To receive information on the Council’s review of the current Housing Allocations System.
Minutes:
Karen Jones, Senior Project Manager for Wiltshire Council, gave a presentation regarding the Council’s review of the current Housing Allocations System.
Karen explained that the Chippenham Community Area had a population of 44,220, with a mix of owner occupied homes (67.4%), social housing (17.5%), private housing (13.4%), and other (1.6%).
There were several potential land opportunities withi the Chippenham Community Area, including:
· Westinghouse Cricket Club site in Chippenham – delivering 22 affordable housing units
· The North Chippenham expansion – seeking 40% affordable housing
· The former chicken factory in Sutton Benger – delivering 19 affordable housing units
· Further small sites in Kington Langley and Kington St Michael.
Wiltshire’s housing register had a total of 17,088 households currently. Of these, 1,637 had indicated Chippenham as their first preference.
The Council was considering many factors as part of its review, including under-occupation. There were currently 250 households in Wiltshire that occupied a house that was larger than required.
Jenny Spoor of Greensquare provided further information on the issue of under-occupation and the Welfare Reform.
A Project Board and Plan had been assembled and households that were currently under-occupying their properties were being targeted. Continued work was being done with partner agencies, and various polices and procedures were also being reviewed.
The Avon Communities Board had been in operation since April 2012 and the AGM would be held on 23 October 2012.
Angie Rawlins, Head of Allocations and Options at Wiltshire Council, presented information regarding the review of allocations.
The Localism Act 2011 had introduced amendments to The Housing Act which provided new freedoms for local authorities to set the rules determining which categories of applicants qualified for social housing.
Following the presentation, there was an opportunity for everyone present to contribute to the review through a series of questions which sought to obtain people’s views regarding the future of housing options and allocations.
A question and answer session was also held with the three presenters, and the following summarises the key points and issues that arose:
· Greensquare had a Tenancy Sustainment Team and worked closely with other agencies to assist those households that were wishing to downsize.
· Greensquare was not currently looking to introduce Fixed Term Tenancies due to the scale of the impact this could have. There were many issues that would need to be considered, but this might be something that would be looked into in the future.
· Wiltshire Council had a duty to provide housing for homeless people, however there was a lot of criteria to consider in the process, including details of any previous evictions and whether or not the person was ‘intentionally homeless’.
· Wiltshire Council’s housing policies did not currently allow for any households to be excluded from the register, but the housing associations were able to exclude as they had their own lettings policies.
· The Welfare Reform and the new provisions regarding under-occupation of properties, did not apply to elderly people; it only applied to people of working age.
The Vice Chairman thanked the presenters for the useful information and suggested that anyone wishing to obtain a copy of the presentations should contact the Democratic Services Officer.
Please see Appendix 1 for a summary of the answers to the questions that would feed into the Housing Allocations review.