Council To Approve £38m Housing Spend

Two reports are due to go before the Council’s Executive Board on Tuesday relating to housing – one on affordable housing provision, and the second relates to the Council’s own housing stock.

The Affordable Housing Project was established by Wrexham County Borough Council in 2009 to provide more affordable housing across a range of sites in both Council and Welsh Government ownership.

The project has a target of delivering 367 new affordable homes. The report provides details of progress to meet the delivery target and summarises the key milestones and achievements to date including details of Welsh Government grant supporting specific schemes.

The project has established a portfolio of 29 sites of which 2 are in the ownership of the Welsh Government, seven are now in the ownership of Registered Social Landlords with the remainder in Council ownership.

Excluding the Welsh Government sites 15 sites are either in development, shortly to commence on site or have firm proposals from Registered Social Landlords for new affordable homes.

The report provides a summary of progress towards meeting the project delivery target – currently 316 new affordable homes either delivered or planned over the next 18 months and provides a detailed breakdown of sites within the project including a summary of Registered Social Landlord development partners, grant allocations, nominations arrangements, tenure and type units to be delivered.

The second report covers the Council’s aims targets towards the Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS) and also the HRA (Housing Revenue Account) Capital Programme which breaks down over the next twelve months where budgets will be spent.

The overall HRA Capital Programme has increases from £33.91 in 2014/15 to £38 million; the increase from 2014/15 will fund in the main, external wall insulation, a programme of external works, additional rewires and additional roofing works.

In the next twelve months among other works the Council anticipates over 2,500 council tenants being offered new kitchens and bathrooms, 700 properties receiving new central heating, 600 new roofs fitted and 200 properties having external wall insulation applied.

The Council says: “Expenditure on these elements is necessary to fund the programme of works to ensure all of our properties achieve WHQS by 31st December 2020.

“The ongoing regeneration of the housing stock plays a key role in supporting our communities as well as helping economic activity. We are working in partnership with the Contractors, who are delivering elements of the investment programme, to recruit local labour and deliver other community benefits.”

Councillor Ian Roberts said: “This is a massive capital spend and we are doing our best to make sure we reach the Welsh Quality Standard in 2020”.

You can read the PDF report here.