Council given extra £350k to build new homes in Lancing
Seven new council homes will be built on the South Street car park site
An extra £350,000 for new council homes in Lancing has been approved after Homes England funding could not be sought.
Adur District Council’s joint strategic sub-committee approved part of the funding, for seven new council homes on the South Street car park site, which will be borrowed from the council’s £2.25million Southwick Estate acquisition scheme.
The new emergency and temporary accommodation on the car park site was initially agreed in 2022, with plans for the scheme announced in April this year at a cost of roughly £2.6million.
Council officers said such a scheme would usually qualify for Homes England funding, but would the council would need to fund a gap of £350,000 with some right-to-buy receipts funding from the Southwick Estate scheme.
The council’s housing service, Adur Homes, was found in breach of the Regulator of Social Housing’s Home Standard in May, preventing any new Homes England funding to the council until it is cleared of the breaches.
Council officers said they thought using the funds to build new homes would be ‘better value for money’ than purchasing leasehold interests in existing ones, which is what the Southwick Estate sheme is doing.
They also said if the council did not proceed with the South Street project, it would have to return £115,874 of a £268,485 grant given to the council in October from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), as part of its Brownfield Land Release Fund.
The rest of the grant already had to be returned to DLUHC after the other project the funding was granted for was no longer being ‘progressed’, according to the council.