Preston City Council move closer to local authority-owned social housing return

Preston City Council has moved a step closer to striking a deal that will see local authority-owned social housing return to the area after an absence of more than two decades.

During a meeting of the full council on Thursday, members gave the green light to the purchase of 18 new-build properties in an as-yet-unidentified location.

The move – which was agreed in a private session for reasons of commercial confidentiality – secured unanimous cross-party support, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands.

It means the Labour-run authority can now enter into a formal contract with the developer to acquire the dwellings.  A conditional offer had been made and accepted in March.

The cost of the arrangement remains under wraps for now, but £5m was ringfenced for new council housing when the authority’s current budget was set earlier this year.

However, as the LDRS has previously revealed, the town hall is hoping to be able to fund further purchases from the same pot – coupled with other sources of finance – to develop between 40 and 50 new properties by April 2028.

They will all be offered for what is known as’ social rent’, meaning they will be available at up to 50 percent less than the local market rate – making them cheaper than housing in the ‘affordable homes’ category, which is priced at around 80 percent of usual rents.

In a statement issued after the meeting, deputy council leader – and cabinet member for community wealth building – Valerie Wise said direct ownership of the new dwellings will mean the authority can begin to boost “life chances and positive outcomes for priority households”.

Matthew Brown, the city council’s leader, added that he was delighted to be moving towards achieving the “longstanding goal” of bringing council housing back to Preston, which he said would help in “tackling homelessness and meeting local housing needs”.

The policy – which initially sparked some political wrangling with the opposition Liberal Democrat group over value for money issues – marks the city authority’s first foray into directly providing housing since it transferred its entire stock of properties to social landlord Community Gateway Association back in 2005.  Offloading council housing to third party providers was common practice across the local authority sector at the time in order to enable dwellings to be brought up the ‘decent homes standard’ introduced by the government in 2004.

The first tranche of 18 new Preston council houses will be built in phases on what the authority says is “a large development site” – which the LDRS understands is somewhere in the north of the city – with all of them being ready for occupation by spring 2028. That is the point at which Preston City Council will cease to exist under a government-ordered shake-up of the local authority landscape in Lancashire.

The larger authority that will be put in place to cover Preston and a yet-to-be-determined number of surrounding districts – will then take on responsibility for the homes.

Meanwhile, Nick Thompson, director at Hive Land and Planning, the city council’s specialist housing consultants, welcomed this weeks’ arrival at an “important milestone” in the town hall’s social housing project.

“Re-establishing the authority as a registered provider and securing an initial pipeline of housing stock are important stages and we look forward to continuing our relationship, using our knowledge and experience to bring the development forward,” he said.