Herefordshire to move ahead with setting up its own housing firm
They say the idea is to alleviate a growing crisis across the region - with a warning that demand's far outstripping supply
Herefordshire is to move ahead with setting up its own housing firm to address a “growing crisis” in the county.
Council leaders have unanimously backed a call by the council’s Connected Communities Scrutiny Committee to “explore the development of a Herefordshire Council-owned housing development company, to meet some of the county’s critical housing need”.
Putting the case for it, the committee’s chair Coun Ed O’Driscoll said it was “clear that demand in the county outstrips supply” and warned that the county’s housing waiting list, currently over 2,000, “is going up by 250-300 a year – we are not eating into it”.
“We’ve got to put in building blocks that will make a difference in the long term,” he told members of the county’s ruling Cabinet.
Council-managed housing would also provide an income stream to the county while reducing the high cost of temporary accommodation, he added.
“It’s a no-brainer and we should have done this a long time ago,” he said, expressing the hope that such a company will be established within the next financial year.
Greens group leader Coun Diana Toynbee said her group were “very supportive of our developing our own housing stock”, adding that council housing had previously been “a win-win-win”, since obstructed by successive governments.
Cabinet member for adults, health and wellbeing Coun Carol Gandy earlier confirmed to colleagues that there has recently been a “significant increase and overspend” in temporary accommodation in the county.
“Over 1,300 people have presented as homeless since April 1 2024,” she said. “This is unprecedented and extremely worrying.”
Coun O’Driscoll said afterwards: “We have a housing crisis and the market isn’t providing a solution so we have to look at the alternatives.”
Councillors and officials now plan to draw on experiences of other local authorities such as Telford & Wrekin “which have already gone on this journey”, he said.
A recent report for the scrutiny committee listed 17 council-owned sites and buildings around the county which could accommodate anything from individual properties to hundreds of homes.
But Coun O’Driscoll said local views “will always be taken into consideration” before any are developed.