasioned by rapidly rising private sector rents, the reduced number of properties available for rent and the very modest number of new properties we as a Council have been building each year.
What strategies is Cabinet adopting to address these issues – and in particular, to increase the number of Council-owned properties available for rent?”
Councillor Jill Bayford responded with the following points:
· The Council had adopted a detailed Housing, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy, which set out the Council’s proposals for providing affordable homes. The strategy was available on the council’s website.
· The Strategy included a strategic objective to improve access to, and supply of, housing including affordable homes. It set out a detailed action plan, and progress was reviewed by the Housing Cabinet Advisory Group. In particular the strategy set out how the Council and its housing association partners were working together to increase the supply of affordable homes, and the action that the Council was taking to bring empty homes back into use.
· Over the past nine years the Council had constructed or acquired 162 new homes for affordable rent, and had approved funding in place for a further 28 new homes. These programmes have been supported with a total investment of £43,000,000.00, primarily from capital funding from the Council’s Housing Revenue Account (HRA), with additional support, such as from Right-to-Buy receipts and Homes England grants. The total funding available for investment in this way was limited by the capacity of the Council’s Housing Revenue Account to release capital funding or support borrowing.
· The current business plan projections included provision for further investment of around £8.1m annually, from 2024, which would provide at least 30 new homes each year. The Housing Cabinet Advisory Group were due to consider the latest business plan projections at its next meeting and these would be presented to Cabinet and Council as part of the budget setting process for 2022/23.
· In addition to the Council’s activities, new affordable homes for rent were provided by the Council’s Housing Associations Partners. These homes were either provided in partnership with private sector house builders, through section 106 agreements, or supported by grants from Homes England, with the bulk of funding coming from Housing Associations own business plans. The pace of delivery was strongly linked to the pace of private sector house building, and the Council worked closely with private sector house builders to facilitate the delivery of approved homes. This year would see 66 housing association homes completed in the District, this would increase in 2022/23 to around 350 homes.
· Although these programmes demonstrated the commitment of the Council to deliver more affordable homes for rent both directly and with partners, they were insufficient to meet the level of need for homes. The Council was therefore also committed, through the Housing, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy, to explore new models of funding and delivery, and would continue to keep this under review through the work of the Cabinet Advisory Group.
Councillor Austin followed up her question by asking what the Council was doing to ensure homes were adequately insulated.
Councillor Jill Bayford advised that this was detailed in the Council’s Housing Strategy.