Agenda item

Report of the Director of Placemaking and Housing.  To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Council Housebuilding, Placemaking and Local Economy.

A report updating members on how the Council Housing Delivery Programme is progressing - including first outturn updates on completed schemes, removal of certain schemes from the Programme, and other necessary decisions.

The Cabinet Member for Council House building, Placemaking, and Local Economy presented the report which provided a detailed overview of the Council’s progress towards the Corporate Delivery Plan target to deliver 3,000 Council homes for Council rent by 2031. It focused on the progress since Cabinet were last updated on the programme and requested a number of decisions.

The Cabinet Member expressed that building work had started on more than 2,000 new Council homes in the last five years. The Council were on track to finish and let 3,000 new homes by 2031.

The Cabinet Member further outlined that the new homes, the Council was delivering, were built to the highest standards of sustainability and energy efficiency. Placemaking was central to the Council’s approach, and the new homes were bringing real improvements to their areas - including through new facilities and green spaces that contributed greater biodiversity into the city. The Council were designing these new homes to meet the individual needs of a wide range of people.

The Cabinet placed on record their appreciation and thanks to the Director for Placemaking and Housing, the Assistant Director for Housing and the Housing Delivery Team for their continued work and significant commitment to the Housing delivery programme. This had been nationally recognised with an award from Inside Housing for the best Housing Delivery Team of the year.

Cabinet was asked to approve the use of Right to Buy receipts towards seven new Council homes at Crawley Road, to agree budgets for homes already delivered at Harvey House and Finsbury Road, and to remove three unsuitable sites from the programme.

7.35pm - Due to a significant fault in the sound system affecting the live stream of the meeting and limiting participation of officers joining the meeting online, the Chair Adjourned the meeting

The meeting restarted at 7.45pm.

In response to questions from Cllr Hakata and Cllr Connor, the following was noted:

-      Overall, the programme was moving towards a target of 35% three-bedroom homes and 10% with four or more bedrooms. This demonstrated how the Council building programme would provide real benefits to residents awaiting Council homes and also those that were living in severely crowded accommodation.

-      The Council were building homes sustainably and to last. They were accessing innovations which provided value for money and met high end needs in the borough.

-      All schemes would be built following planning permission, and the Council was confident that it could deliver 3000 homes. In addition, the Councill had a spend envelope for housing delivery which was being monitored and adhered to.

Following consideration of exempt information at item 23 and agreement of the exempt recommendations,

RESOLVED

1. To approve the removal of 3 sites from the programme: Land adjacent to 82 Muswell Hill Place, Stokley Court and Eade Road. Reasons for this are individual and set out in detail in the report.

2. To note the post-completion reports for the new Council homes at Errol Cour (500 White Hart Lane), 27 Harvey House and 43 Finsbury Road, including financial information included in the Exempt Part B report.

3. To approve the retrospective, overspend on 27 Harvey House and 43 Finsbury Road of £38,857 and £29,013 respectively.

4. To approve the use of retained Right to Buy (RtB) receipts as capital subsidy to support the delivery of seven new Council Rent homes at Crawley Road as detailed in paragraphs 6.31-6.34, to the total value detailed in the Exempt Part B report.

5. To note the continued success of the programme, the achievements to date against targets, and the forecast performance.

Reasons for decisions

The Corporate Delivery Plan (2022-24) commits to delivering 3,000 new Council homes by 2031 and the suite of decisions contained in this report support this commitment through both site/project-specific decisions and proposed updates to procedures and processes. These decisions ensure that the Council continues to build up a pipeline of new sites to deliver a long-term sustainable Housing Delivery programme.

Alternative options considered.

This paper is an update paper, and alternative options have been considered only for recommendations which are for approval rather than for note.

In regard to 3.1.1, the alternative option is that the sites remain in the programme. This would mean that more appropriate alternative future options for the sites would not be explored, which would result in a continued spend on project proposals for these sites that are currently identified as either unviable or unsuitable. For this reason, we have not proposed pursuing this alternative option.

In regard to 3.1.3, the schemes at Harvey House and Finsbury Road have been completed, and the overspend is being retrospectively approved. Therefore, no alternative can be considered, and these costs are contained within the current HRA business plan.

In regard to 3.1.4, the option of not using RtB receipts was considered, but would not make best use of the Council’s time limited reserve of RtB funds to support the delivery of an otherwise unsubsidised project. In order to ensure best use of our available RtB receipts, this option was rejected.