Leicester to spend £4.9m on building new affordable housing

Leicester City Council has announced plans to spend just under £5 million of Right to Buy funding to create affordable, new homes.

The council will give £4.9 million to the emh Group to build 55 new homes available at affordable rent in the Waterside area, by the city’s River Soar and Grand Union Canal.

Funding will come from the sales of council owned properties under the government’s Right to Buy scheme.

The council will then be able to nominate people from its housing waiting list for the housing once completed by the emh Group, a leading provider of affordable properties in the East Midlands.

There are plans for 55 homes which will be a mixture of one and two-bedroom flats and will be part of a larger proposed supported housing scheme which is in development.

 Cllr Elly Cutkelvin, assistant city mayor four housing said: ‘By providing Right to Buy funding to emh Group in this way, we can help ensure that dozens of new homes – including much-needed wheelchair accessible properties – are available at affordable rent to some of the most vulnerable people in the city.

‘There is no doubt that the Right to Buy scheme has hit the supply of council housing hard. We’re losing homes much faster than they are being built and it’s time the Right to Buy scheme was abandoned. In the meantime, it is essential that we invest whatever proceeds back into addressing our local and critical need for more affordable homes.’

Many have warned the Right to Buy scheme has had a negative impact on social housing supply, putting local governments under strain as they struggle to replace affordable housing.

1.98 million Right to Buy sales have been made between the beginning of the scheme in 1980 up to March 2020, according to politics.co.uk.

Proposed Right to Buy reforms were announced in June, to allow for housing association tenants to buy their homes, which was met with concern by housing experts.

These proposals have not been taken any further yet.

Photo by Brandon Griggs