The Council's Housing Plan and Housing policies are based mainly on building market rent and sale and affordable residential units that have a rent capped at 80% of local market rents, due to upward market forces on rents locally, these types of residential units are no longer affordable or accessible to single people who aren't earning over £45,000 pa
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This ePetition ran from 13/02/2024 to 13/05/2024 and has now finished.
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The Council, in the course of setting its housing policies,
undertakes a very detailed and robust housing needs assessment. The
most recent assessment was undertaken in 2018 by Opinion Research
Services, who are recognised as leaders in the field of housing
needs assessments. The assessment concluded a need to provide
additional affordable housing for 8,756 households over the period
2016-41. It found that the vast majority of households who require
affordable housing (7,200 households of the 8,756 households) would
need housing benefit support to afford housing at London Living
Rents or Affordable Rent levels.
The findings of the assessment have informed the current housing
policies, which seek to secure the maximum amount of affordable
housing from new development and, therein, prioritises social
rented affordable homes.
The Council is commencing a review of its Local Plan this year and
will be commissioning a new housing needs assessment. As with
previous assessments, this will consider a broad definition of
households in housing need and interrogate data from a wide range
of sources. As with the 2018 assessment, this will include
households that are unable to afford their housing costs, including
those living in the market rented sector in the Borough.
However, it is important to note that the most significant and
detrimental impacts to the availability and affordability of new
affordable housing, are changes introduced since 2011 by
Government. These changes include the broadening of the definition
of affordable housing to include low cost home ownership products
and the substantial reduction in Government grant available to
acquire new affordable homes - the average grant per dwelling has
dropped by 60%. These are matters outside of local council control
and beyond local housing policies to address.