Last week (6.2.17) an announcement claimed that Sheffield would
be delivering 1000 new homes by 2021.
This includes some new build through Sheffield Housing
Company. This was something they set up 3 or so years ago in partnership
with Keepmoat. It covers acquisitions as well as new build. They
have delivered 352 of which 301 are acquired properties and 51 new build.
This is similar to our Homescape programme which was
launched back in January 2015. It consists of a wider range of initiatives
including council new build, some specialist housing provision for vulnerable
groups, market sale and rent to buy. We have also proactively offered
some small sites to small and medium builders to build new homes. In
total there are currently 880 new homes in the development process of which
approximately 267 are affordable rent, 138 are market rent, 49 are rent to
buy. The total investment into district will equate to £100m (based on
average build costs). This is total expected investment including some
grant funding and private finance.
Cllr Naheed Mather, Cabinet Member for Housing and Enforcement Management
In our early 70’s we lived in our own house, it was a three bedroomed
semi where we had brought up our family. We were quite active but couldn’t
manage the stairs and the cleaning. We could not find a bungalow to buy that
met our needs. Thankfully we applied to the council and were lucky enough to
get a lovely bungalow that we can manage and we didn’t have to move away from
our friends.
The majority of local authorities do not class starter homes as affordable, despite central government claiming they are…
It should come as no surprise that the government’s Starter Home project will not achieve what it was designed to do. The Local Government Association warned last month that Starter Homes were not affordable for first time buyers, despite being aimed at this group.
Now a new survey from the Town and Country Planning Association has revealed only seven per cent of local authorities in England believe starter homes will address the need for affordable housing. This means four in five local councils do not believe discounted starter homes should be classed as affordable.
The Starter Homes scheme has been touted as a way of providing affordable property, enabling developers to replace shared ownership and affordable rented homes with properties sold at a 20 per cent discount on the market rate.
The survey asked some 353 councils in England what they thought of the scheme and the changes to right to buy, as well as social rents. The 105 that responded included a mixture of Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat-led councils. A total of 59 per cent said the need for affordable homes in their area was severe. Some 87 per cent said the initiative would not address that need, while 79 per cent said Start Homes should not be classed as affordable.
The survey also found that plans to reduce social rents by one per cent a year over the next four years has impacted many local authorities’ plans to build. Some 69 per cent said as a result they would create fewer social and affordable homes. Additionally, 90 per cent of respondents said the extension of Right to Buy to housing association property would lead to fewer homes available for social rent.
TCPA’s chief executive Kate Henderson said: “Low-cost homeownership, such as starter homes, may help some people get a first step on the housing ladder, but as the survey of councils highlights, this will not address the need for genuinely affordable homes.
“We need a housing strategy for the nation that provides decent homes for everyone in society, including those most in need in the current housing crisis.”
Shadow housing minister John Healey warned the results revealed a growing cross-party opposition to the housing bill, which is set to be debated in the House of Lords.
“Labour and Conservatives councils are united in their belief that government housing policies are failing, with fewer genuinely affordable homes being built and so-called starter homes a huge let-down for families and first-time buyers,” he said.
“It is a damning assessment of Conservative policy from the organisations that will have to deliver it.”
Elderly will be hit by 'bungalow sell-off plan', foundation warns
Image copyrightThinkstock
Older and disabled people could be disproportionately affected by plans to force councils in England to sell high-value social housing, campaigners say.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said the policy was likely to lead to a widespread sell-off of bungalows, which are often popular among the elderly.
It said 15,300 council-owned bungalows in England could be sold off by 2021.
But ministers say councils can decide not to sell a property if it meets "a particular need" or is hard to replace.
The Housing and Planning Bill - which the government says will help more people become home owners - goes before the House of Lords later.
If it is passed, local authorities will be compelled to sell expensive properties as they become vacant, to "ensure that the money locked up in high value vacant housing stock will be reinvested in building new homes".
According to the Bill, what will count as a "high value" property is likely to vary in different areas.
However, the foundation called on ministers to make bungalows - which it says are in high demand - and sheltered housing exempt from the initiative. How will extending Right to Buy work?
Such a move would bring England in line with Northern Ireland, where councils are not forced to sell bungalows or ground-floor flats under a similar initiative.
In the foundation's report, researchers from Cambridge University said they found high demand for bungalows meant they were almost three times more likely to be sold off and would be harder to replace because of the amount of land needed.
It also estimated that while bungalows make up 9% of council-owned housing, they were likely to make up 25% of high-value property sales because of their higher cost and more frequent vacancies - a result of people moving into residential care or tenants moving later in life.
One in five older people currently lives in a bungalow, a proportion that increases steadily from 55-75, according to the report. This figure rises to one in four when there is someone sick or disabled in an older person's household.
'Acute housing crisis'
Brian Robson, from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said the housing Bill would reduce the number of affordable homes at a time of an "acute housing crisis".
"We risk holding a great British bungalow sell-off that will make things worse for older and disabled tenants who are trying to find suitable, affordable accommodation," he said.
"The increasing reliance on costly, insecure tenancies in the private-rented sector to house families on low incomes will only serve to trap more people in poverty."
However, a spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said local authorities would have the power to decide not to sell a property "if it meets a particular need and would be difficult to replace".
"Planning policy already requires local plans to take the housing needs of older and disabled people into account. Where there is a local need, councils can set much clearer standards for accessible and wheelchair-adaptable new homes," he added.
George Osborne Didn't Want To Build Houses That 'Produce Labour Voters,' Claims Nick Clegg
Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (left) and Chancellor George Osborne (right) react during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London. | PA/PA Archive
George Osborne and David Cameron blocked plans to build more social housing because it would "produce more Labour voters", Nick Clegg has claimed,
According to the former deputy prime minister, the chancellor and prime minister rejected repeated Lib Dem attempts to get more money to build homes for people on low incomes.
