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13
Jun
Five new social housing schemes to be scrapped in Harrogate district
Five council-owned sites earmarked for social housing in the Harrogate district look unlikely to be built on after the schemes went massively over-budget.
Harrogate Borough Council planned to develop the sites before its abolition in 2023.
Its successor authority North Yorkshire Council has now said developing them would result in a loss over 40 years of more than £1 million.
Presenting his findings to the council’s area committee for Harrogate and Knaresborough, Cllr Simon Myers, who is executive member for culture, arts and housing, said the sites didn’t “stack up in terms of economic viability”.
Two sites, at Church Close in Sharow and Poplar Grove in Harrogate, are recommended for disposal, with the money returned to the council’s housing revenue account.
The Poplar Grove site, which was former amenity land, had planning permission from 2022 for a three-bedroom detached house. But North Yorkshire Council has calculated that it would cost more than 50% more to build the property than was originally budgeted, resulting in a £97,000 loss over 40 years.
Forty years is the period the council uses to gauge the economic viability of development projects.
The Sharow site has planning permission for two two-bed flats, but it has been determined that inflation would increase building costs to such a degree that the loss over 40 years would come to £454,000.
The recommendation for two other sites – Gascoigne Crescent in Harrogate and Springfield Drive in Boroughbridge – is to “retain and consider reverting to garden land, due to the constrained nature of the site.
Gascoigne Cresent was earmarked for a three-bed detached house, and Springfield Drive for a two-bed detached house, but developing these two sites would result in losses to the council over 40 years of £72,000 and £165,250 respectively.
It is recommended that a fifth site, on Woodfield Close in Harrogate, be retained, but that development on the former garage site be put on hold for 18 months.
The site was earmarked for two one-bed homes for the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme but would have cost £621,000 to build.
Cllr Myers said it would be cheaper to buy homes for that sum, adding:
This isn’t to criticise the predecessor council, because Harrogate Borough Council had limited land and limited opportunities to develop social housing. And so it may well be, even with the inflation in costs, that Harrogate Borough Council might have thought some of these were worth doing, even though they didn’t make sense. Because they didn’t have the scope that we now have as one big council with 8,500 council homes.
So we can put money back into the housing revenue account and we can buy off-the-peg houses in the Harrogate district for less money.
And to me, it’s about delivering housing rather than being precious about some site that we own.
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