Thanet council is aiming to buy its third temporary accommodation site as well as more properties to serve as council homes.
Cabinet members will be discussing plans to spend £1.2m for six temporary accommodation flats in Margate Road, Ramsgate,
It will be funded using £1,309,250 of the council’s General Fund capital budget, meaning there are no borrowing costs. Assumed costs for Stamp Duty Land Tax are £97,250 and there are £12,000 assumed associated legal costs.
The flats, being built by local developer GPML construction, will be added to Thanet council’s in-house temporary accommodation with sites currently at Foy House in Margate and the former Glendevon hotel in Ramsgate.
Plans are also in progress to purchase a fourth site.
In Margate Road four flats are one-bedroom properties and two are two-beds. A report to councillors says: “Currently, the council has around 300 households in temporary accommodation, so if it is able to own more such homes without having to use nightly-paid providers, this will assist greatly in reducing the General Fund bill on using third-party provided temporary accommodation.
“Indeed, there are currently 166 households in temporary accommodation using 1-bedroom properties and 61 households using 2-bedroom properties, hence the acquisition at Margate Road.”
At the end of 2023/24 the council’s net spending (after grant monies) on homelessness services was £2.5m, which was an £1.2m overspend compared to the approved budget.
New council homes
Cabinet members will also discuss buying four, 4-bed townhouses in King Street, Ramsgate, which are also being constructed by GPML.
These will be council homes, meaning the rents will not exceed the Local Housing Allowance rates, with two going to people on the housing list and two for those moving out of temporary accommodation.
The cost of the King Street homes, at £1.33m, will be met through borrowing and Homes England grant of £80,000 per property.
The report to councillors says: “The housing register shows 105 households having a requirement for a 4-bedroom property. Larger homes are the hardest to come by, and so it is important to acquire homes of this nature to assist those with larger families.”
Thanet council has 1,500 households on its housing register with further applicants waiting for the applications to be assessed, as well as the 300 households in temporary accommodation.
Additional 30 homes
Councillors will also discuss the purchase of 30 properties, on the Haine Road site being constructed by Guildcrest for a cost of £8.35m – equalling £276,666 per property.
These will be made up of 3 x 2-bedroom homes and 27 x 3-bedroom homes and the purchase will be funded with £2.5m Homes England grant, £5.5m of borrowing and £300,000 from s106 agreement funds. £50,000 has been allocated for associated legal costs.
The original Guildcrest application for the St Stephen’s Park site was for 115 homes, of which 12 were allocated as First Homes.
The report to councillors says: “The developer has subsequently approached the council to offer the opportunity to deliver more affordable homes on the site. It is important to state that these homes will be managed and maintained by the council and will be managed closely through its tenant and leaseholder service.”
The report adds: “There is a significant need for properties containing 2-bedrooms and 3-bedrooms. The housing register shows 232 households having a requirement for a 2-bedroom property and 357 households requiring a 3-bedroom property.”
As with the King Street houses, 50% of the Guildcrest homes will be let to priority applicants from the council’s Housing Register and 50% will be let to people moving out of temporary accommodation.
An accelerated affordable housing programme with a target of buying 400 new affordable homes for those in need over four years was agreed by Full Council in July 2023. With the latest properties, and a further purchase due to be discussed later this month, Thanet council will have reached 361 homes in just over one year.
Reports to councillors say developers are now keen to work with TDC as the authority is seen to ‘tackle the shortfall in affordable housing head-on.’
Properties have previously been agreed for purchase at developments such as Spitfire Green, Reading Street, Tothill Street and Northwood Road. There are also plans to build council homes at sites including the former Dane Valley Arms and Tomlin Drive in Margate and Staner Court and Clements Road in Ramsgate, constituting Phase 4 of the council’s affordable housing build project.
Deputy council leader and Cabinet Member for Housing, Cllr Helen Whitehead, said: “The growth of our in-house temporary accommodation is absolutely essential for the wellbeing of families in our area.
“Ensuring that residents stay close to their jobs, schools and support networks is vital to health and wellbeing, and producing this in-house allows us to support residents the way that we want to, and also support those with pets.
