Agenda item

Report from the Strategic Director of Adult Care, Housing and Public Health.

Recommendations:

That Cabinet:
 

1.    Approves development of the Far Lane site, to build up to an estimated 14 new Council homes.

2.    Delegates authority to the Assistant Director of Housing, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Housing, to optimise design of the sites according to strategic need, site constraints, and any requirements resulting from both stakeholder feedback and the planning application process.

Consideration was given to the report which sought approval from Cabinet to develop the Council-owned Far Lane site in East Dene. It was projected that the site (identified in Appendix 1) would deliver up to 14 new homes.

Far Lane was a Council-owned land asset held in the Housing Revenue Account. The site was first approved for development by Cabinet in January 2023 as part of the ‘Housing Development Programme Report – 2023/24’. The site was allocated for residential development within the Council’s adopted Local Plan (site reference H28). The Sites and Policies document indicated an indicative capacity of 13 dwellings. The site was currently an unused garage plot site on which fly tipping was an issue, with high costs to clear and maintain the land.

The site had been included within the previous Programme report to Cabinet meaning that release of the site for the purpose of new housing development has been approved in principle. The report sought approval from Cabinet to build an estimated 14 x 2-bed apartments on the site. Early surveys had been commissioned following which indicative plans had been produced. The final designs were subject to change in line with recommendation 2 of the report.

The apartments would be low-rise, with their own direct access via a front door. There would be no internal communal areas and they would be constructed to meet Secure by Design standards. An indicative layout was provided in Appendix 2.

The East Dene locality was situated within the Rotherham East Ward. Rotherham East had the highest number of Council homes in Rotherham (1,989) with the highest number of three-bedroom houses (973), two-bed houses (293) and one-bed bungalows (257) of all wards in the Borough. These were also the most common house type within the ward. In comparison to Rotherham’s overall split of house types, Rotherham East had a below average percentage of bungalows and flats.

Although Rotherham East had the highest number of Council homes of all wards, it was also losing the highest percentage of homes through the Right to Buy, therefore whilst the new homes would still be subject to Right to Buy, new housing delivery in this ward was key to helping meet continuing high levels of demand. The area was popular with a higher-than-average number of bids for all property types, with three-bed properties receiving over double the borough average. One and two-bed flats also exceeded Rotherham’s average bids and whilst the data did not record the two-bed flats as the highest demand property type, they did have the lowest turnover of any of the property types in the area for 2023.

Resolved:

That Cabinet:

1. Approve development of the Far Lane site, to build up to an estimated 14 new Council homes.

2. Delegate authority to the Assistant Director of Housing, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Housing, to optimise design of the sites according to strategic need, site constraints, and any requirements resulting from both stakeholder feedback and the planning application process.