Clegg quoted the chancellor and prime minister in an interview with The Independent today as telling him: "All it does is produce more Labour voters."
The former Lib Dem leader also said Osborne blocked his attempts to expand childcare provision for two-year-olds for poorer families in favour of offering 30 hours of free childcare for older children as it would score a political victory over Ed Miliband.
Clegg claims the chancellor told him at the time: "All we want to do is to shoot Labour’s fox".
Yesterday I had a very long talk with a Kirklees resident who is not unique in any way in the situation she finds herself in.
She is in her early 90's, her husband who served in the 8th Army in Africa and Italy died about 20 years ago. Her son lives in London and her sister lives in Manchester. She has no relatives living in Yorkshire. She is living in the family house where she has lived for over 60 years, the house is a three bedroom house with a garden. She used to know all her neighbours who were also bringing up families, everyone looked after each other and the gardens were neat and tidy.
She can no longer look after her garden. Her neighbours have moved out and both the neighbouring properties are new private lets operated by a letting agent, all the gardens are now neglected and are used to dump rubbish. She has seen Police raids on her neighbours, periods where the houses have been gutted and abandoned, there have been disputes, between her neighbours about car parking ( She does not drive and sold their car when her husband died), her washing line has been pulled down as her neighbour now parks his car in front of her house.
Ideally she should be moving to a more suitable property. But as she owns her house she does not qualify for social housing. If she sold her house there is nothing on the market in the private sector that would meet her needs. In the past, not that long ago, she would have been able to move into a Council Bungalow or a Housing Association flat, where not only would she be able to manage the property she would have had neighbours of an age and outlook nearer to her own.
Today the council and Housing Association Waiting lists are getting longer and longer, the Governments reaction has been to force Kirklees to sell the best houses it has, not to use the money to build more houses, but to give the money to the Government who will then give discounts to people in the South to buy their housing association houses, that have then got a good chance of becoming private lets at 5 times the rent the Housing Association were charging.
So a lady who's husband fought in the second world war, who has never claimed any benefit, who paid for their own housing needs is now stuck in house, that though full of family memories is now a burden, she is alone, struggling to make ends meet, her husband was not a Banker, he only worked hard all his life in a job without a massive pension, or annual bonuses. She is stuck in the middle as the Conservative Party continue in the mission so amply demonstrated by Dame Shirley Porter, in bribing people who were lucky enough (or regrettably in some cases clever enough) to be allocated Social Housing when they needed it.
Social Housing Sales is not meeting the aspirations of those in need.
Just when you thought the Conservative Housing Policies could get no more daft and unfair they excel themselves in brass necked robbery. They plan to give first time buyers who can afford a £450,000 home a £90,000 public hand out.
To pay for this they are scrapping subsidies for "Social Housing" and "Affordable Housing", they are letting developers build 100,000 houses without contributing a penny to local road networks or schools. The Builders are flocking to be added to the Conservative Press release to sign up for this hand out, no longer will they have to pay expensive accountants to work out how to avoid their taxes, the Conservatives have done it for them.
Planning fees are being abolished which means another cut for local authorities, with Eric Pickles determining planning appeals and interfering with local plans, is it any surprise that companies scramble to support the Conservative Scheme.
This scheme discriminates against anyone over 40, anyone without surplus funds or anyone who has managed to get a first step on the housing ladder. It is doubtful that it will reduce the price of houses as the developers will pocket the profits they make from this tax avoidance. This £90,000 hand out must be compared to the bedroom tax imposed on those without inherited wealth or access to nepotistic support.
Passing an Estate Agents in Huddersfield I noticed a property to rent in Dalton asking for £650 per month. It looked like a Council House so I asked some questions.
The property was sold with a discount of £16,500, the discount was set by central government, but they don't pay it, the residents of Kirklees do. The discount is a hand out given to someone just because that at some time in the past they were fortunate enough to be given a council house. I don't blame the tenants for one moment, they did not set the rules. But the question is, if they can be given £16,500 (or as the limit now is £80,000) why can't that be given to a young couple who have not been fortunate enough to have been allocated a Council House, or how about to someone who is homeless.
To go on. The rent for the house, if it was still a council house would have been £362 per month, someone with two children would have been able to claim that in housing benefit (if the children had left home they would have been hit with the bedroom tax). Now the same person renting the house from the private landlord can claim the full £650 Local Housing Allowance.
So RTB has given an individual £16,500 and the government are paying an extra £298 in Housing Subsidy. Does that make sense?
Brandon Lewis, one of Eric Pickle's protégés, has just handed the Abu Dhabi Investment Council £8.9m in a move that the director of planning at the Conservative-controlled authority the City of Westminster, John Walker, described as “insane”.
Questions must be asked about this policy. Is "insane" the only description that can be used or should we be looking for other motives?
The policy is the decision to scrap the requirement for developers and speculators to make a contribution to Social Housing (housing that some ordinary people can afford). This has been pushed through even though the departments own estimates (probably on the low side) estimate that £1.9b worth of "affordable" housing will be lost nationwide, all to line the pocket of the "Spivs and Speculators" (to use Vince Cables words).
Among the first beneficiaries of the policy were the developers of a block of luxury Mayfair apartments, including 5,000 sq ft units with cinemas and billiard rooms. The scheme, 20 Grosvenor Square, is backed by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, and the developers had agreed to donate £17.9m to affordable housing as part of the planning deal, but Lewis’s policy allowed that to be slashed by £9m.
Councils estimated that Lewis’s policy could boost property companies’ profits by hundreds of millions of pounds, while the City of Westminster said it stood to lose £1bn in affordable housing contributions.
