Affordable housing is high on the political agenda and the South West is one of the worst affected areas in England for house prices that outstrip people’s income.
Houses cost around 12 times the average income in this area, according to the National Housing Federation latest edition of its annual Home Truths report.
As a key provider of affordable housing, we have a vital role to play in providing new homes, both to rent and buy through shared ownership. We will be building around 500 new homes to 2012 through our development strategy, mostly for rent. Our development strategy outlines not just our house building programme but also other ways that we will use our assets to tackle housing need.
We are a member of the New Futures partnership which has secured £27 million to spend on building new homes across the South West of England. Around £14 million of this will be spent by Flourish Homes in Somerset over the coming years.
These include:
- Identifying key local villages where we could build new homes to help tackle the lack of affordable rural homes
- Building all types of properties, from one bed-roomed starter homes to two, three and four bed-roomed family houses
- Encouraging single people renting bigger homes to consider moving to smaller properties to enable these larger houses to be re-let to families
- Building on land we already own which is under-occupied, such as blocks of garages which are hard to let out. These are therefore losing the rental income that could be fund our work
- Expanding our horizons outside the traditional Mendip area – towards Yeovil, Bridgwater and Taunton
- Setting up the ‘Mendip’ standard to which all our new homes will be built
Have a look at the links on the left to find out more about our building plans for the future.
We are also part of the New Futures groups and you can find out more here on its website.
