Agenda item

To update the Panel on progress towards the new draft Housing Strategy which is expected to be presented to Cabinet in early 2020.

Alan Benson, AD for Housing, presented the reports for both items 10 and 11 together as they were linked. He said that the Council’s current Housing Strategy had been published in December 2016 and had been due to run until 2022. However, there have since been changes in national housing policy, in regional policy from the Mayor of London including funding to build Council housing, and in local priorities as the Housing Strategy still refers to the Haringey Development Vehicle and does not include the housing targets that are included in the new Borough Plan. The Housing Strategy will therefore be rewritten with the top priority being the target to build 1,000 new Council homes and will also include homelessness, rough sleeping and the quality of the existing housing stock. There is a Members engagement process which takes place before publishing a draft of the new Housing Strategy, and this involves a Members steering group chaired by Cllr Ibrahim which has met three times already. The aim is currently to bring the draft Housing Strategy to Cabinet early in the New Year, which will then be published for consultation.

On the delivery of new Council homes, Alan Benson said that the report focuses on the Council’s progress towards delivering its target of 1,000 new Council homes. Council housing hasn’t been built on this scale in Haringey since the later 1970s/early 1980s when there were around 22,000 Council homes. There are now only 15,000 Council homes in Haringey as a result of the Right to Buy programme. However, the Mayor of London has recently allocated funding to enable the building of new Council homes across London. The new Haringey Cabinet agreed in 2018 to set up a Wholly Owned Company (WOC) to deliver new Council homes as this would enable borrowing outside of the government restrictions imposed on Housing Revenue Account (HRA) borrowing. However, later that year, the Government lifted the cap on HRA borrowing so the WOC route was rendered unnecessary.

Alan Benson continued by saying that the report covers the three main areas required for the delivery of Council housing which are land, funding and capacity within the Council’s team. There are 60 sites that have been identified for development in the first stage and work on these is underway. Another group of sites will soon be identified and reported to Cabinet, probably in January. Significant funding of £62.8m has been provided to Haringey from the Mayor of London although this is not enough in itself to finance the building programme and so further funding will be required through HRA borrowing. There has been extensive staff recruitment to support the programme and there are now 18 people in the Housing delivery team. The Council is currently on track to deliver to its milestone target which is for 500 Council homes to have planning approval and for 350 Council homes to have started on site by May 2020.

In response to questions from the Panel, Alan Benson said:

·         That most of the 60 sites are quite small, the smallest with only one unit on it but with 190 units on the largest but the majority are in the range of 20 to 50 units. There are some larger sites which are expected to be brought into the programme in future.

·         That growing the team of staff in future makes sense as there is an assumption that after the first 1,000 Council homes are built the Council will want to continue building more in order to work towards recovering the 7,000 Council houses that were lost through Right to Buy.

·         That with regards to the two sites on the Appendix 1 list showing zero for the estimated number of Council homes, on the Muswell Hill site this is because it is a historic scheme which is designated for shared ownership,  and on the Bounds Green site this is because there has not yet been an calculation made of how many Council homes could be built on the site.

·         Asked about Islington Council’s presentation of its Council housing schemes in a clear way on their website, some boroughs are further ahead and Islington started their programme a few years ago although their target for building Council homes is lower than Haringey’s. There are plans to improve this part of the Haringey website.

·         With regards to the environmental standards of the new Council homes, the Council is aiming to ensure that they are all carbon neutral, have exemplary quality of design and that the mix of units will include family sized-homes and not just 1-bedroom flats.

In response to questions from the Panel, Rob Krzyszowski, Head of Planning Policy, said:

·         That the draft London Plan has been going through its process for some time and was recently examined by the independent Planning Inspectorate. The recommendations are now public and is awaiting a response from the Mayor and then from the Secretary of State before approval by the London Assembly which would lead to the new London Plan being formally adopted. This is likely to happen sometime early or in the spring of next year.

·         The draft London Plan specifies that Council’s should set affordable housing tenure targets of a minimum of 30% low cost rented homes (which can include affordable rent and social rent), a minimum of 30% intermediate products (which can include London living rent and shared ownership) with the remaining 40% being left to the discretion of the individual Borough.

·         Haringey Council’s Local Plan would have to be in conformity with the London Plan and a consultation on the Local Plan will begin in the spring of next year which will include questions on the affordable housing target and affordable housing tenure. Evidence on need is required to justify any future affordable housing targets.

·         That the Council’s self-build register, which is required by law, had around 300 people who had indicated an interest in delivering self-build or custom-build properties. There are now criteria recently approved by Cabinet that have to be met to be on the register including a £144 administration fee as well as a financial resources test and a local connection test. This has reduced the number of people on the register from 300 to just 1. However, the register is just an indicator of demand for self-build properties and, with 300 on the register, the planning service would have had to allocate enough land to meet the demand that could otherwise be prioritised for affordable housing. However, this doesn’t prevent anyone from going ahead with self-build development on private land.

In response to questions from the Panel, Cllr Emine Ibrahim said:

·         That Community Land Trusts are an innovative way of delivering affordable housing. Cllr Ibrahim said that she will always prioritise Council Housing at Council rents. She said that security of tenure is important as well as the rent levels and Council tenancies are the most secure form of tenure.

·         That consultation is key and there has been some confusion about plans for the Crownwood site so there have been some issues with communications. She said that she is planning to meet with some of the tenants soon to help improve this.