Thanet homes advertised in London Mayor’s property lettings brochure for over 60s in the capital

The Mayor of London's property brochure

Homes in Thanet are being advertised to Londoners over 60 in a brochure published on behalf of the Mayor of London.

The Seaside & Country Homes scheme offers older council or housing association tenants in London a chance to move away from the city into properties funded by the London boroughs.

The scheme helps more than 200 households to move from London each year and is operated by the Mayor of London.

Kent is in the top three most popular destinations alongside Essex and Sussex.

Thanet has 146 homes featured in the latest brochure.

In Birchington there are 10 bunglaows in Park Road; Margate has  48 bungalows listed in Eastchurch Road, Elmstone Gardens, Luckhurst Gardens, Pluckley Gardens and Springfield Road; Ramsgate has  66 bungalows listed in Cranbourne Close, Grange Road, Coniston Avenue, Grasmere Avenue and Thirlmere Avenue. Westgate has 22 flats listed in Sherwood Court.

The landlord for all the properties is Places for People, a property and leisure management, company with 182,725 homes on its books.

People who move through the mayor’s scheme become a tenant of the housing association that manages the property. They pay a social rent and their former tenancy rights are protected. Seaside & Country Homes’ tenants don’t have the Right to Buy.

The scheme has more than 3,000 properties, mainly two bedroom bungalows and one and two bedroom flats,on offer. These are dotted all along the south coast, from Cornwall in the south west to Norfolk and Lincolnshire in the east. Places are also available across the countryside, from Dorset to Cambridgeshire to Shropshire.

The aim is to free up city properties for homeless and overcrowded families.

Last November The Isle of Thanet News reported that the number of housing benefit claimants moving from London to Thanet decreased dramatically in 2016, according to the most recent data from Kent County Council.

In a report looking at the effects of welfare reform across the county, data showed the number of movers from London boroughs who were claiming housing benefit increased in 2015 but fell again during 2016.

Thanet currently has 2,123 households on the social housing waiting list.

5 Comments

  1. I don’t live in London but have been desperately trying to move to Margate for two years through mutual house exchange scheme with no luck. I am 70 yrs old hoping my son can help support me as I have arthritis.I would die for a chance to move to a 2 bed home in Margate or even a large one bed would do. I live in Milton Keynes and have family connections in Margate do you think my council could be considered for this scheme? Please contact me with a reply. Thank you.

  2. A very well-balanced account. Given that there are 146 homes in Thanet that are being made available through this scheme, and that the scheme enables 200 families per year to leave London for destinations spread across a wide area, it does suggest that take-up of THIS scheme in Thanet may be comparatively low. But what we cannot fathom from these figures are what other schemes there are that may be operated by individual London boroughs for other segments of London’s burgeoning millions, who are increasing at a rate of about half a million people a year.

  3. Why are these homes not being made available to local people who have housing problems? And how much is London Mayor making from all this in kickbacks and so on?

  4. Can’t see the problem. People from the cities have been retiring to to live by the seaside for as long as I can remember. It’s a bit bizarre isn’t it? The same people who are opposing plans to build more houses in Thanet are whinging about people coming to live in the area. If you were really bothered about having enough housing, surely you wouldn’t be so aggressively opposed to building more? It’s just NIMBYism.

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