Agenda item
Purchase of 10 homes through GPML for temporary accommodation and affordable rent
Minutes:
Cabinet considered the report that sought the approval to acquire ten properties for the Council, six to be used as temporary accommodation and four as affordable rent on two separate small sites in the district at Margate Road, Ramsgate, and King Street in Ramsgate. This extended the Council strategy, as discussed in the previous housing item, in allowing the Council to purchase outside Section 106 agreements to further grow its portfolio. These were being built by an SME developer, GPML construction. Although there were two sites and two sets of homes (6 x flats at Margate Road and 4 x townhouses in King Street) the homes were being acquired for different purposes.
In Margate Road, the flats would be acquired as in-house temporary accommodation for the Council to reduce out of area placements, and in King Street the townhouses would be acquired for the Council to use in its housing revenue account (HRA) as general use homes to add to its housing stock. The six flats on Margate Road will cost the Council £1.2m; these were a mix of 4 x 1 bed flats and 2 x 2 bed flats, on the Loop route for easy transport for residents. For King Street, the acquisition cost is £1.33m for four 4 bedroom townhouses, also on the Loop route to promote accessibility.
As with previous acquisitions, schemes needed to show an overall surplus over a 30 or 50-year timescale to be viable, depending on the duration of any borrowing. The proposed King Street purchase would generate a cash flow deficit in year 1 of £4,870 with surpluses accumulating from year 7. The Margate Road properties would allow the Council to reduce temporary accommodation costs from the day of occupation. There was a significant need for the properties being acquired here.
Currently, the Council had around 300 households in temporary accommodation, with 166 of those using 1 bedroom properties. The Council was fully committed to growing its in-house temporary accommodation to ensure that residents could stay close to their jobs, schools and support networks. Thanet District Council (TDC) had already separately worked to secure 41 Porchlight units for Thanet residents that could have been lost completely due to the loss of Kent Homeless Connect, and this purchase would complete the third direct in-house unit, with plans for a fourth in the pipeline. These properties, in Margate and Ramsgate, all close to public transport, would soon provide 21 units of in-house temporary accommodation, using an estimated six month stay before moving on to permanent accommodation. The Council’s direct portfolio alone would allow TDC to keep at least 42 households in area every single year; the further the Council grew this portfolio, the more residents it could support locally.
Four bedroom properties were also a significant need for those on the Council’s housing list. One hundred and five households on the housing list had a requirement for a 4 bedroom property. Larger properties were often very hard to come by within standard affordable developments and therefore to secure four with direct transport links was a huge positive for residents. It was proposed that the new homes at King Street be let in accordance with the Council’s adopted Allocations Policy. The policy provided for the Council to agree a Local Lettings Plan for new homes, and in this case an LLP would be agreed to ensure that 50% of the homes were let to priority applicants from the council’s Housing Register and 50% would be let to people moving out of temporary accommodation, again, supporting residents to live locally and supporting the Council in reducing ongoing temporary accommodation costs to the General Fund. The Margate Road homes would be let in accordance with the recently approved Temporary Accommodation Allocation Policy, agreed by Cabinet in July 2024.
Councillor Bayford and Councillor Davis spoke under Council Procedure Rule 20.1.
Councillor Whitehead proposed, Councillor Keen seconded and Cabinet agreed the following:
1. That the Council progresses with the acquisition of these 10 properties and their proposed uses as set out above, using the additional capital budget, approved by Council at its meeting on 12 October 2023;
2. The letting of the King Street homes be in accordance with the Council’s Allocations Policy and any subsequent local lettings plan (LLP), at an affordable rent as set out in the Council’s Tenancy Strategy;
3. The letting of the Margate Road flats be in accordance with the Council’s Temporary Accommodation Allocation Policy, approved by Cabinet in July 2024.
Supporting documents:
- Cabinet August 24 - Purchase of 10 GPML homes - Google Docs, item 34. PDF 273 KB
- Annex 1 - Equality Impact Assessment - Purchase of 10 H GPML for Temporary Accommodation and Affordable Rent - Google Docs, item 34. PDF 202 KB