Beating the build barriers

Andy Elder comes face to face with what he’s done every time he goes to work. Stepping out of Littlehampton train station it’s right there in front of him: a brand new block of 23 flats and maisonettes for social rent.

What is now The Ostlers, a smart new development owned by local housing association Worthing Homes was, until March 2010, a club for railways workers. As housing strategy and enabling manager for Arun Council, based a five-minute walk from the West Sussex coastal town’s station, Mr Elder was instrumental in transforming it from a vacant building to a set of homes.

‘Every day when I stepped off the train the railway club site was the first think I saw, so I was able to keep a close eye on its progress,’ he says.

Mr Elder has spearheaded attempts to increase the supply of affordable housing in Arun through schemes like The Ostlers since joining the local authority in 2009. And those efforts make Arun something of a flagship council for the kind of initiatives Inside Housing is banging the drum for through Get on our Land, our new campaign to increase housing land supply.

A Conservative-run authority representing some of the more well-heeled communities of England’s bucolic South Downs might seem an unlikely champion of pioneering land initiatives. And yet it is proving itself to be just that.

Arun’s councillors decided to make delivering affordable housing a priority when it came to writing a new housing strategy in 2010, after a report by housing charity Shelter identified significant local housing need. Councillors want 1,000 affordable homes built in the area over the next five years and, says Mr Elder, construction will begin on 250 affordable homes this year alone. The development goal marks a step change in delivery. In the 10 years to 2007/08, just 79 affordable homes - 50 for social rent and 29 for intermediate sale - were built in Arun in an average year, according to Shelter. ‘We have set out our stall in very ambitious terms,’ confirms Mr Elder.

Securing land

Managing to bring land forward for development in a bearish land market is chief among the reasons for both the authority’s ambitions and its success in transforming the pace of housing delivery. To find out how it’s done I am sitting in the site cabin at one of Mr Elder’s latest projects. Outside, contractors are busy building the upper storeys of 12 homes for social rent, which replace another of the town’s defunct pubs, The Wickbourne Swan. Inside, the tinny sounds of Spirit FM seeping from the stereo, I aim to find out what barriers the district has overcome to get sites like this to stack up - and how others can do the same.

Here to help Mr Elder explain are Jess Thompson, a project manager from Viridian housing association, and Charles Wiggins, director of developer Wilmington Homes.

Despite the activity outside, getting this far hasn’t come easy. Securing land is the chief problem: most of the private landowners which dominate the area won’t sell until today’s low land values recover. I mention a 1.2 acre plot I saw for sale as my train from London trundled through Goring-on-Sea, in neighbouring Worthing.

‘I can’t comment on that site,’ says Mr Wiggins. ‘But there are plots in the area that were bought at the height of the boom market and got planning permission for schemes that aren’t viable anymore because, I’m assuming, the landowners can’t achieve the price for the land they need to make the scheme work.’

The private sector is a problem for housing associations which want to develop here, says Ms Thompson. ‘The [land] market down here is dominated by the owner-occupier market and we need to be able to compete in that,’ she says, adding that Viridian plans to build 940 homes in the next four years, 640 of them, it hopes, grant-funded.

‘When [sites] do come up they’re advertised on the private market and it’s very difficult for our teams to know what’s happening because we are not commercial companies. So the majority of sites [we secure new homes on] are section 106 sites. Thankfully we have some good contacts like Charles that can bring other sites, because he has that relationship with the commercial sector that we just don’t.’

In turn, plummeting land values, reduced development grant and tighter commercial lending have affected Mr Wiggins’ approach to business. ‘You can’t now go to a housing association with a scheme that has a planning consent and say, “well do you want to buy it off me?”,’ he explains.

In addition, it has become harder for outfits like Wilmington Homes -which has delivered around 100 housing association homes with Arun and Worthing councils in the past two years - to get finance. ‘Whereas before you could be building schemes with probably 25 per cent equity, now [as a developer] you’re looking at putting anything between 40 per cent to 60 per cent equity in,’ says Mr Wiggins.

Overcoming obstacles

How, then, can it be that 12 new homes for social rent are going up outside? Step forward Mr Elder. The housing enabler is quite clear why this site works: the council was prepared to put in its own land - for nothing.

Arun Council owns the freehold to the site where The Wickbourne Swan once stood. When the leaseholding brewery, Punch Taverns, decided it wanted shot of the pub in 2009

Mr Elder saw an opportunity. Instead of selling the freehold, valued at £340,000, he persuaded his bosses to retain it and allow Wilmington to buy the lease and sell it on to Viridian for development.

‘It was really making good use of land,’ says Roger Elkin, deputy leader of the council. ‘It really does focus on what our priorities are.’

While the council doesn’t gain financially from the deal, it maintains nomination rights for all 12 homes, ensuring they will remain for social rent. Mr Wiggins benefits by paying nothing for the land, which makes an otherwise unviable scheme stack up. And it’s a win for Viridian because it gets a 125-year lease on the properties at a price that is both affordable and allows it to charge social rents - a boon in an area where the average household earns less than £13,000 a year and 300 new families join the housing waiting list each month.

‘We are quite wedded to the idea of trying to deliver social rent alongside the majority of [80 per cent of market rate] affordable rents in the future because we recognise what the affordability issues are in our district,’ says Mr Elder. The ability to demand social rents is indicative of how donating land for development gives the council a strong hand in negotiating its terms.

Taking control

Councillors recently approved the Arun Developer and Partner Charter Plus which requires all partners in schemes on council-owned land to contribute to wider economic ambitions for the area, such as by providing training for local people. For example, apprentices from the town’s Littlehampton Academy will help on the Wickbourne Swan site in November, says Ms Thompson.

Other beefed-up housing policies include scrapping rules which said schemes of up to 25 homes did not have to include affordable housing. ‘Now we require schemes of 15 units and above to contain 30 per cent affordable housing. But below that, from 14 right down to one unit we seek to try to achieve 15 per cent affordable housing. That might be through offsite delivery, or by way of a commuted sum.’

The Wickbourne Swan site, due to complete next month, is not a one-off. Mr Elder says in a couple of hours he will be attending the opening of 59 homes it has developed with Affinity Sutton in nearby Yapton. Before then there’s just time to visit a council-owned plot down the road which the housing enabler has his eye on.

‘I reckon we can get four properties on here,’ he says, as we stand on a generous expanse of council-owned concrete bordered by garages in various states of dilapidation. ‘There’s a problem in that six garages have been purchased ,which is a hurdle because people can hold you to ransom. And access is tricky.’

Something tells me he won’t give up easily. ‘I suppose in Arun we don’t have a singular solution to every single housing challenge that’s facing us. But we’ve got a range of options to consider.’

It seems the day will come when Mr Elder can’t turn a corner round here without coming face to face with what he’s done. Poster boys for Get on our Land don’t come much better than this.