Affordable Housing Development Program:
The Sustainable Homes Sustainable Communities Stratford-on-Avon District Housing Strategy 2021 – 2026 promotes affordable housing and commits us to report annually about the new affordable homes that we provide. We collect data about these homes which helps in the efficient management of the Council’s development program, including informing the development of new and revised policies.
We’ve outlined:
• Key factors affecting the size, shape, and direction of our development program.
• Key achievements and outcomes of the program during the financial year ending 31 March 2022, including the overall number of homes, their type, location, and tenure, and who built and funded them.
As distortions can arise from year-to-year, we’ve also included comparative data for the past eleven years i.e. from April 2011 to 31 March 2022. April 2011 is the base date of the Stratford-on-Avon District Core Strategy for monitoring purposes. Figures may not always sum to 100% due to rounding. Further information is available in the Council’s Authority Monitoring Reports, including details of annual affordable housing yields (as a proportion of overall new housing) from 2001-02 onwards.
The context within which the development program discussed in this Annual Review is delivered is continuing high open market property prices and rents.
• HM Land Registry data shows that the average house price in the district for the year ending 14 November 2022 was £433,000; this is the highest local authority price in the West Midlands.
• Statistics published by ONS measure the ratio between average house prices and average earnings. Essentially the higher the ratio the less affordable homes are. The lower quartile house prices to lower quartile residence-based income affordability ratio for this district in 2021 was 10.74; this was the highest local authority ratio in the West Midlands (ONS March 2022).
• The lower quartile private rent for Stratford-on-Avon District for the year ending 31 March 2022 was £725 per calendar month or £8,700 per annum (ONS Private Rental Market Statistics June 2022).
• There were 5,800 households on the Council’s housing waiting list (Home Choice Plus) for rented affordable homes at the end of August 2022.
In summary, despite the lingering effects of the pandemic and significant inflationary pressures in the wider economy, the long-term trend of local high house prices and private rents make the provision of affordable housing is all the more important to the district’s sustainability.
To tackle these long-term issues, the Core Strategy 2011-2031 includes a requirement for 35% of homes on eligible market-led ‘S106’ sites to be affordable (this requirement has applied to homes granted permission since 2016) and we also promote community-led housing schemes. This and other activities by the Housing Policy and Development Team have achieved the outcomes outlined in this Review.
Lead times for the delivery of new affordable homes are lengthy. The homes delivered last year resulted from planning permissions granted between 2010 and 2020. The policies and terms under which the homes were secured (including grant funding where applicable) will have been those prevailing at the time those projects were approved rather than completed.
It is worth emphasizing that the Housing Policy and Development Team would have negotiated and agreed on most of the affordable homes many months (and sometimes years) before any permissions were granted. The Team is also heavily involved in agreeing on variations to agreed affordable housing in S106 Agreements.
The scale and form of the development program are driven by a range of factors affecting the operational environment. Actual delivery as well as longer-term development capacity remain very fluid. Investment decisions of partners and third parties such as lenders to associations and Homes England keep changing.
In addition, significant uncertainties about housing, social, and planning policies impair the capacity of Registered Providers to manage risks prudently and build new homes. Registered Providers (RPs) delivering affordable homes in this district are mostly not-for-profit housing associations, but some are for-profit organizations.