Housing Action Man
PAUL MCLAUGHLIN talks to Hastings BC’s Deputy Leader and Housing & Community Wellbeing Portfolio Holder, Councillor Glenn Haffenden, on the vital importance of housing to the future of the town
In a wide-ranging interview with the Hastings Independent Press, Cllr Haffenden spoke about the success of the first phase of the council’s Housing Acquisition Programme and how “excited” he is to be moving on to the more ambitious second phase “ahead of schedule”. He challenged the local MP over the Government’s “unrealistic” house building targets and outlined how the Council was in the process of scoping a new five-year Housing Strategy for the town.
Cllr Haffenden said he is both “delighted” and “proud” of the success of the first phase of the Housing Acquisition Programme. The programme was launched in February 2023 with an initial £11 million budget to buy up to 50 homes to help relieve the housing crisis in the town. Since then, 40 properties have been secured, with 15 of these currently tenanted. This has resulted in a reduction in temporary accommodation costs of more than £185,000 and savings of £413,000 in grant funding by underspending on acquiring and renovating these properties.
The second phase of the programme will see Hastings BC acquire a further 124 homes after securing “unprecedented” external capital funding of £22.8 million from the Government. This money will be partly matched with around £6.3 million of the Council’s own money. If all goes to plan, the Council hopes to save almost £2 million per year in temporary accommodation costs.
The £22.8 million is split across several funding streams. Up to 10 million will come from Levelling Up funds designated for direct property acquisitions. A further £3.5 million will come from the Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP), which funds homes and support services for people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough, with an additional £4.5 million from the Local Authority Housing Fund.
The newly acquired properties will be required to meet the council’s Fit to Let standard to ensure they meet appropriate health and safety standards, are in good decorative order, and reach a minimum EPC rating of C.
When challenged as to the difference between the current acquisition programme and the approach taken by previous administrations – which resulted in huge losses for the council –
Cllr Haffenden insisted that the two approaches were totally different. He pointed to the purchase of 22 Wellington Square, bought in 2019 at an inflated price only to be left empty for years before being put up for auction with an expected loss of more than £200,000, as an example of the previous failed strategy. In the past, he said the Council had a twin-track approach of buying and restoring older, listed buildings with the intention to improve both the aesthetics of the town and to use the properties as temporary accommodation. Unfortunately, such buildings were expensive to buy and to bring up to the council’s Fit to Let standard. They were also wholly unsuitable for use as temporary accommodation. Under the new acquisition programme, “only suitable properties would be purchased and improved” and he said he was confident that the mistakes of the past would not be repeated.
Cllr Haffenden acknowledged that there was still a long way to go to tackle the housing crisis in the town,despite the initial success of the programme. He indicated that with more than 560 households living in temporary accommodation, costing the council over £6.5 million per year, many more homes were needed, but there was “a limit to how many houses we can buy”.
Turning to the new Labour government’s plan to impose mandatory targets on councils to build more new homes, he said it was just not a viable option for a town like Hastings. “We are constrained by the sea on one side and the country park on the other and it is simply not possible to build over 700 new homes on the land available without building on either green spaces or sports grounds.”
He challenged Helena Dollimore, the town’s new Labour MP, to walk around the town with him to show him the brownfield sites that she believes are available. To emphasise how unrealistic he believes the government targets are, he said the draft Local Plan identifies the potential to meet just 30% of housing need over the next 20 years with building on available land. “We are not arguing that we do not want to build. We do, and we definitely have the need, but we do not have the land to build on.”
He went on to say that Hastings “really needs more social rent properties but the pockets of brownfield sites that are available are often too small to encourage housing associations or developers to build on and without external funding the Council cannot afford to build the homes that are desperately needed.” He pointed to the development of 16 affordable homes on land to the rear of 419-447 Bexhill Road as an example of what the council could achieve when such funding was available. The social rent homes are being built with £4.7 million from various sources with Hastings BC putting up £213,484 of its own capital monies into the scheme.
Cllr Haffenden concluded the interview by saying the council was in the process of scoping a new housing strategy for the town. This will be a five-year strategy with the aim of adoption by the middle of 2025. It will set out how we will meet our ambition for everyone in the town to have a decent place to live. In addition, it will consider how we ensure a private rental market which works for tenants and landlords.
it will consider how we ensure a private rental market which works for tenants and landlords.
The council’s housing team is hosting two in-person workshops seeking the views of local people on what the strategy should include. They will take place on Tuesday,
1 October 6-8pm and Thursday,
3 October 2-4pm at Muriel
Matters House.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply