The council’s cabinet is expected to approve a budget of at least £16 million for three housing schemes this week with 67 new homes in the pipeline.
Brighton and Hove City Council has not published the exact sums in a report to the cabinet but all three sites already have planning permission.
Earlier reports indicated that the council would spend about £10 million building 28 homes at the Portslade Village Centre site formerly known as the Courthope Centre.
Plans were approved last month for the “truly affordable” homes in Courthope Close in two blocks of flats, each three storeys high, which would go to people on the housing register.
A £3 million project on the old Hollingbury Library site, in Carden Hill, received planning permission in March. The council plans to let five one-bed and four two-bedroom flats at social rents to people on the housing list.
And in October 2020, the council granted permission for a £3 million project to build 30 studio flats as short-term supported housing for young people who had previously been in care or homeless and were in work, training or education.
The scheme involved putting prefab homes on an old garage site behind the row of shops in Moulsecoomb Way, Moulsecoomb, and the neighbouring Oakendene flats on the corner of Appledore Road.
A report to the cabinet said: “Building new homes on council land is a council priority. It is essential if City Plan housing targets are to be met and the city’s housing crisis tackled.
“The New Homes for Neighbourhoods programme aims to proactively respond to the acute housing need in the city and to build much-needed new rented homes on council-owned land making best use of council assets.”
Since the New Homes for Neighbourhoods programme started in 2014, the council has built 269 homes on 14 sites and 264 more have planning permission.
The cabinet is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 4.30pm on Thursday (18 July). The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
Good. Now if only we could sell off the i360
You’d still have the debt, and now you don’t have the asset to make money back from it.
£16m for 67 homes gives a build cost of around 240k per home. That’s a lot when you already own the land. Is this the best value for money we can get? If we are looking for affordable housing, then we need affordable building too….
£240k per unit doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. Materials and labour costs are through the proverbial roof. Add on demolition costs, architecture, fees etc.
I wonder if council staff and project management costs are included too?
It would be OK if it included the land cost! It very high if its just the build cost…
Sounds like a reasonable cost to me, clear project reimbursement with rent, and strategically, much needed in the city.
Pretty reasonable costs. People always think land is expensive but at the moment build costs in flats are the far greater proportion of costs always has been but now it’s exacerbated as build costs have rocketed.