Opinion - 500 new council homes? It's not all it seems to be

Cambridge City Council voted to proceed with the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough devolution proposal.

An important part of that decision was the assertion that City Homes would receive a grant of £70million to apply to its social housing programme.

Much was made of the claim that this would secure at least 500 new homes for social rent. Both the leader of the council and the executive councillor for housing repeated this point – arguing that it would be wrong to turn away this money when it could do so much to reduce the waiting lists for council homes in Cambridge. Cllr Hipkin referenced the same point when giving his support for the devolution deal. The implication made was that these new homes cannot otherwise be provided.

Unfortunately, the business plan put together by the City to support its request for this funding to DCLG does not bear this out. Many of the housing projects listed in the early years of the proposed plan for spending this grant are redevelopments of existing council-owned estates. So the numbers attributed as “new” are exaggerated, if one takes “new” to mean “additional”. It is only additional housing that will shorten waiting lists.

A good example of this is the proposed redevelopment of Anstey Way – a project that, according to the business plan, contributes 34 “new” council homes. In reality, only 11 additional homes will result from the redevelopment of Anstey Way – there already being 23 homes on that site.

Another project said to be only deliverable by accepting the devolution proposal is the redevelopment of the Akeman Street site to give 12 “new” homes, not otherwise deliverable. And yet in January of this year the city council approved a fully financed plan for the redevelopment of the Akeman Street site using existing resources.

The business plan also lists the social homes that will be created by the redevelopment of the city’s Mill Road Depot; another 67 “new” homes, it is said. But it has been clear from the outset that the Mill Road Depot would deliver some social housing without recourse to devolution monies. How many of these 67 are truly “new” and truly only deliverable by accepting the devolution deal and all else that comes with it?

There is no doubt that the devolution money will free up the city council and allow it to re-start its social housing building programme. But it is not true that execution of the plan put forward by the city will deliver 500 additional homes created through this funding.

Of the 146 “new” homes programmed for commencement in the first year of the business plan, around 113 either already exist or have been previously approved for finance or would be delivered anyway through existing large capital projects.

Perhaps the council would have voted the same way anyway – even if the boast of 500 new council homes had been properly understood. Those on the City Homes waiting list will be disappointed to discover that 500 new council homes does not mean 500 additional council homes.

The continual renewal and improvement of the City Homes estate must always be a priority and this devolution money will be very helpful in that regard. But it is important to retain a sense of perspective here – we will not see 500 additional homes for social rent as some might have hoped would be the case. A good analogy might be when someone says I have a new car. It replaces my old car. My passengers travel in more comfort and I can get one more person in but it is new as in different rather than new as in additional.