Responding to the challenge

The publication of Shelter's (the housing and homelessness charity) online Housing League Table serves as a timely reminder of the scale of the challenge facing local authorities across England in meeting the need for more affordable homes.

The high cost of housing has been a long-standing problem for Stratford-on-Avon District, but the District Council has been actively pursuing a wide range of initiatives to address the problem.  These initiatives are delivering real results.

The District Council has:

• Made the provision or more affordable homes in rural areas and returning empty properties back to residential use its key corporate priorities.
• Enabled the provision of over 1,000 new affordable homes over the past decade, in partnership with local housing associations.
• Brought a total of 35 empty homes back into use and allocated £450,000 to deliver this programme between 2008/09 - 2012/13.
• Provided long-term funding for the Warwickshire Rural Community Council to employ an independent Rural Housing Enabler, who works directly with local communities to help them assess and address their own housing needs.
• Released grant funding to support the production of more Parish and Town Plans aligned with work to undertake local housing needs surveys.
• Introduced planning policies providing local communities with the opportunity to promote development to meet their specific needs, especially those identified in Parish and Town Plans which often include more affordable homes for local people.
• Pioneered the 'Local Choice' initiative. This initiative allows planning permission to be granted for housing schemes which meet needs identified by local communities. This pioneering 'bottom up' approach to planning has received national recognition.
• Invested over £3 million of its own money to provide nearly 50 additional affordable homes since 2004, through its Affordable Housing Investment Programme. A further 26 homes are currently under construction.
• Committed a further £1.2 million of its own money to support a new programme to build over 70 affordable homes in six rural villages.
• Approved proposals to make available a further £1.5 million of its own money to help provide more affordable homes over a three-year period.
• Attracted over £5 million of inward-investment into the District since 2008 from the Homes and Communities Agency (and its predecessor) to provide more affordable homes.

Commenting on the range of initiatives outlined, Councillor Stephen Gray, Revenues and Housing Portfolio Holder at Stratford-on-Avon District Council, said: "The District Council has been very active in recent years in tackling its housing problems.  Despite the scale of the challenges it faces, the Council has achieved tangible results.  These include boosting the supply of new affordable homes and reducing the number of empty properties.  A particular feature of the Council's activities - and one which has won national attention - is our pioneering work to empower our many rural communities to address their own housing needs.  As a result, we currently have 30 new rural homes for local people under construction, and another 70 in the pipeline.  In the longer-term, we hope to provide even more.

"However we and our partners are always keen to work with more rural communities.  Our support for the production or review of Parish and Town Plans, together with our support for the work of the Rural Housing Enabler, is tangible evidence of this commitment.  Our work to reduce the number of empty properties is also bearing fruit.  We have already helped to bring over 35 such properties back into use and expect to meet our target of 50 by next year.

"Finally, the Council's decision to invest over £4 million from its capital budget has enabled nearly 150 new affordable homes to be built.  This is a clear demonstration of how seriously we take our responsibilities: all this in the context of the increasingly tight financial constraints the Council must operate."