Issue - meetings

[Report of the Director for  Housing Growth. To be introduced by the  Cabinet Member for Housing and Estate Renewal.]

To note the progress of the establishment of a wholly owned company and to make decisions to facilitate the Council’s housing delivery programme, namely the agreement of HRA capital, the acceptance of the GLA’s grant offer and right to buy receipt ring-fencing offer, the reversal of a previous Cabinet Member decision to dispose of HRA sites to Sanctuary Housing and consequential financial decisions  The report will further be identifying the first sites to enter the housing delivery programme.

The Cabinet Member for Housing and Estate Renewal introduced the report and reiterated the Labour administration’s manifesto commitment to deliver at least 1,000 new Council homes at Council rents by 2022. This was the latest report putting in place the programme to deliver these homes.

The Cabinet Member outlined the Labour Administration’s stated preference in the Manifesto to build Council housing directly through a company it fully owned. However, this was at a time when the GLA funding was not available and was before the announcement, in the October budget, of the scrapping of the HRA borrowing cap. Time was now needed to consider what those changes meant for housing delivery in the borough, the role that the proposed Company could best play in making that delivery happen and the extent to which the HRA could now support the house building programme, before Cabinet finalised any decisions on forming the Company. Proposals on the Company would be presented in the 2019 but, in the meantime, the Council sought to continue with work on the Company.

This report sought Cabinet to make some key decisions to get started on the Council housing development programme. It identified the first sites to come forward with the GLA funding, including bringing back sites that the last administration had passed over to a Housing Association to build shared ownership and Affordable Rent homes, on which instead would be built Council homes at Council rents. It also provided the initial funding necessary to start work on those first sites and asked Cabinet to agree to accept over £62m of GLA housing grant to help the Council deliver 848 affordable homes over the next four years.

The Cabinet Member concluded her introduction by stating the GLA funding was a major vote of confidence in the Council and its capacity to deliver its housing programme and would be key to funding the bulk of the 1,000 new Council homes that were pledged.

Following questions from Cllr Barnes, the following information was noted:

• In relation to whether paragraph 4.4 of the report meant that right to buy receipts would only be spent on affordable housing and not rebuilding replacement Council homes, Officers advised that the point of that paragraph was to identify that this would stop the Council losing receipts back to the government. It would be up to the Council to determine how it spent the money generated from those right to buy receipts.

• With regards to the size of the sites in the report and the query on whether the Council under the Company scheme would build large housing sites, Officers informed the meeting that the Company would have small to medium sized sites with between 20 and 150 units. It was not within the capacity of the Council to develop larger housing sites. However, overall programme could provide a total of 848 homes.
• Officers responded that they were on course to put forward a further report with decisions on housing development sites to instigate the delivery  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11