Agenda item

Presentation to follow.

The committee received a presentation from Chris Brown, Service Director of Housing. The chair invited comments and questions from members, and noted the presentation.

The committee received a presentation from Christopher Brown, Service Director of Housing, on the demand and supply for housing, the challenges around affordable housing delivery, and the local pressures.

During the discussion, the following points were raised:

• Right to Buy – is there evidence of who is buying? Anecdotally, it may be an elderly couple who have children that have become affluent and buy the house for their parent or parents? Presumably it only goes in the name of the tenants, do we have a handle on how often that is the case? An awful lot of ex-council houses are let privately, do we know how much that happens and if there’s anything we can do? Once something has purchased for right to buy, the council doesn’t have any control, aside from where the council is still the leaseholder. It is difficult to get data on this.
• Is there a current pressure from developers not doing affordable housing because they only get 15% profit? Planning applications have dropped significantly and have been held there because of the phosphates challenge. It’s easier to develop elsewhere as they don’t have to invest in phosphate solutions. There are also issues around skilled labour effecting developers. 15% profit is the benchmark for a requirement to make social housing. Developers are squeezing their budgets and they are the ones evidencing their costs as they offer the development so that does impact development of affordable housing. Planning would be better to go through that.
• Pop up housing – does the HRA have a stock of land it can use for modular housing? There are clusters of 8 units, that are low energy/net zero carbon. They are appropriate for garage sites and single story buildings, so we can continue to use the available HRA garage sites for small developments. There aren’t large pockets of land to build larger schemes. We are looking at a model with Adult Services with Corporate Assets – where we are selling a lot of land, can we identify some of that which could be put to a different use and save us revenue funding. If we put 60 houses on it, it would be a huge offer. Half of it would be a good offer for providers. Where land can be put into the pool, it needs to be large enough for developers to make a profit. We were talking last week with Homes England, Adults, and Childrens, and Homes England have asked if we would like some money to investigate these sites. Larger schemes will take several years as they are complex joint ventures.
• Pressure on rough sleeping budget – when does the money come out, when is the next tranche of money due? The current funding for rough sleeping will run out at the end of 2025. There is a budget for 24/25, and will be putting a new bid in to the government in the summer. We would expect some funding to continue.
• Is the 405 based on this? No, it is based on planning applications that we expect to be completed.
• There are questions around the viability of the notional profit – 15% 30 years ago, now 20%. They pay a lot of money for land and everything else gets squeezed out. The government should get a handle on this.
• Occasionally there is a philanthropic landowner who comes forward with land under market rate to facilitate housing. Clearly a registered provider must come forward to do it. Are we able to consider being a registered provider to take those on at below market rates? Yes, we can consider purchases of S106. Number of housing associations/registered providers are not interested in small development. We do have providers who are interested in rural provision. It’s more helpful if the providers purchase these properties, as the council only has so much money it can use. For S106 activity, there may be a discounted price but we can’t use our 40% grant. Building with grant funding can be more affordable. We have to think about where S106 fits in the strategy for the Housing Revenue Account. There are also alternatives to property being maintained as a social rented property – we prefer that, but if we may lose the property, we have the option of discounted market sale.
• Reducing the number of people on the waiting list – two components to this challenge, the first is more properties, and the other is churn. How many properties come vacant every year? Up to 10% churn per year. Hopefully we are all living longer, that churn may be steady and not increase. There will still be a challenge with that churn, and as we deliver longer there will be extra needs. We are hoping for additional funding with Hinkley Point C for potentially another 4 years, which may lead to initiatives like downsizing which can be successful. We want to make the best use of our accommodation.
• Where a parent dies and there is a child of a tenant, this doesn’t reduce the waiting list. Sometimes the child of a tenant has a right of succession, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that property, if the needs are different they may have right of succession to a different property.

The committee noted the report.