Agenda item

Director of Community Services

The Director of Community Services attended the meeting to discuss the Housing White Paper – “Fixing our broken housing market” from a housing perspective.

There were two main aspects of the White Paper, planning and housing, but it was mainly driven by changes to the planning system. It was recognised that  there was a significant deficit between the supply and demand of affordable housing. It was felt that the White Paper did not provide many solutions to aid the Council in discharging its statutory housing duties (homelessness and the Housing register), but it did emphasise the need for more houses to be built in order to help close the gap.

The Director of Community Services provided Members with a brief overview and some statistics detailed in the Paper.

Affordability was a key issue; this was particularly a problem in the South East, with local housing in the district costing between 10 to 14 times more than the average salary. Due to a very limited private rented sector, local rents were pitched very high.

According to the Paper there was plenty of available land in the country, only 11% of the country had been built upon. There were proposals to introduce  transparency around land ownership i.e. to provide reasons associated with plots of land and why they had not been built on, this would aid sites to be quickly identified along with reasons as what was stopping sites coming forward for development. The idea being discussions could happen with land owners to bring forward or unblock issues e.g. Lack of infrastructure, land contamination etc. 

The White Paper also raised elements such as:

•           Introducing longer tenancy agreements by, extending these to three years in order to provide protection to families.

•           Changing the definition of affordable housing: To include a range of low-cost housing opportunities for those aspiring to own a home, including starter homes. And to introduce a household income eligibility cap of £80,000 (£90,000 for London) on starter homes.

•           Charges on second homes though Community Housing Fund Payments.

•           Encouraging LAs to introduce new housing ventures e.g. Local housing companies which could deliver forms of affordable housing, although the Government had confirmed that if products feel like, and look like social housing then Right to buy policies would apply.

•           New powers for Councils to deal with the worst landlords.. 

•           Continuing a crackdown on empty homes which re-enforced measures already set out in the Councils ‘Empty Homes Strategy’.

•           Exploring further how to remove the barriers to help older people to move at the right time.

•           Do more to prevent homelessness by supporting households at risk before they reach crisis point and will increase the obligations upon Council to help all homeless households – by pushing through the Homelessness Reduction Bill.

The Council’s Housing Needs Survey was considered vital evidence base for the officersto assess the needs of the housing in the District.

The Group noted that the White Paper would not have much of an impact on the Council from a statutory housing perspective; it would not have much impact on reducing the number of people on the Council’s housing register or those in temporary accommodation. Although some of the planning tools referred to in the White Paper might bring forward more schemes which could include affordable housing and unblock sites in the future.

There was some S106 commuted sums money available that could be used to buy accommodation and recently this had been used to purchase temporary accommodation (x17 units) by way of a new build in Bishopric, which would be used to reduce the number of homeless sent to Bed and Breakfast.

The Director of Community Services was asked to provide figures on the number of affordable housing units that had been delivered over the last two years.

The Cabinet Member was due to attend a ‘think tank’ meeting to discuss the Paper, he would meet with the Director separately ahead of the meeting.