“The growth of our in-house temporary accommodation also has to be matched by growth in our general portfolio, so that residents also have access to secure and genuinely affordable tenancies.
“I am extraordinarily proud of those working so hard in Housing to meet our targets and support residents and am incredibly pleased that we are so close to meeting and exceeding the initial total set for housing acquisitions across Labour’s first term.
“This is a long term project and seeing each development come to term and residents housed is incredibly exciting, and each completion brings greater security to those housed.”
The Cabinet meeting will take place on August 24.
And l bet the homes won’t be for Thanet people, probably be for people from London as usual, London Councils keep sending there waiting list to Thanet and Thanet council keeps taking them because Thanet council get payed more for taking them .
Bluntly, no.
You have to be on the Thanet Housing Register to be eligible for Council or social housing in Thanet.
Very good news. The loss of council housing since Thatcher’s government brought in the right to buy has been appalling. I hope the current Labour government decides to repeal it.
So you can apply to be placed on the TDC housing list whilst in London because a long distant relative lives in Fanet and be offered a property in Fanet tomorrow. Yet a medically disabled relative with wife and son all born and breed in Fanet is offered a 2 bedroom property in London. Something has gone wrong somewhere yet again.
So a person born in London who has distant relatives living in Fanet can apply to be on the TDC housing register and be offered a property whilst a registered disabled family member his wife and son born and breed in Thanet are offered a 2 bed property on London. Fantastic. Good to see that TDC have got their priorities right.
“R” your a moron, get help.
Will these,one day,be eligible for Right To Buy,at hugely discounted prices?
There are rules to protect the council from this with new properties, and the new government has promised to address the increased discounts introduced by the Tories.
Those increased discounts being the index linking discounts? Though in reality the majority of those given the new social housing will be workless households with few assets and as a resu
T very unlikely to ever be able to save the deposit or pay a mortgage.
How many homes have been bought under right to buy in the last 5 years Mr. Everit?
Apart from the new houses for the Ukrainians and Afghans at Westwood ? I’m not sure they were on the waiting list.
Those few properties were market housing funded by central government grant for those groups. They would not have been viable for TDC to buy for local residents without the grant which was specific to those groups, so they could not have been allocated to local people on the housing register. They would have been sold on the open market. However under the terms of the grant they eventually become TDC stock to allocate to Thanet residents under usual rules.
Absolutely disgrace
Would it be more correct that they are only partially grant funded and that TDC paid the rest from the HRA? Iirc the article on here at the time.
It was pointed out that if the money had bought properties at the same cost as those in spitfireway it’d funded 8 similar units. As for eventually returning to tdc for local need , surely this will only be once the families that moveinto them leave for pastures new, so could eell be a considerable length of time?
What it would have funded in affordable (discounted) housing is neither here nor there, because the grant wasn’t available for the purchase of affordable housing for those on the housing register. It had to be used to buy market housing, for people from Ukraine/Afghanistan. The HRA makes a surplus from these rents, which it puts back into housing local people regardless when these properties are freed up. In any case the Ukrainians only had permission to remain in the UK for three years IIRC.
It’s a perfectly valid opinion that the then govt should have helped Afghan or Ukrainian refugees – although it’s not my view. It’s not the case that they received something that TDC could have provided for local people.
“Shouldn’t” have helped…
Mr. Everitt , just to make things clear, were the homes for the afghans , FULLY funded by grant money , or as i understood from a previous article , they were only partially grant funded and the balance was from the HRA?
At the time it was suggested if TDC’s input into the deal had instead been used to purchase additional units at Spitfire Green or elsewhere, it would have immediately helped local need rather than “ eventually” in respect of the homes for the afghans..
If i’ve not made my question clear enough pleas let me know and i’ll try again.
This is the article i refer to
https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2023/06/16/thanet-council-cabinet-backs-proposal-to-buy-new-homes-to-provide-accommodation-for-ukrainian-and-afghan-refugee-families/
Tdc put 2 million into the deal, so it wasn’t grant funded in full and that 2 million could have gone for local need.
