A council serving an area with one of the highest gaps between incomes and house prices in the North looks set to approve a developer’s request for a sharp cut in the number of affordable homes on a controversial housing estate, just days before formally lowering its affordable housing target.
Hambleton District Council’s planning committee will on Tuesday consider Tilia Homes’ request to build 30 per cent rather than the agreed 50 per cent of properties when the 224-home estate on fields off Tanton Road, Stokesley was approved following a public inquiry in 2015.
Despite meeting the authority’s 50 per cent affordable housing target for Stokesley at the time the scheme had been rejected by the authority as unsuitable for the town.
Objecting to the reduction of affordable housing on the estate, Stokesley Town Council said after the public inquiry the planning inspector had approved the development on the condition it would help offset the shortage of affordable homes in the district.
A town council spokesman said: “As the development subsequently proceeded, the applicant clearly accepted this condition and therefore considered the development to be financially viable on the specified 50 per cent affordable housing provision.”
However, the meeting will hear after agreeing requested changes to the layout of the estate and lowering the number of affordable houses from 113 to 67, a viability appraisal by the developer had found it would result in a profit margin of just 9.8 per cent, a level below the level expected by investors.
Recommending the reduction in affordable housing be passed, a planning officer’s report to the meeting states: “It is clear from the applicant’s submission that the approved scheme lacked viability with significantly less than the usual expected 20 per cent developer’s profit being achieved.”
The decision will come days before the authority is set to lower its affordable housing target for housing estate from 40 or 50 per cent to 30 per cent as it adopts its Local Plan to shape developments across the district until 2035.
Hambleton councillors have regularly expressed frustration as many developers have strived to build as few below market value properties as possible as they are less profitable the market value homes.
Ahead of its expected adoption this month, the draft Local Plan has long highlighted the lack of affordable housing as a key social and economic problem facing the district.
When concerns were raised at a council meeting in 2013 over developers seeking to reduce the number of affordable homes on viability grounds after gaining planning permission, the authority’s leader Councillor Mark Robson replied: “That will not be happening in Hambleton.”
At hearings over the Local Plan Labour groups representing the Thirsk and Malton and Richmond constituencies criticised the proposed change in affordable housing policy saying almost four times the 55 affordable houses a year the authority was targeting needed to be built.
However, a government inspector has found the proposed 30 per cent target would lead to “a reasonable prospect that affordable housing needs can be met”.
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