Warwickshire councillors make demands for affordable housing and sales of council homes across county

Those two demands will be made by Warwickshire County Council after councillors agreed at their full council meeting this week [Tuesday October 13 ] to take action after hearing that many such homes were now being rented privately and that local authority housing stocks were being diminished.

Cllr Dave Parson (Lab, Polesworth) put forward a notice of motion at the meeting calling for changes when it came to affordable housing.

The motion read: “Recent research has clearly established that the increasing costs of private rental is a very significant factor in causing in work poverty and an affordable decent home is a fundamental requirement of good physical and mental health.

“The LGA [Local Government Association] has recognised this and recommended that local authorities should be allowed to retain 100 per cent of right to buy receipts and to set any discounts locally so that more homes to rent can be built or purchased.”

It also included a paragraph urging the government to increase the supply of affordable housing and to urgently implement the LGA’s recommendations in the light of the developing Covid pandemic but this was later amended.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Parsons added: “We are looking at a real recession and real problems and these matters are going to get worse. It’s no good kicking it down the road - we need help now and we need homes now.”

The motion was amended by the controlling Conservative group who included a section asking the government to follow through on its recommendations in the Planning for the Future White Paper which looked at how developers often tried to reduce the number of affordable homes on an estate.

Cllr Jill Simpson-Vince (Con, Brownsover and Coton Park) said: “All the planning authorities in Warwickshire have targets for affordable housing and all planning officers will have challenging conversations with developers over whether that allocation can be achieved.

“Sometimes the main allocation is built but sometimes when it isn’t, the main argument given by developers is that the site is not viable for that amount of affordable housing.

“There will be cases where the viability issue is real, for example on a contaminated brownfield site where the clean-up costs are very high. But the vast majority of sites do not have these problems - many are greenfield sites so it is much harder to accept that this is the case.”