However i was incorrect and it came from the housing capital account , whatever that is? Is this funded from the councils general fund? Ie from council tax rather than rent receipts.
Its hard for mere mortals to follow what goes on especially when your post at. 9:40 on the 15th rather suggests they were totally grant funded by central government. Do you not see that such misleading statements lead to distrust in the councils machinations?
I’m pleased that you are sorting out the housing problem as best as you can being so many people/families are on the list not a Labour or tory supporter but fair due and when praise is warranted.
This literally doesn’t happen.
They’re for Thanet residents.
Thanet Council has the tough hurdle of three years residence in Thanet District. Many councils have two years or less.
Anyhow, let’s be happy that for once TDC is doing better than its target. Everyone who gets one of these has either been homeless through no fault of their own or been on the waiting list for a long time. I am very happy for these new tenants and everyone else should be. It is very shoddy to try to score points when everybody prevented from being homeless is brilliant news. The old Tory council should be ashamed of its lethargy and callousness. If their long years of misrule had been instead creating 300 or 400 family homes every years, we would not have the sea of human misery created by homelessness.
It was one of the reasons there was so much overcrowding in rented homes. Migrants under freedom of movement would live many to a household long enough to be eligible to get on the housing list and access the benefit system, once on the list they hoped to be offered a social housing home, some did succeed. Look at some of the local listings for properties for sale in Thanet, it’s still happening.
Of course the countries open door policy from 2004 and the then labour gov not choosing to invoke the 7 year brake on freedom of movement( meaning the uk was about the only real choice of places to go) along with no efforts to build sufficient homes for those that came in the remaining years of that labour gov , to your mind has no bearing on how things have transpired?
Funny how they can find money all of a sudden for houses, yet can’t do the basics of running the place.most things never add up in Thanet no matter who’s in charge always underhand brown envelopes
The cost of buying these houses comes back in rent, which is why it is possible for the council to buy or build them, underpinned by upfront planning discounts or grants from Homes England. None of the cost of council housing can or does come from council tax, unlike other council services which have to be funded from the average £250 per household per year (roughly) the council gets in council tax and other income streams like its share of business rates.
It would be unlawful to spend council rental income on those other services. It has to be ringfenced for housing.
Knowing that the rent covers the purchase costs is great.
Knowing how much of the that total rent income is covered for tenants by any other benefits (taxation for others) would be nice.
Yet you’re using 1.3 million from the general fund to buy six properties? So some of the cost of council housing is coming from council tax, you say so in another comment. Or have i got it totally wrong?
6 plus properties in a single purchase trigger sdlt under “non residential “ rules and so the amount payable would be around £49500 on 1.2 million purchase price, a pretty basic mistake to assume the much higher figure.
Temporary accommodation from the general fund; council housing from the housing revenue account, which is separate and funded from rents and grants.
Was the money being used from Sec106 payments collected from developers specifically for the purchase of social housing? When details have been given of such arrangements in planning articles on IOTN , it usually talks about a percentage of homes being affordable and payments for all sorts of things libraries etc etc.
Or is money being syphoned away from its original purpose?
Also what is the “General Fund Capital Budget” does that sit inside the housing and been accrued from rents or grants similar to the “Housing Revenue Account” or is it money that’s come to a degree from other council receipts?
S106 money for schools and libraries, etc, is paid to Kent County Council. TDC does collect S106 money for affordable homes where a developer is inable to provide them on site – usually where they have been unable to find a provider to take on properties that were supposed to be affordable housing under the S106. TDC is now buying those S106 properties because housing associations won’t buy them, meaning they would otherwise be lost to those on the housing register.
Are such homes restricted to housing associations which have to house those in need within Thanet, or could any housing association have bought them and housed people from outside the borough?
HAs can only accommodate those on our housing register in new S106 properties. They could potentially buy market properties for other people (and so could anyone else) but the numbers wouldn’t add up with affordable rents.
