Labour councillors on Cheshire West and Chester Council believe 2011/12 will see only 19 affordable homes built in the borough against a rising waiting list for social housing of 16,000. But the ruling Conservative administration has a different take. DAVID NORBURY reports.

A £3M BOOST for affordable housing was sought by opposition Labour councillors at Cheshire West and Chester Council's annual budget meeting.

Labour leader Cllr Justin Madders also asked for a further £200,000 to be allocated to bring empty homes back into use.

He argued the additional funding should come from elsewhere in the council's budget by using part of a kitty funded from selling assets.

The Tory-controlled administration itself put forward proposals to spend almost half a million pounds a year on social housing in each of the next three years and £200,000 to deal with empty homes.

And Council Leader Cllr Mike Jones pointed out that under the council’s leadership, Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire East and Warrington would benefit from £20m which has been brought in to provide affordable housing over the next two to three years.

Cllr Madders argued that homelessness applications ‘have nearly doubled in the last 12 months’.

‘Thousands of families’ in the borough had no prospect of having their own home.

At the same time the council had a reserve of nearly £10m but no plans for using it.

He accepted part of the money might be needed to fund other capital projects but insisted ‘rather than sit on this massive reserve with no particular purpose in mind, let’s use some of it now for something that needs tackling now’.

The council, he believed, was relying on developers to deliver affordable housing schemes but that was not working.

The waiting list was growing rapidly ‘and you can see we are never going to tackle this problem this way.

“That’s why we are calling for a new approach, significant capital investment being set aside to work in partnership with registered social landlords to deliver substantially more houses for social rent”

He pointed out the council and all other public sector bodies ‘own vast banks of land in the borough and it’s about time we started using it to its full potential’.

The £3m would ‘kick start a meaningful house building programme that will start to tackle the lack of affordable housing in the area’.

Chester councillor Bob Rudd (Lab), a former chairman of the Chester and District Housing Trust, commented: “Given the number of people on the housing waiting lists in the borough together with the numbers of people homeless or faced with homelessness, this council needs to do

something radical that will help those in need of housing to be dealt with more quickly than currently being proposed by this administration”.

The move would not only help those on the waiting list but would also help to provide ‘much needed jobs’ in the construction industry locally.

“I think this council’s record is one we can be proud of,” suggested Cllr Mark Stocks (Con).

“With regard to housing we are in the process of agreeing a growth strategy for residential development across the authority.

“We are also in the process of seeing a major capital spend which has not been seen by any other local authority in the area”.

This was stimulating economic recovery in the borough.

Residential development which was being planned would include 20% of affordable homes.

“You cannot just magic them out of the air you have to have the right economic conditions,” he pointed out.

Policies for residential and affordable housing for the future had already been approved.

Cllr Jones insisted:“We have exceeded our affordable homes target in the last two years.”

He revealed the sub region ‘with our leadership’ had received £20m to provide affordable housing over the next two to three years.

“That is a massive, it is more than Manchester.

“We have a superb investment plan that is seen as a leading document amongst councils.

“We are engaged with our housing partners to see how we can use our land to produce even more housing and affordable housing and ensure we get good value for this council.”

Under his approach council owned land would be built on to provide homes for rent until the banks started lending again and occupiers were able to buy their homes.

“We get people into houses, we get houses built and we get our value back in maybe 10 years time.

“That is the sort of flexibility this council is looking at to deliver real houses for real people so that we can actually get them into the jobs that we are creating in this borough”.

He pointed out the cash in the reserve ‘is used to support the capital Investment which residents told us they wanted to see built over next 10 years’.

“You start taking money out of that fund and you start slowing down the projects that our communities have told us they want to us deliver”.

Resources portfolio holder Cllr Les Ford (Con) said the reserve was used ‘on a continuing basis’.

“We intend to use £10m every year for the next four years, that’s £40m and that has to be found somewhere.

“I don’t take kindly to taking £3m out just to put it somewhere else”.

He pointed out the council had also allocated £3.3m for extra care housing and ‘another £4.1m on strategic housing priorities’.