Every flat in Coventry Spon End redevelopment to be 'affordable'

A development of more than 250 flats in Coventry is set to be entirely ‘affordable’ amid “low values” in the area.

Housing group Citizen plans to rent most of the homes that will replace a derelict 1960s estate in Spon End.

The scheme is the first part of their £120 million project to regenerate the Coventry suburb.

Regeneration chief Kevin Roach told us more as demolition work started on the former estate at Windsor Street last week.

Mr Roach said the 261 new flats on the site will all be “affordable” including 209 at social rent and 52 ‘rent to buy':

“Ideally what we would want to do is have a more mixed tenure of open market sale and affordable homes, from a regeneration perspective.

“But the values in these areas is quite low at the moment. And therefore it costs us more to build than actually the homes are worth to sell on the open market.”

Overall, the group plans to replace a total of 450 homes with 750 new ones in its £120 million scheme.

They aim to replace about 402 affordable social housing on a near one-to-one basis and the rest, some 300 homes, will be sold on the open market, according to Mr Roach.

“That will then create a mixed tenure, a more sustainable, balanced community,” he claimed, adding that around four-fifths of the site is social rented accommodation. “What we find from regeneration schemes is to bring that mix of tenure in and you know, to lift the area up in terms of the values you need to bring in that owner-occupation.”

Asked how they solve the problem of it being more expensive to build rather than sell, he said they will be making funding bids and also hope to see the impact of the work on the area’s values.

He said: “The values aren’t there so we look for support from the government in terms of funding bids to Homes England and the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA.)

“So we’ll be making those funding bids for phase one. What we hope to do is that what we achieve, what we are aiming to deliver in phase one and the extent of works that we’re doing will lift those values for the later phases in the project – which will then hopefully not rely on as much government funding as we require for phase one.”

Of the social housing to be built in the regeneration project, only four will have more than one or two bedrooms according to current plans.

Asked if they had considered including more, Mr Roach said three-bedroom flats are “not really ideal” for family housing and it is not what the demand is:

“Three bedrooms are meant for families and therefore you want to provide those appropriate housing, low-rise housing.”

He also pointed out that a later stage of the project will include family housing with more bedrooms.

He added that on the council waiting list there is a need for one and two-bed accommodation.

People living in buildings that will move from later phases of the scheme will also get the first opportunity to move to new homes if they wish to and most of these homes are two-bedrooms, he added.

Asked when residents in the blocks involved in the other phases of the scheme will be moving out, he said: “Our first challenge is to get phase one the 261 flats started and then completed.

“Once we’ve got that started then the latter part of this year, early next year, we’ll be then developing our strategy for moving residents out and agreeing what that area is.” He added: “At the moment phase two or phase three doesn’t stack financially for us.

“So hopefully as we lift those areas we’ll be able to then make decisions about then where do we start next.”

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