Agenda item

The purpose of this report is to update the Committee on progress made on enabling new affordable homes in 2019-20.

Recommendation

The Housing Overview & Scrutiny Committee is asked to note the contents of this   report and agree any comments it wishes to pass to the Executive.

The Housing Strategy / Enabling Manager presented this agenda item.

·         150 new affordable homes had been completed in the last financial year.  This was well above the Council’s average of 82 new homes per annum since 2012.

·         Examples were shown of some of the new affordable homes which had been developed.

·         It was predicted that 135 new social homes would be completed during the financial year 2020-21.

There was a question around what the Council might do to constrain Housing Associations privatising parking enforcement on their estates, resulting in charges to residents for parking permits. Officers recognised that this could cause hardship for Housing Association tenants, but this was not something over which the council had any power or influence.

There was a further question and an explanation around different methods of providing affordable housing on sites, including on Rural Exception Sites where market housing could be sold at discounted prices for people with a local connection, in order to make socially rented dwellings viable.

There was a question about how planned changes in the white paper Planning for the Future would affect delivery of affordable housing in the borough.  Officers responded that the more immediate threat was from the proposed changes to the current planning system which would temporarily raise the small sites threshold below which developers did not have to contribute to affordable housing to 40 or 50 units, and introduce First Homes sold at a discount to market price for first time buyers. These proposals would lead to fewer socially rented homes being delivered, which were the homes which were needed the most.  There was no details about how discounts on First Homes would be funded.  The difficulty of finding sites for social housing or affordable housing was also discussed as Waverley Borough did not have many large sites to contain affordable housing.  A new Housing Strategy for Waverley was being developed which would attempt to address these issues.

Councillors wanted more in the report about why social housing was important, including something on the economic contribution of the people working in Waverley Borough in service roles as key workers who struggled to afford to live in the borough.  If people did not have to drive into the Borough to work it would also drive down emissions.

The Chairman wanted the report to highlight that Housing Operations had been doing a really good job in driving down carbon emissions in Council housing stock, by increasing the number of properties with an EPC rating of C or better. This had been achieved through replacing windows and doors, boilers and insulation to reduce heat loss and improved energy efficiency.

There was a further question regarding the standards of affordable housing and whether providers had to adopt standards set by Waverley Borough.  It was explained that new affordable homes had to meet nationally-set space standards and emissions standards.  The Council also had its own standards for new builds.

The Committee noted the contents of the report, and that a new Housing Strategy was being drafted to which the Committee would have the opportunity to contribute at an early stage.