A numbers game
Since they made affordable housing ‘a priority’, we’ve seen Allerdale Borough Council allow developers to reduce or remove affordable housing contributions from their developments. While overall housing delivery has increased, affordable housing delivery has decreased in every single year.
The Allerdale local plan mandates a percentage of developments that must be given over to affordable housing, while Allerdale Borough Council decide how that should be made up - social rented, affordable rented, affordable purchase, size of housing, etc.
All too often we see developers allowed to reduce their affordable housing provision either at planning stage, or by returning for a reduction later. We must ensure that the tools given to the council to deliver affordable housing are used much more robustly.
Where the reduction is due to the developer not being able to find a housing authority to take on the affordable housing, we must work with them through our own new Local Housing Company.
Safe and decent homes
We should never see social or affordable housing as something that need simply be 'good enough', nor think that the people who live in it should be grateful for it and expect no better. In Allerdale we want to see affordable housing that people are proud to call their home.
In mixed developments, we still often see that the mandated social and affordable rented housing is smaller, more isolated and often of a lower standard. It should be impossible to tell the difference between full-price and affordable housing, which should not be tucked away out of sight and out of mind.
Allerdale Conservatives will work with developers, and our own new Local Housing Company, to deliver a mix of new affordable and social housing across the borough, to buy and to rent.