Thank you. So are the low local LHA rates the reason that housing associations are not interested in buying the S106 properties in local developments? If that’s not the reason then why are TDC seen as the buyer of last resort?
Unlike council housing, temporary accommodation is funded from the general fund (council tax, etc) rather than housing rents, although there is goverment support through housing benefit. Crucially the previous government restricted this to 2011 benefit levels, leaving councils to make up the difference, while the numbers have grown dramatically in recent years. Council passed a motion in July to lobby for more government support because this is a significant drain on TDC’s ability to fund other services, but again it supports people that TDC has a legal obligation to support, not random individuals. Typically these are Thanet residents who lose their private rented accommodation and they will be on our housing register.
So what portion of the rents will be passed back to the general fund seeing as this fund has helped fund the purchase? Or are the diverted funds lost for eternity effectively having the council tax payer subsidise the councils housing. Wpuld it not be better for the council to effectively loan the money to the housing department on a commercial basis and have it repaid and recorded accordingly?
Whilst i can accept there is a small saving to the council from the moving of 6 households from emergency housing into permanent housing , that saving would barely cover the interest on a 1.3 million loan let alone cover the capital cost, this is effectively robbing from council services that now can’t be provided. Will the general fund be listed as the “freeholder “ of these properties?
The payments received in respect of people in temporary accommodation go back into the general fund. The freehold will sit in the general fund.
Rent received for temporary accommodation is used to offset the cost to the general fund. Where we own temporary accommodation it sits in the general fund, not the HRA.
However, the problem we have is that the income does not meet the cost of the temporary accommodation we are legally obliged to provide, so it is the case that all council taxpayers are subsidising it. We think this is unreasonable. We are lobbying govt and we are looking to reduce the cost by providing our own temporary accommodation, not third party owned – and moving people into council housing, which is not a cost to council taxpayers.
Again, though, the people in temporary accommodation are likely to be Thanet residents who have lost their homes, not random individuals from somewhere else.
Could you post a link showing how it’s been calculated that buying temporary housing is finacially advatageous to the council and the council tax payer, as superficially it seems that paying out 200k to provide 1 unit of temporary accommodation will take a decade or two to recoup the capital cost, even longer if the council then borrows money to spend on other projects the capital could have been used for.
In addition its been stated in another article that the council supports those in temporary accomodation, is this a way of saying that the council receives the higher rate of LHA for “supported” accommodation?
Perhaps you should also lobby for the removal of section 24 and against the proposals to remove section 21, both of which are reasons many landlords have decided to exit the prs. Are you also lobbying to have the tax advantages that furnished holiday lets have instead given to the prs to encourage it to expand and so improve the market?
In respect of 106 momey, i’m a tad confused, does tdc actually get cash from these agreements that it is now spending on properties or is it in reality buying properties that are effectively discounted under the section 106 agreement from the market price? The borrowing and grant making up the balance? Is the borrowing contained within the housing department and nothing to do with the other council functions?
Over what period is the money borrowed, are the loans on fixed rates, repay,ment or interest only
, how long before these homes cover all their costs, given previously homes were bought where they needed subsidising for around 18 years.
S106 agreements require the developer to sell affordable homes at a 40% discount. The council doesn’t get the money. However, where the developer doesn’t provide the affordable on site for whatever reason, they may pay a sum to be used towards affordable homes elsewhere.
Borrowing for council homes is within the HRA, although in practice we may not borrow at the time we buy if we have reserves we don’t need immediately. Therefore we can wait for better interest rates.
You can see the calculations and when each purchase moves into surplus based on current assumptions in the cabinet reports. That surplus is then available to spend elsewhere in the HRA.
We don’t get grant on S106 properties as they are already subsidised by the developer. We do when we build or buy at market price.
Again thank ypu, could yo u give a link for the cabinet reports you refer to please.
I note you’ve made no comment regarding Sec24 and the effect this has on rents, in my case most of my rents were very close to LHA rates, but section 24 has meant each tenant has had a £50 a month rent increase which is solely to cover the the additional income required after tax to cover Sec24 costs. It’s little more than a tax on tenants ( as they are the customer) will the council be lobbying for this pernicious tax to be reviewed or are labour quite happy to raise revenues directly from those with the least to spare? Or will LHA increase , though that only helps those in receipt of it and nothing for low earners trying to pay their own way in life.
