Chichester District Council
Issue

Issue - meetings

Community Housing Fund

Meeting: 07/03/2017 - Council (Item 193)

Community Led Housing Fund

(See report at agenda item 9 (pages 45 to 52) of the Cabinet agenda of 7 February 2017)

 

RECOMMENDED BY THE CABINET

 

1)      That the allocation of funding of £1,386,067 for the 2016-2017 financial year from the government’s Community Housing Fund to support community-led housing developments be noted.

2)      That authority be delegated to the Head of Housing and Environment Services, following consultation with the Leader of the Council and the Cabinet Members for Finance and Governance and for Housing and Environment Services, to approve the spend of the funds in para (1) above in line with government guidance issued with the notification of the award (appendix 1 to the agenda report) and Chichester District Council’s Housing Strategy.

Minutes:

Mrs Purnell (Cabinet Member for Housing and Environment Services), seconded by Mrs Lintill (Cabinet Member for Community Services), moved the recommendations of the Cabinet.

 

Mrs Purnell introduced this report, summarising the objective of the Government’s community-led housing development scheme and how the council, which would be allocated £1,386,067 in two tranches, would be required to use the funds in a prescribed manner.  The funds provided by this scheme would enable the council to implement the key priorities of its Housing Strategy.

 

Registered provider partners were now looking to maximise economies of scale in response to government grant funding reductions and the revenue loss through the government’s 1% per annum rent reduction policy on all affordable rented tenancies.  They were no-longer interested in delivering small sites as they were relatively expensive to deliver.

 

The Council currently holds £435,000 in commuted sums yet to be allocated.  A further £1.23m of commuted sums was expected to be received from completed section 106 agreements.  The Housing Strategy review approved by the Council last year approved the use of commuted sums both to attract investment to meet specific local needs, such as bungalows and to make small schemes viable, particularly rural schemes. This scheme achieved both of these objectives.

 

Funding had been determined on the number of second homes in the district and on affordability level.  Chichester district has more second homes than Arun, for example, and more on the coastal strip than in the South Downs National Park area.

 

Council was being asked to note receipt of the funding and not to consider how it was allocated.

 

Mrs Grange advised that over 25 expressions of interest in community led housing had been received over the last six months.  She had spoken to a number of groups – parish councils, landowners and community groups as well as Action in Rural Sussex, housing consultants in the district and to other organisations who provide advice.  An options report would now be drawn up to consider how this money could be allocated.

 

Mrs Duncton supported the scheme, saying that it was the only option in our small communities and rural villages where we could provide housing which did not go onto the open market.  Mr Shaxson praised the proactive work that Mrs Grange (Housing Enablement Manager) and her team were doing in speaking to individual parishes.  Mr J F Elliott suggested that more one bed properties should be made available in rural villages for widows/widowers.

 

Mr Dunn considered that it had not been a good decision to transfer our housing to housing associations and that Community Land Trusts should be encouraged to build housing for rental to secure housing tenure. 

 

Mr Dignum asked members to encourage their parishes to get behind the scheme, particularly in the South Downs National Park area.  Chichester had received 50% more than the rest of West Sussex combined and there may be more such funding available to us.  Para 5.4 of the Cabinet papers gave examples of the sorts of things  ...  view the full minutes text for item 193


Meeting: 07/02/2017 - Cabinet (Item 325)

325 Community Led Housing Fund pdf icon PDF 69 KB

The Cabinet is requested to consider the agenda report and its appendix and to make the following recommendations to the Council:

 

That the Council:

(1)  Notes that funding of £1,386,067 has been allocated for the 2016-2017 financial year from the government’s Community Housing Fund to support community led housing developments.

 

(2)  Approves delegated authority being given to the Head of Housing and Environment Services, following consultation with the Cabinet Holder for Housing and Environment Services, to approve the spend of these funds in line with the government guidance issued with notification of the award (appendix 1) and the Council’s adopted Housing Strategy. 

Additional documents:

Decision:

RESOLVED

 

That the allocation of funding of £1,386,067 for the 2016-2017 financial year from the government’s Community Housing Fund to support community-led housing developments be noted.

 

RECOMMENDED TO THE COUNCIL

 

(1)   That the allocation of funding of £1,386,067 for the 2016-2017 financial year from the government’s Community Housing Fund to support community-led housing developments be noted.

(2)   That authority be delegated to the Head of Housing and Environment Services, following consultation with the Leader of the Council and the Cabinet Members for Finance and Governance and for Housing and Environment Services, to approve the spend of the funds in para (1) above in line with government guidance issued with the notification of the award (appendix 1 to the agenda report) and Chichester District Council’s Housing Strategy.

 

Minutes:

The Cabinet received and considered the agenda report and its appendix and the fourth agenda supplement which reported a revised version of the second recommendation in para 2.2 of the report (copies attached to the official minutes).

 

The report was presented by Mrs Purnell.

 

Mrs Rudziak and Mrs Grange were in attendance for this item. 

 

Mrs Purnell summarised the objective of the government’s community-led housing development scheme and how CDC, which would be allocated £1,386,067 in two tranches, would be required to use the funds in the prescribed manner. The funds provided by this scheme would enable CDC to implement (as set out in para 3.3 of the report) the key priorities of its own Housing Strategy. The proposals for how the funds could be used were outlined in section 5 of the report.

 

Mrs Rudziak emphasised the opportunity afforded by the funding allocation to take forward CDC’s Housing Strategy. Officers needed to advise the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) as soon as possible of CDC’s proposals for utilising the funds to support community groups with housing initiatives.

 

Mrs Grange commented that despite the fairly slow take-up of interest in Community Land Trusts (CLTs) during 2016, parish councils were beginning to be enamoured with the concept and so the advent of this scheme with its funding was very timely. CDC was in fact making good progresspleasing advances with CLTs compared with many local authorities and this scheme would enable it to augment the very important preparatory work undertaken by housing officers.

 

Mrs Grange replied to members’ questions on points of details as to the period within which the funds had to be spent (it was not believed to be before the end of March 2017 but DCLG’s advice was being sought); the need to indicate to DCLG at this stage only ideas rather than preferences as to how the funds might be spent (CDC would, for example, looking at what Cornwall Council (which was experienced in CLTs) was planning to do); para 8.2 of the report stated that the funding initiative was not restricted to areas with the highest second-home ownership and, in fact, currently the parishes expressing an interest in the scheme were not necessarily those with more second homes.

 

The Cabinet concurred that this was a very exciting grassroots opportunity but it was important to ensure that local communities were given as much assistance as possible to understand and implement the opportunities this scheme presented. 

  

Decision

 

At the end of the discussion members voted unanimously on a show of hands in favour of making the recommendations (as amended by the fourth agenda supplement) to the Council meeting as set out below.

 

 

RESOLVED

 

That the allocation of funding of £1,386,067 for the 2016-2017 financial year from the government’s Community Housing Fund to support community-led housing developments be noted.

 

RECOMMENDED TO THE COUNCIL

 

(1)  That the allocation of funding of £1,386,067 for the 2016-2017 financial year from the government’s Community Housing Fund to support community-led housing developments be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 325


 

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