ONLY 66 affordable homes will be delivered across the whole South Somerset district in the next 12 months.

South Somerset District Council has predicted that the number of affordable homes that can be built by April 2019 will be just over one-third of the number delivered in 2014/15.

The council has said that more than 300 affordable homes are “in the pipeline” at various stages, and that its Homefinder system was coping with existing demand.

It has also threatened to withdraw nearly £400,000 of funding from one scheme near Crewkerne unless planning permission is secured within the next 12 months.

A report on the provision of affordable housing came before the council’s district executive committee in Yeovil on Thursday (July 5).

Council leader Ric Pallister admitted that the amount of affordable housing being delivered had “fallen quite markedly”.

He added, however, that a long-term picture was needed and that demand for homes on the council’s Homefinder system was “constant but manageable”.

He said: “We have gone backwards in bringing forward new housing, but it hasn’t impacted on our homelessness figures in the way that it has elsewhere in the country. We are still doing better than the national average on homelessness.

“At the moment we still seem to be broadly in control of things, and long may it continue, because it still isn’t elsewhere. We have tried to bring more schemes forward, but we have been stymied by scheme viability.”

In 2014/15, the council managed to secure 181 affordable homes, through a mixture of developer conditions (i.e. a percentage of homes within a new development) and grant subsidy to housing associations.

This subsequently declined to 121 dwellings in 2015/16, 59 homes in 2016/17, and 69 in the last 12 months.

The council had predicated that 81 homes would be built in 2017/18, but had to revise its estimates downwards due to “slippage” – where a scheme set to be completed in one year is delayed into the next year, or sometimes further into the future.

Colin McDonald, the council’s corporate strategic housing manager, said that housing associations were keen to “get on with it” and that work being done now would bear fruit in the coming years.

He said: “It’s a long harvest. What we do now is what we will see come to fruition in two to three years’ time.

“Consider the part in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat where he’s talking about seven lean cows. We have three lean cows, but healthier cows are on the way.”

Mr McDonald said that 66 dwellings were expected to be delivered in 2018/19, comprising:

  • 31 homes on the Northfield site in Somerton – comprising 17 social rent and 14 shared ownership – all delivered by Liverty housing association
  • 15 shared ownership at Balsam Park in Wincanton, brought forward by Stonewater
  • 10 homes on Maple Drive in Curry Rivel, with half being social rent provided by Magna Housing and the other half being shared ownership from Summerfield
  • 4 affordable rent on the former working men’s club site in Chard, delivered by Stonewater housing association
  • 3 affordable rent homes n Yeovil, purchased from the private sector by the Bournemouth Churches Housing Association (BCHA)
  • 3 affordable rent homes in Seavington St Michael, delivered by the Seavington Community Land Trust

Looking ahead to 2019/20, Mr McDonald predicted that 57 could be feasibly delivered, including a Magna Housing scheme on South Street in Crewkerne and a delayed Stonewater scheme for 14 homes in Stoke-sub-Hamdon.

He said in his report: “There are always a number of other schemes ‘bubbling under’ which the strategic housing team regard as ‘pipeline’ and rarely report directly on.

“At the time of drafting this report, there is a potential further 329 dwellings on sites being considered by our four main developing housing association partners – Liverty, Magna, Stonewater and Yarlington.

“In addition it is possible, but by no means certain, that during the current and next financial years we may see the next ‘peak’ in delivery of affordable housing through planning obligations on one or more of the larger sites.

“In particular, it is expected that Persimmon Homes will progress development on the Lufton key site in Yeovil to the point where provision of more affordable housing is triggered within the terms of the existing Section 106 agreement.

“There is also the possibility of the delivery of the first tranche of affordable housing within the Brimsmore key site in Yeovil.”

Plans for 642 homes on the Brimsmore site – including more than 200 affordable homes – were approved by the council’s area south committee in Yeovil on Wednesday afternoon (July 4).

Mr Pallister said that affordable housing was not being delivered in the areas where housing need was the greatest.

He said: “The difficulty is that if you taking housing need, Yeovil is number one, Chard is number two and Crewkerne is number three.

“But if you take the pipeline forward, it’s coming to Somerton and Castle Cary. We’ve got a distortion of the picture coming off the back of the open market.

“In some of our areas of highest demand, we are not seeing pipeline schemes coming forward, because the land is in the control of a small number of individuals – it is not in their interest to bring it forward.”

In order to ease the demand for housing in Crewkerne, the committee voted that a grant of £396,661 would be withdrawn from Yarlington housing association if it did not secure planning permission for a site in the neighbouring village of Misterton before July 5, 2019.

The committee granted this money in October 2015 towards the scheme, which would deliver 11 social rent homes and six shared ownership properties.

Mr Pallister said: “It just needs Yarlington to crack on with this, and they have assured us that we will see progress next year.”