Yet you can take money from other grants and transfer to fund other projects. Ie Ramsgate fishing boats to fund more arts and theatres. How about taking money from the art’s to fund more needed support for real jobs and people
Perhaps we should spend more money on education. Particularly English grammar.
Spelling mistakes abound! What a reflection on our education system since the 1980’s when learning how to spell correctly didn’t matter!
No grant money has been transferred from fishing in Ramsgate to arts and theatres in Ramsgate or anywhere else.
Excellent news for those who have been waiting for a roof over their heads Thatcher the evil children’s Milk and housing snatcher done so much harm to this country. Thank god Labour can start repairing the damage she caused.
Labour were in power for 10 years from 1997, they could have cancelled the right to buy policy at any time over that period.
Bill,this is not the 1st Labour government,since Thatcher.Remember Tory Blair,from 1997until 2010?
That should have been Tory Bliar;the one whose wife was always on the earhole for freebies.
Well done TDC, Helen and the team.
Thank you; Housing and Finance are incredible, and have worked so hard to ensure we can provide these homes.
I do hope these properties come as freehold, as the majority of the new builds are 125 year lease holds with ridiculous amount of additional costs to pay per year.
How and why TDC planning allowed these new builds to be leasehold and not freehold beggars belief, those who buy them must have more money than sense.
Dear Details Matter;
Section 106 for Housing is delivered in affordable housing; if providers do not take it on, developers can apply to substitute housing for a financial contribution; which in Thanet, is not what is needed.
As Councillor Everitt said earlier, any Section 106 properties that aren’t being taken on we are purchasing, so that affordable housing isn’t lost. Section 106 properties are at a discounted rate.
The details of every purchase, and financial details, are listed, published and discussed within Cabinet, Overview and Scrutiny and Council meetings.
Each purchase is financially stress tested; if it doesn’t add up, we don’t purchase.
So the rents will be used to repay the general fund then? Could you provide a link to the relevant discussions documents etc.
regarding the properties that aren’t being taken on, my question was are those homes reserved for thanets residents in need and so any housing association taking them on. ( not that it seems they are) would need to house locals or would they be able to house whoever they wished.
As those houses are not suddenly going to disapear and be lost, someone will have to live in them.
And even when housing associations do purchase / build they are not always what most would see as affordable. “Leaf living” ( excuse me if i got that wrong) is an offshoot of Orbit and they were advertising 2 bed homes at WX for around 1400 pcm, does that count as social provision. How does Tdc view rents at that level?
Well done Helen and team for continuing to increase council housing in Thanet. Great to see progress bit by bit.
I hope these nice new homes will go to the original and genuine family’s who are on the housing listing and not new applications as this happens in London the homeless and long term council re home are the the first to be offered these new homes I hope local families who have been waiting for years get there new homes in order
In general social housing is allocated/offered on a needs based system, so if you are on the list but have a decent home a stable life and no great problems you are very likely to leap frogged eternally by those in “greater need” , amount of time on the list has little to do with it.
It’s not uncommon for a childless couple to rent a small 1 bed flat in the prs, go on the housing list but have no real chnce of being offered anything, so they have a couple of kids asap ( generally won’t have more as they’d not collect as much under the 2 child cap) now within a year or two they’ll be overcrowded, the flat won’t be suitable, so they’ll move up the list as now have greater need.
What a cynical view of things “Details Matter” has.
Or, someone who has had to make their own way in life and never had the largesse of others to pay for my mistakes. Then there’s the endless years of terrible decisions and spending by tdc i’ve witnessed along with many examples of an inability to add , subtract, understand their own leases or read reports they’ve commissioned. They’re a pretty useless organisation.
Then throw in the examples of behaviour i’ve witnessed over the years from tenants and residents in various parts of thanet.
So one persons cynicism is anothers point of view resulting from experience.