Preston City Council savings depend on how interest rates affect Animate borrowing plansCouncil housing could eventually be on offer again in Preston – for the first time in two decades – as part of a deal to enable the city’s local authority to provide its own homes to residents.Preston City Council has agreed to establish a partnership with housing association Onward Homes, which would see the authority initially acquire up to 20 properties.
According to papers presented to city councillors, Preston’s aim is to provide “affordable social housing” in order to address the need for more “affordable rented and social rented homes in the city”. Councillors were told at the meeting where Preston’s council housing plan was discussed that the number of people living in temporary homes in the city has more than doubled compared to before the pandemic – from 80 placements in 2019 to 195 last year.
A study into housing needs across Central Lancashire in 2022 described a “double whammy of pressure” on social housing in the sub-region. First, there are people now requiring social housing who would “never previously have needed it” – for reasons including the loss of their job or a breakdown in their relationship.
Nationally, there has been a sharp decline in the supply of properties for social rent, especially following the introduction of affordable rent in 2011. The authority considered – but ruled out – the possibility of building new homes itself on council-owned land, because of the additional pressure that would put on staff resources which are already stretched by the delivery of multiple ongoing regeneration projects.
Paying a visit to a young mum with two children, the Labour member was shocked at the state of the family’s privately rented home.“They said there was damp in the kitchen. I went – and this is honest God’s truth – there was a brook running through the kitchen. One of those Conservative colleagues – Sharoe Green ward’s David Walker – said he thought the plans had been pitched “at totally the wrong time”, adding: “It’s not cheap and money’s not cheap to borrow.”
In inner city areas of Preston, where rent and prices are lower to start with, it has sometimes proved more difficult to deliver affordable housing. As the LDRS has regularly reported, developers of city centre schemes often successfully argue that their projects would not be financially viable if they were obliged to meet the affordable housing quota – meaning developments can be built without any affordable homes being included with them.